Two years ago, I wrote something about how it had been 61 years since Northwestern's last bowl game. It was ADORABLE then. At the time, Northwestern had only lost six consecutive bowl games. I then posted it again last year. I am now posting it again this year, as Northwestern has now lost eight straight bowl games.
Our lives are so sad.
Things that have changed since 2009 and then changed again since 2010 are fixed.
Friday Saturday isn't just the beginning of a new year, and it's not just a day our football team plays a bowl game.
It's also the 61st 62nd anniversary of January 1st, 1949: Northwestern's first and only bowl victory. This was 6162 years ago. As the title notes, 61 62 years is a long freaking time. I've been trying to figure out an appropriate way to demonstrate this. First, I wanted to do an NU football timeline, but it was too depressing chronicling all the unfortunate happenings, and was like 400 pages long by the time I was halfway done with it. Instead, accept this comparison of January 1, 2010 2011 and January 1st, 1949. (Ed. Note: Northwestern plays on Dec. 31, 2011 this year, so, all the mentions of New Years' Day are kind of random.)
I'd like to apologize to any readers I may have who are 62+ years of age (editors note: hey, enjoy your 63rd birthdays tomorrow!) for a) making it seem like dinosaurs and stuff were still around in your lifetime and b) being a young whippersnapper writing an article that seems disrespectful of all y'all elders and the good ol' days. Not necessarily the case: I just find it fascinating that Northwestern hasn't won a bowl for such a long freaking time, and that the world was such a remarkably different place back yonder. If anybody who saw a football game before 1949 and is reading this would like to come forward, I'm kinda fascinated.
Consider all information Wikipedia'd.
Oh, and I started writing this article before the Daily's two great articles about the 1949 Rose Bowl (which covers a few of the same things as here.) and Pat Fitzgerald's Bob Voigts-iness, and before Lindsey Willhite's blog post yesterday about how different basketball was the last time NU was ranked. I'm not a good author, but at the very least I'm not a plagiarist. (editors note: all these articles are from last year. They're still good though.)
-
The Rose Bowl was one of four bowls in the 1948 football season, meaning old-timey college football fans were deprived of the opportunity to witness the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl. Then again, they couldn't watch the Rose Bowl either, because it wasn't televised.
-
Northwestern was the second team in what was then the Big Nine conference - UChicago had backed out of the conference in 1946, and wouldn't get replaced until May of 1949, when Michigan State filled that spot. The reason the Cats made it to Pasadena despite being second in the conference was because Michigan, who had appeared in the Rose Bowl the year before, had won the conference, and a Rose Bowl rule prevented teams from playing in back-to-back Rose Bowls. This, like Michigan being good at football, is no longer the case.
-
Football was a moderately different game. First off, it looked like this:
via hailtopurple.com
- That's Tom Worthington picking off a California pass. If you think any of those guys would last more than 28 seconds on the field at the
Outback Bowl Friday(TicketCity Bowl Saturday)(Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas Saturday), well, ya dead wrong. First off, all of them would suffer life-altering brain injuries when the hellish titanium enforced concussion machines impacted those facemaskless leather things whose main purposes were to keep a guys head from falling apart and protect their ears, whereas today's help making leading with your head deliver monster hits. While we're talking about uniforms, it should be noted that NU's uniforms in 1949 actually featured Northwestern striping on their sleeves,as opposed to our current uniforms, which are some cookie-cutter things Adidas supplies us with no individuality based on the school they're giving it to. (YAY NORTHWESTERN STRIPING!) (ed. note: Under Armour'ed) But, moving on. The game was primarily running-based back then, and most guys played both ways. Also, no overtime (now, they have overtime, as you probably found out last year.) (editors note: AND AS YOU PROBABLY FOUND OUT AGAINLAST YEARTWO YEARS AGO IN HEARTBREAKING FASHION), and no two-point conversions. Seriously. No two-point conversions. - I mean, don't two-point conversions just seem so obvious nowadays? How did it take them so long to figure out? It kind of scares me that this hasn't been a part of the game since its inception, because perhaps this means the NFL will someday take a hint from Northwestern IM referees and start including the three point conversion from the 15 yard line, used only by really risky coaches, or that one really dicky team that's made up of like all 24-year old grad students and is up by three touchdowns but missed an extra point along the way and wants to make sure that you can't come back even though there are only three minutes left plus they want to practice scoring from 15 yards out anyway so that when they play a more difficult opponent they can be more ready YEAH I HAD SOME BAD EXPERIENCES PLAYING CO-REC FOOTBALL FRESHMAN YEAR.
-
On to the obvious stuff: Harry S Truman was president. Harry freaking Truman. Even more old-timey is the fact that he was still serving out Franklin Delano Roosevelt's term. Therefore, if Roosevelt hadn't died of a stroke at the beginning of his fourth term, he still would have been serving as president the last time Northwestern won a bowl. Then again, if Roosevelt hadn't died, it's likely that Roosevelt would have been elected to a fifth term, then a sixth term, and so on and so forth, and it would be likely that further cyborg/zombie Roosevelts would still be serving as President today. (Tasteless.)
-
My parents weren't born yet. Pat Fitzgerald wasn't born yet. Morty Schapiro wasn't born yet. Not to get all tragic on you, but Randy Walker wasn't even born yet. Walker was born in 1952, meaning that in Walker's 52 years, he was never once alive in a season where Northwestern won a bowl.
- Ryan Field was still called "Dyche Stadium." And Northwestern football wasn't yet associated with unrelenting failure.
As for the Outback Bowl, well, it was 27 years from being in existence, and Outback Steakhouse was 29 years away from being founded, considering fast food as we know it today, let alone the concept of a family-style sit-down American restaurant with an Australian decor theme, was not yet invented.As for post-season bowls in Tampa, there was one: the Cigar Bowl, so called because of Tampa's then thriving cigar industry and still thriving Cuban population. The bowl was founded in 1946 and finished by 1954, featuring minor college teams. The edition held on January 1st, 1949 was a 13-13 tie between Missouri Valley College (hasn't had a football team in years) and the University of St. Thomas (a DIII school from Minnesota.) Other schools featured in the Cigar Bowl's brief turn on this mortal coil were Lenoir-Rhyne College, Wofford, a then non-prominent Florida State, and my grandparents' alma mater of the University of Havana, who lost 55-0 to Southern Miss in 1946. Luckily, I don't think either of them ever cared much for football, and neither of them spoke English in 1946, so, I doubt neither of them were too beaten up about La Universidad's shutout. Anyway, you can tell this took place a long time ago, because Cuban university football teams stopped playing exhibition American football matches against American college teams around the same time my family left Cuba. That is, a long time ago.If you're wondering about the TicketCity Bowl, this is the inaugural year, duh. TicketCity also didn't exist, mainly because there was no such thing as the internet or computers or wow, living in 1949 must have sucked. However, there was the Cotton Bowl, which has been played since 1937. Indeed, it was played 62 years ago on January 1st, 1949, the same day NU won in the Rose Bowl. SMU, led by Doak Walker, yes, the guy after whom the award was named, beat Oregon 21-13. The year before, Penn State, not yet coached by Joe Paterno, and a still independent, played SMU to a 13-13 tie, having had to travel 14 miles from the only place where the two black players on the team were allowed to stay. Racism and teams with only two black people have fallen off in the past 62 years.- So, now, Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas trivia. There were bowls in Houston back in the day, starting with the Bluebonnet Bowl, played at Rice Stadium and then later the Astrodome, from 1959-1987. Then that stopped happening. However, the roots of the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas begin in 2000, with the Houston Bowl, or as it was formally called, the galleryfurniture.com Bowl. This had its flaws: first off, one word was capitalized and one wasn't. Also, the.com boom made the owner of the actually-still-active galleryfurniture.com realize that perhaps he wouldn't move enough chaises and coffee tables per year to also afford sponsoring a middling bowl game. However, some people thought there was still hope in the internets, the people from Everyone's Internet, who decided to make the bowl into the EV1.Net Houston Bowl. Yes, the people of Evanston First Liquors, who for decades have been providing of-age Evanston residents with Peach Passion Andre for their pledge family dinners at Cozy Noodle, decided to sponsor a bowl game promoting their website. This didn't last either. The place became the Texas Bowl. It appeared the bowl was sponsorless. But Meineke Car Care disagreed. For years - seven years, actually - the muffler repair brand of choice for George Foreman had sponsored a bowl in Charlotte, the Meineke Car Care Bowl. But this year, they were outbidded by Belk, which apparently is a company, and had to shift their sponsorship to someplace warmer than Charlotte: Houston. But rather than confuse the millions of Americans who watch college football solely for sponsorships and locations and had grown accustomed to the obvious connection between Meineke Car Care and Charlotte, they had to specify: this wasn't just any Meineke Car Care Bowl, but the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas. And there we are. My point is, this bowl and all the companies who have ever sponsored it are about 50-ish years younger than NU's bowl drought.
- 1949 in film featured such films as "I was a Male War Bride" (what?) and "Jolson Sings Again", but the movie that caught my eye is "Father was a Fullback". Take it away, Wikipedia!
State College football coach George Cooper (Fred MacMurray) has more than enough problems on the job without his teenage daughter Connie (Betty Lynn) complicating his life at home. Connie is convinced she's unattractive to the opposite sex and wallows in self pity. Resigning herself to a loveless existence, Connie decides to make literature her life. When a fictional article she pens about a teenage bubble dancer appears in a confessions magazine, the boys come calling. The young authoress dates a high school football star from across town who chooses to attend State College (rather than Notre Dame) to be near his new found sweetheart. George's gridiron and domestic problems are solved.