Monday Sips, featuring What Could Have Been, Evan Watkins, and Saving NU Football History?

I work in the afternoons now! Morning posts!

but there's no more football why am i running through this wall oh: The pregame video Northwestern watched on its way to the Gator Bowl is loose on the internets, and its some must-watch stuff. It's comprised of three parts: a highlight clip of Northwestern running el on Illinois, assorted highlights of every senior and graduating junior on the team, when they were in high school, and then a video game recreation of Northwestern vs. Mississippi State. All three parts are awesome:

Hoo boy, Evan Watkins had an ARM. DON'T LEAVE THE WATKINSURGENCY LIVES ON. A lot of nasty plays in there - the crazy thing is that for NU going 10-3, the team is losing a lot of guys that seemingly had potential left. That said, the best part of this has to be that some Northwestern staffer was in charge of editing Northwestern's roster in NCAA 13 so all the players had last names. I like the Bo Cisek TD at the end, too. The second best part is that Rick Ross had to record an edited version of "Hold Me Back" at some point in his life.

I was sort of hoping we'd burn it: Northwestern is making the strange effort of not just not destroying all evidence of pre-1995 football, but actually preserving it. The NU library uploaded a lot of tapes onto Youtube and explained why they're trying to save all these awesome acetate tapes of early NU football.

Timmeh: The Champaign Room linked all B1G football teams to Premier League teams, and I like Northwestern's comparison to Everton, not least of all because USA Number 1.

'CROOTIN: Matt Alviti - coming into play QB next year, the biggest recuit there in a long time - played in the Semper Fidelis All-American Bowl, the only NU recruit playing in one of those. 10-12, 104 yards, making him the top performer in the game according to 24/7. Not bad!

#FreeKafka: The New England Patriots signed Mike Kafka to a future contract, much like the ones Drake Dunsmore and Corbin Bryant got with teams last week. He'd worked out with them earlier in the year, but they opted to stick with two QB's instead of adding a third. The third guy they cut, Brian Hoyer, started games for the Cards later in the year, so no biggie - he definitely could get a shot as a backup next year. In other news, he joins Jeremy Ebert, who is on their practice squad, although they totally messed up his player profile.

(nods head): ESPN did the best and worst of Northwestern's season, and, uh, guess!

(nods head more): Michigan's Rivals site ranked the top 25 football players in the Big Ten, and whaddaya know, Venric Mark and Kain Colter were in the top ten., I don't necessarily disagree with that, either.