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October 30, 2000

   Yesterday was the final game of the IM football regular season.  Unfortunately, we got crushed by 2020 Orrington, 28-6.   We actually had a chance to tie the game at 14, but a touchdown got called back because of an illegal use of the hands, and we never really threatened again.  The upside is we probably won't have to play them in the playoffs.

    In other news, I've worked out the current possible Northwestern bowl scenarios.

There is a sixth and possibly a seventh scenario which would result in NU going to the MicronPC.com Bowl or possibly some at-large bid in a game like the Oahu Bowl, but those scenarios get very complex.  It should be noted that under the "And" section, "Michigan beats Ohio State" and "Ohio State beats Michigan" means that those teams win the rest of their remaining games.  If NU does lose to Michigan, their bowl fate would be contingent on the outcome of the OSU-UM game, which would determine whether they finish in third or fourth in the Big Ten.  Those scenarios also involve Purdue winning out.

Remember to look for my full Bowl Coverage, coming as soon as the matchups are set (early December sometime, I'd say).

October 25, 2000

   Right after I wrote that fog thing, it got really bad, and then all of a sudden it disappeared and I could see the lake again.   Weird.

    In other news, Week Nine NFL Predictions are up.

October 25, 2000

   I'm in a strangely observational mood, so just humor me for a minute.

Notes on the Fog Settling on Evanston

    The National Weather Service calls it a "severe weather alert."  I say, "Hey, fog!"  Fog is interesting, after all, as long as you don't have to drive in it.  Or play football, as my dad says.
    I saw the clock tower last night in the middle of the fog.  The face was lit up and you could see all the fog surrounding it, making for an eerie effect.   It's weird, but during the day if you fix your gaze near the ground, the fog in the air makes everything else look white out of the corners of your eyes.  It is as though the only part of the world that exists is what you are looking at, and the rest just fades away.
    The fog is so thick that I haven't been to able to see the lake for two days.  Or the beach, for that matter, and the distance is only a few hundred feet from my window to the shore.
    Coming back from class today I could see the fog moving with the wind.   Fog always gives me a strange feeling of stillness, like a pallor hanging over the earth.

    The fog comes
    on little cat feet.

    It sits looking
    over harbor and city
    on silent haunches
    and then moves on.

    --- Carl Sandburg

    The Weather Service said that this fog bank ran from Rockford to Valparaiso.  That's a long way.

October 22, 2000

   Two days, two football games, and I didn't do much in either of them.  First there was Saturday's battle between the Daily Northwestern (newspaper) and WNUR Sports.  I started the game on the defensive line, but was replaced early on and just stayed out.  This was okay, though, because it meant I got to announce the game - which was good until the Daily scored a late touchdown and beat us 12-8.  It was pretty fun anyway, though.
    Then came today's actual IM game, with our Hinman squad taking on Sig Ep (Sigma Epsilon, or whatever it is).  I didn't see too much time in this either because I crashed out of bounds going for somebody's flag on a kickoff return and scraped up the left side of my left leg, which wasn't really enough to keep me out necessarily but which stung like crazy.  So rather than chance falling on it again, as it was already bleeding a little bit, I pulled myself out.  We won the game pretty big anyway, 24-13, making us 3-1 on the season, which is pretty good for a res hall, I think.   The game was called after we picked off their quarterback for I think the third time in the end zone with maybe a minute and a half left - at that point it was obviously over, so the refs just called it.

October 17, 2000

    Results for yesterday's poll are so far: 75%, Gore; 12.5%, Nader; 12.5%, the chick from Dark Angel.  This after I had to factor out all of the votes put in for Gore by a certain ballot-stuffing weasel who shall remain nameless (mostly because I only know his IP).

    In other news, Week 8 NFL Predictions are up.

October 15, 2000

   Hinman's IM football team improved to 2-1 today with a 20-13 win over the "Woo Shack" of Willard Residential College.   The game was pretty exciting right down to the end, which is pretty embarrassing because we had eleven guys and they had five total, meaning we outnumbered them by two guys on each side of the ball.
    Willard scored on their first possession to go up 6-0, but we drove back to lead 7-6.  Later we went up 13-6, but Willard came back to tie the score at 13.
    Then, late in the fourth quarter, we stopped Willard on fourth down deep in our territory and took over.  Unfortunately, our drive went nowhere, so we were forced to punt with under two minutes left.
    Here's where our luck kicked in.  On Willard's first play from scrimmage, their QB threw an interception to John.  Then, early in our drive, John, as QB, threw a pass that was knocked up in the air by a man running in.  John caught it himself and ran the ball about 30 yards, putting us within striking distance.  He then hit Eric for a touchdown with fifteen seconds left, and we went up 20-13.  After a kickoff on which I made one of my two important plays of the game (the other was breaking up a pass in the first half) by pulling the return man's flag off before he could really break it open, Willard took two deep shots at the end zone but couldn't get a completion, so we held on.
    Yeesh.  There's no way that game should have been that close.   If we'd run the kind of drive we ran to win the game all day, we could have scored about 40 points.  The problem was we refused to run the ball most of the time, even though we could easily have done so because of their defensive shortage.  Oh well.   It's still a win.

October 13, 2000

   Today was a really nice day: mid-70s, warm but not too warm, sunny, blue sky, the works.  Tomorrow will be about as nice, and then for Sunday the temperature drops to 60 and it rains.  Or at least according to the forecast I've seen.  Then next week it's back into the fifties, and our beautiful weather, which we all thought had gone last weekend when it was 35 and snowing, will actually be gone.  Maybe.
    The downside to this weather is the massive infestation of ladybugs.   Normally I don't mind ladybugs - as bugs go, they're pretty harmless and certainly not of the "icky" variety.  BUT when 80,000 or so of them descend on your dorm in particular and other buildings as well, it's not too fun.  There are ladybugs everywhere in this dorm, landing on you and crawling around in the shower and such, which is not particularly fun.
    Also today, there was a group of naked purple guys running around chanting "Go U!  NU!" or something like that.  I think I probably could have gotten by without seeing that.

October 10, 2000

   Week Seven NFL Predictions are up.

    In other news, I've done an update on WNUR's Sunday night show "The SportsVoice" three weeks in a row.  This week I did the Big Ten football update.  And now they've started putting said updates online - so you can read what I wrote, and read on the air, here.

October 8, 2000

   Well, it didn't snow this weekend (here), although it did get pretty cold.  It did snow in Palatine, though, which is not very far away - and it rained here, it just wasn't quite cold enough to snow.
    The rain made the football field somewhat muddy, which wasn't too fun.   I almost avoided getting dirty for the whole game, but right near the end I went diving to break up a pass and fell down.  Oh well.  The bad news was that we lost to Delta Kappa Epsilon 20-7.  The good news is that we got our shit together in the second half, which we actually won 7-6 despite missing our best player.  In fact, the team as a whole was pretty shorthanded today - we only had nine players.  This meant that, unlike last week, I got to be in for almost every play, only coming out for one or two plays in the second half when I wanted to come out for a minute.  I didn't really get to do much, though - I was only as effective on offense as I was last week.   But at least on defense I almost had an interception.  Oh well, there's always next week (plus everyone makes the playoffs).

October 3, 2000

   Week Six NFL Predictions are up.   In other news, the forecast for this weekend is snow.  B'uh?

October 1, 2000

   A week ago, it was September, but cold and rainy.  Today is the first day of October, yet it's bright and warm and beautiful.  So, fittingly, I spent the day outside - playing flag football.
    There's regular Northwestern football (we're #24 in the coaches' poll, baby!), and then there's IM football - intramural.  No pads, no helmets - no hitting.   Just flags.  Today was the first game of the season (we play five or six games), and we won 6-2 over a team from Chapin Hall.  Yes, I know 6-2 sounds like a baseball score, but it's hard to get offenses going in this game because we're all generally very low-rent amateurs.  But at least our defense played well, which included stopping Chapin from first and goal (our offense proceeded to give up a safety, but what the hell).  So hey, at least we're 1-0.

There's more! View last month's updates.

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This page last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 08:12:47 PM