A wise man once said: “It doesn’t get much better than waking up hung over, turning on the TV, and finding College GameDay waiting for you”.
That wise man was the author of fabled website Bros Like This Site, and the reason he was writing it, of course, was because he had captured a screen shot of someone in the crowd behind the mobile stage where ESPN’s College GameDay is filmed with a sign proclaiming that “Bro Paterno is a Bro King”.
Now, I’m rarely one to disagree with Bros Like This Site. After all, I do like many of the other things they claim bros like, such as throwback jerseys, The Wire and peeing places that aren’t the toilet.
But, as a Northwestern student, I’ve never been down with America’s favorite football pregame show. Yes, I love college football more than nearly anything else in this world, besides my family, the video game NBA Street Vol. 2 and possibly my friends. But watching GameDay is like forcing myself to re-enter a mindset where NU sports simply don’t matter. The Cats aren’t the team playing, and they’re not the topic of conversation. The best chance NU has of being mentioned is in a graphic about other Big Ten team’s schedules.
ESPN might be broadcasting NU’s game Saturday, but College GameDay’s bus hasn’t rolled into Evanston since it’s first full season going on a nationwide road trip. Then, the crew came to watch then-No. 5 Northwestern continue their run to a Big Ten championship against the Iowa Hawkeyes on November 11, 1995.
It’s been nearly 15 years and more than 200 episodes of GameDay since then, but the Cats have neither appeared nor hosted since. Now, it would be silly for me to argue that NU has deserved another visit from the mascot-helmet-applying crew. True, since the end of the 1995 season, the Cats have won two Big Ten championships, but they’ve also won slightly less than half of their games while never entering the top ten of the AP Poll rankings and playing primarily in front of a half-full stadium – far from the screaming throngs that normally appear in the background of GameDay.
I’m tired of College GameDay being a barrier preventing the unification of Northwestern’s student body with the pantheon of things bros supposedly like.
But this year, Bristol shouldn’t rule us out. In the next two weeks, Northwestern will play Minnesota and Purdue. That is to say, Northwestern is 4-0 right now, and could easily be 6-0 entering their bye in two weeks. I’m not predicting the impossible, just two wins against lesser teams, much as I would have predicted four weeks ago about NU’s first four games.
Meanwhile, No. 21 Michigan State will play here in three weeks. Now, they have a mighty tough schedule: they’ll have to fend off No. 9 Wisconsin and No. 19 Michigan in back-to-back weeks before playing Illinois.
Hypothetically, if NU does its job and the Spartans play slightly above their caliber, two undefeated teams could face off at Ryan Field. Both would probably be ranked – MSU in the top ten, NU in the top 25. GameDay here wouldn’t just be cool, it would actually make sense.
After a decade and a half, GameDay could once again be upon us. Bros.
Deputy sports editor Rodger Sherman is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected]
