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Monday Sips, ft. FOOOTBAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL, Tim Hanrahan, and Kain Colter

Northwestern has a football practice today! Really!

By Rodger Sherman
USA TODAY Sports

Good morning, all! I rounded up about 40,000 links for you to read. Here they arOMG FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL. FOOTBALL IS HEEEEEEEERE: Evidence:

Bo Goes: We all came to learn and love Bo Cisek, the big guy who took on the role as Northwestern's on-field mascot. He ended up changing his number from 55 to 1 to be Northwestern's punt protector, and somewhere along the line NU decided it would permanently award that number to guys who embody the team. This year -- and presumably next year -- it'll be backup running back Tim Hanrahan.

YOU SEE? THIS IS WHY I DIDN'T DO A NO. 28 POST ON SATURDAY IT'S BECAUSE I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN. It does seem there's a bit more emphasis on being a representative of the team and less on being a goofy fool like Cisek, which is a tad disappointing -- here's to seeing Hanrahan all light sabered up. It's a cool tradition, and I hope NU runs with it.

Achilles' Ghost: I had meant to do my own post on this, but, we'll just discuss it here. In this profile of Kain Colter -- on how he's had missed opportunities, but everything turned out pretty darn spiffy -- Lou from Wildcat Report touches on how Kain Colter had to play three games in 2010 because of that he won't be Northwestern's quarterback next year.

Long story short: ARRRRRRRGHGHHHHH! I think about this from time to time. Colter clearly wasn't ready to play, and his role wasn't large: he was playing as Evan Watkins' backup, basically just running the ball when under center, occasionally lining up as a wide receiver. And as Vaccher writes there, his shoulder was hurt. At the time, it was the right call to get him in games -- Northwestern had a chance to win a bowl game! -- but in retrospect, it totally, totally, wasn't worth it. Kain Colter turned out to be quite, quite awesome, and although Trevor Siemian will still be here in 2014, Matt Alviti will be a redshirt freshman... Colter's a proven playmaker, and he will be missed.

But you live and you learn, and we should be glad from the good things we've had with Kain instead of playing shoulda woulda coulda. But it's a weird, stupid thing that happened, and Northwestern will pay the price.

An example of how awesome Kain is: this post at Inside NU about Colter's tendency to run -- and convert -- in passing situations.

CAR WASH: Pat Fitzgerald went to Bristol for stuff.

Mike Greenberg, of course:

Also Colin Cowherd: And Desmond Howard said Venric Mark is one of his top 5 playmakers;

Run up like Machine Gun Kelly in a black skelly leave ya smelly then take ya Pelle Pelle: 2014 forward Gavin Skelly committed to Northwestern! I don't know a whole ton about basketball prospects, so I'll send you to people who do: Nick Medline is high on Skelly despite the fact that few are, and touched on it in his long story about the world Chris Collins is doing, and Jeremy Woo wrote about the differences between Coach K and Coach C.

She said 'Ye can we get married at DeKaaaaaaaalb: NIU's AD wants to play Northwestern. Although I do tend to argue Northwestern should play in-state schools, y'all can see why that's bad news bears, right? All the no fun of playing a MAC team, all the very, very real possibility that you lose to them. Coming up Northwestern is going to have only three non-conference games to schedule, and NIU's dangerous, and we'll want wins. That said, NU is 6-0-1 against NIU all-time.

GREEEEEEEEEVE: Matt Grevers, winning stuff.

Really more watch lists come on: Kain Colter on the Manning Award, Tyler Scott on the Hendricks Award list. I thought we were done with this seriously.

Assorted: Look, it's four out of five Michigan writers picking Northwestern... Michigan State loses an offensive lineman to an allosaurus... Iowa will finish first (and second and third and fourth etc.) in the Big Ten... Illinois admits to being Rantoul's Big Ten Team... The most evil coach in the Big Ten is pretty Urbvious...

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