The 2026 Northwestern Essay No. 1--An Origin Story

 Good evening.  My name is Michael Boyle, and I am a fan of Northwestern University football.  In a bit I will explain how I came to be a fan of this somewhat niche team in the Big Ten Conference of what is now referred to at "FBS" college football.  But first, I want to share my vision for this project so that you, the reader, can have your expectations properly set for what I plan to provide over the course of the fall.

Beginning on September 5, 2026, Northwestern will play a series of 12 games on a generally weekly basis.  Before each game, on Friday, I will post an essay in connection with the game.  I say "in connection with the game" because I anticipate these essays will have a varied degree of connection to the actual game that will be actually played on the field.  Perhaps some essays will provide some sort of substantive analysis of the game, but I suspect many of them will be inspired by the game in a much looser fashion, on a more thematic or abstract level. I can commit to telling you at some point in the essay who Northwestern is playing, what time they are playing, and where you can watch the game if you wish to do so.  Beyond that, I am making no promises that you will know more about the game on Saturday for having read my essay on Friday.  Again, I want to set expectations up front.

I may also put these essays on Substack or some similar platform.  If I do, it will be on a "pay what you want" basis.  Mostly, I want to see how those platforms work and whether they are viable for small-scale projects like this.  If I do decide to move over, I will give a warning in this space.

Anyway, that's what I have in mind.  Now on to my origin story.

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The simplest but also misleading answer to how I became a Northwestern fan is that I was a student there from September 1996 to April 2000.  People who are sports fans, as I was and still am (though I would say less than I was as a younger person), tend to follow the college team of the school they attended, especially if that school has "big time" athletics as Northwestern does.

The problem with this explanation is that I didn't graduate from Northwestern.  Essentially, I flunked out of Northwestern and eventually graduated from a different school with my bachelor's degree in 2002.  The reason for this was a combination of depression that I did not understand and thus did not know how to address/cope with and a lack of a direction and purpose for my life while I was in school.  To be clear, I don't blame Northwestern for this; while there are structural elements with the way Northwestern is set up that contributed to my problems, the ultimate source of the problems I had at Northwestern lies with myself.  Still, when I think back to Northwestern qua the academic institution, my memories are not  pleasant or positive.  It is intrinsically tied up in what was the most painful time in my life, certainly to that point but probably thus far.

No, the actual origin story for why I am a Northwestern fan today is located later, in November of 2002.  At that time, I was living in Denver, Colorado, but more importantly I was a novice with the Order of Preachers, a Roman Catholic religious order.  I was at the beginning of the path toward becoming a Catholic priest.  By late 2002, I had pretty much pulled myself back together from the wreckage of my time at Northwestern, gotten my undergrad degree, and was ready to move on with my life.  As part of that--and definitely influenced by the way I was choosing to move forward at the time--I had made a conscious decision that I was going to act as if my life was a blank slate.  Nothing that I had done in the past mattered, and it was best to forget all of that had happened.  Or, so I thought.

In November, I received a visit from two of my closest friends while I was at Northwestern, Jason and Nick.  They were insistent on coming to visit me in Denver, in large measure (I learned later) out of concern for this crazy thing I was doing with my life.  They came for a weekend, and we had a great time.  At one point, we were walking through downtown Denver and Jason asked me "what do you think of Brent Basenez?" The truth was I had no idea at the time who Brent Basenez was.  I faked my way through the conversation, realizing from context clues that he was the starting quarterback for Northwestern, a freshman from California on a bad 3-8 Northwestern team in 2002. Jason expressed optimism about Basenez and his future development, and I pretended that I cared. I had assumed that Northwestern football, like everything else that had come before what I was doing currently, was something I was going to actively work to forget.

Over the course of the weekend with Jason and Nick, doubts began to creep in about what I was doing in Denver. At the end of the weekend, Nick offered to buy me a plane ticket to get me out of there ASAP. I declined, but I took what they said to heart. They were right in their discernment of my situation: I was trying very hard to convince myself that this was who I was, when in fact it was not. In April of '03, I left the Dominicans.

[As an aside, Jason was right, and not just about the Dominicans. Brent Basenez went on to have an excellent career as NU’s quarterback.  He started all four of his seasons with the team, and is the current holder of the most of the major career passing records at NU.  He became the formula for a string of NU quarterbacks that followed him with similar profiles (“the surprisingly athletic white guy”)--former NY Giants interim head coach and longtime NFL assistant Mike Kafka, Trevor Siemian, Clayton Thorson.  Basenez played a little bit in the NFL, but not in any significant way. Still, he proved to be a very good player for Northwestern teams that we improving over his time.]

After I left, Jason and I would correspond periodically about Northwestern football. When we got done with law school (him in '06, me in '08), we would pretty consistently watch the games in our respective locations and discuss the game. Northwestern became my team again, especially after I moved back into Big Ten country in 2011.

In part, this fandom became a part of my friendship with Jason, probably the closest one in my life (he was the best man at my wedding two years ago). But it also came to represent a rejection of the idea that I could or should run away from the prior, more difficult parts of my life. I have learned over the course of the time from then to now that you can never truly turn the page. What happened to you in the past, both positive and negative is the bones and sinews of who you are now. In particular, the painful and difficult things can be extremely important in your flourishing in the future, if you can forgive yourself and learn from them. The "blank slate" idea, tempting though that is, is simply a way to refuse to acknowledge the complexities of how your past makes you you, now. It's not the way to go.

I still am tempted to just turn the page and ignore what came before. So, following Northwestern football is, in what might seem like a small and silly way, a way to force myself to acknowledge a part of my story that I am inclined to erase. I root for a team that comes from a school that is associated for me with failure and sadness and depression and disappointment. I don't do this out of masochism, but out of a sense that those things are a necessary part of how and why I am who I am right now. I cannot have the wonderful things I have now without going through that pain, and it is good to be reminded of that gently, through the palatable vehicle of a football game on a Saturday afternoon.

Because that's the other piece of this--I find being a Northwestern football fan to me fun, at least in the aggregate. I recognize that, absent the particular connection with Northwestern I would likely find similar fun being a fan of some other team, so I don't think there is something uniquely fun about being an NU fan. But it is important to emphasize that being a Northwestern fan is not some unpleasant act of self-discipline toward a more enlightened state of mind. It's fun, and I think that's really important.

In fact, finding the fun in being a sports fan is something I want to tackle in my next essay.


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Northwestern Schedule 2026

September 5                    HOME        South Dakota State

September 12                                     BYE WEEK

September 19                  HOME        Colorado

September 25 [Friday]    AWAY        Indiana

October 2 [Friday]          HOME       Penn State [Opening of the new Stadium]

October 10                      HOME       Ball State

October 17                      AWAY        Michigan State

October 24                     HOME       Rutgers

October 31                     AWAY        Oregon

November 7                    HOME       Iowa

November 14                  AWAY       Ohio State

November 21                 AWAY       Minnesota

November 28                  HOME      Illinois



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