Northwestern football to play up to five games at Wrigley Field

The press conference is still ongoing, but Northwestern's Wrigley press release is already out, and the news is pretty impressive: five Northwestern football games will be played in the Friendly Confines.

Woah. You expected to hear one or two, but, five is a lot, and a lot of money, and a lot of exposure. Much more substantial than expected.

There's no info on dates or opponents. The games will be played once renovations are made to Wrigley Field that will allow an entire football field to fit so it won't be another one-way game. That won't be this upcoming season, but they could start playing November games there by 2014. Technically, the partnership is for five years and "up to five games" - no word on the specifics of that yet.

Also planned: an NU baseball game at Wrigley in April, which is no biggie since Northwestern plays games at US Cellular all the time, and an NU lax game there in 2014, which is pretty intriguing and a great spotlight for the winners of seven of eight national championships. No word on other sports. There's also other business associations - student-athletes doing internships with the Cubs - but that's less interesting.

Northwestern previously played a game in 2010 against Illinois at Wrigley, which you might remember.