For the longest time Northwestern has been the punch line of many jokes around the Big Ten. Now that the Wildcats have shown an ability to pull off a big upset, the question around campus is: “Where is the love?”
Where is the attention of the national media or even the Big Ten Network? The answer is that although NU has improved in the last 20 years, the Cats have not earned the right to appear consistently on national television.
Yes, NU has made for some entertaining television the last five years, but it hasn’t won any of those games. Four bowl games, including two that have gone into overtime, have resulted in zero wins. Five of NU’s six wins this season were shown on BTN and the Cats were an unimpressive 1-2 on the ESPN family of networks. The Cats lost their three primetime games on BTN, looking inconsistent at best against Penn State, Iowa and Michigan.
The men’s basketball team has four more chances to impress a national audience with games on the ESPN family of networks – against Purdue, Nebraska, Iowa and Penn State. Three of those games will be played in Evanston and all four of them are very winnable. If NU wants to make a push for its first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament, it is paramount they perform in front of a national audience.
Being on BTN is nice and brings with it a national audience, but the network does not have nearly the same following as that of ESPN or any of the network channels like CBS and ABC. If NU wants to make an impact on the national stage it needs to do it on ESPN, not BTN, which covers every Big Ten team.
When the lights have shined on the Cats, they seem to have fallen just short. The basketball team is a good example of this perception. The four biggest games NU played last season were broadcast on national television. The Cats went 1-3 in those games, with the sole victory coming on CBS against Illinois at Welsh-Ryan Arena. NU lost the other three games – twice to Ohio State and once to Washington State – by a combined 10 points, with two of those affairs going into overtime.
The losses to Ohio State and the season-ending loss to Washington State were entertaining basketball and showed NU could compete with the nation’s best on the biggest stages. However, no one remembers the teams that almost won. In five years no one is going to remember the Buckeyes almost lost their first game in Evanston; they are going to remember Wisconsin beating Ohio State two weeks later. No one is going to remember the crazy finish to the NIT quarterfinal; to the extent people even remember an NIT quarterfinal, they are just going to see that Washington State beat NU 69-66 in overtime.
If NU wants to feel the love from the national media, it needs to earn it. Improving a once-downtrodden program is a good start, but that is not enough. Making three straight NITs and four straight bowl games is progress, but not success. College athletics is a results-driven business and like it or not, the Cats just don’t have the results to warrant more national games.
Assistant sports editor Josh Walfish is a Medill sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected]
