So it turns out that Dan Persa is like a tinier version of Hercules with more pinpoint precision passing skills, and that Quentin Davie really, really likes intercepting things, and that Northwestern is 3-0.
And their next three games are against Central Michigan, Minnesota and Purdue, so the concept of NU beginning the season with six consecutive wins is very much within the realm of possibility. Awesome, right?
But although the Wildcats have done everything you can ask of them – winning every game they’ve played, two of them comfortably – don’t go around smelling roses everywhere you go. After all, six of the Big Ten’s 11 teams are undefeated, and one of those is Indiana, so you know how much that means. I’d say NU’s season thus far has been a lot like completing an off-the-backboard alley-oop in a game of NBA Street Vol. 2: It should be impressive, but when you take a look at it in context, it really isn’t.
So let’s reevaluate our expectations for NU’s season: I’ve ranked various outcomes for our season on a scale of 1-to-10 flying pigs determining how likely the event is to cause the apocalypse.
NU appears in a bowl game: 1.1 flying pigs.
NU is already halfway to bowl eligibility, and with the fact that the Big Ten now has eight – yes, eight – bowl tie-ins, it would be essentially impossible for a Big Ten team to have six wins and still fail to appear in a bowl as NU did in 2007. For that to happen again, they’d have to win only six games, which at this point appears highly unlikely, and there could only be two teams in the Big Ten with losing records. I’m not a math major, so I have no intentions of figuring out whether this is possible, but at the very least, it’s highly unlikely.
NU appears in the Rose Bowl: 6.8 flying pigs.
It’s not impossible. Northwestern is good. But they’re in a conference with some serious world-beaters: Ohio State looks like they could beat anybody in the country, Iowa looks like they could beat anybody in the country that doesn’t return a pick and a kickoff return for a touchdown and then sack their quarterback on four consecutive plays in the fourth quarter, and Penn State looks like they were disturbingly over-ranked at the beginning of the year but are still pretty good. (So is Wisconsin.) NU’s best hope is to go 8-0 in conference – or for Ohio State to fall flat on its face.
NU wins the BCS National Championship: 10 flying pigs.
Now you’re dealing with legitimate crazy talk. Let’s say – and we’re getting real, real, real hypothetical here – that NU runs the table and goes undefeated. Even then, there’s a high chance that they wouldn’t get invited to the ship. Our schedule, although it does feature the meat and bones of the Big Ten, looks like a Football Championship Subdivision schedule next to Alabama’s, and Boise State will cakewalk through their schedule. Not to mention that a 12-0 NU wouldn’t preclude the concept of there being a 12-0 Ohio State team since the Cats don’t play them head-to-head, and goodness knows that squad – in the same conference – has an infinitely higher chance of getting invited to the game than NU does .
That being said, it would be fun if NU kept this winning streak going, if nothing else because I’m excited to see if hell actually freezes over at the end of all this.
