ROOTS

 

               I always knew I’d go to college because my parents (who hadn’t gone) made it clear I would, but like many in my era (I recall) never gave much thought to where. When looming high school graduation (class of ’55) made a choice necessary I sent out two applications—to Northwestern University and the University of Illinois. Northwestern didn’t accept me and Illinois did, so off to Champaign I went. The rest, as they say, is history.

               I can’t say that NU’s rejection was unexpected-- my high-school record wasn’t sterling. Nor can I claim it bothered me much. But being a normal, petty person it didn’t endear me to the leafy campus on Lake Michigan just north of Chicago, and for many years I got even by rooting against the school’s athletic teams.

That posture became a bit harder to maintain beginning in 1975, when an adult I and my family moved into a big old house on Pioneer Road in Evanston, Illinois, an easy, six-block walk from Northwestern’s Dyche Stadium football home. The Mildcats (er, Wildcats) were not a big draw then so tickets were cheap and on many an autumn Saturday afternoon I’d take my kids to a game. I’d watch the action and they’d frolic in the south-end-zone bleachers, which always were nearly empty. Walking home amid the smell of burning leaves is a fond memory of that time.

Some of wife Susie and my friends during our tenure in Evanston were NU faculty people. They included Bruce Corrie, the school’s athletics director for a time, and his lovely wife Jane. We’re still in touch even though we’ve moved apart geographically. By osmosis, my enmity toward NU athletics changed to benevolent neutrality, and so it remains.

That lengthy intro is meant to explain what is to follow, a “good news” take on a subject I’m rarely not down on. That would be big-time college sports and the swamp that surrounds it. A few weeks ago Northwestern announced that it had signed a 10-year contract extension with football head coach Pat Fitzgerald. Such pacts usually elicit shrugs because successful college coaches rarely let a few pieces of paper keep them from bounding upward, but based on Fitzgerald’s biography I’m betting on this one to stick. 

Fitzgerald got to be NU’s headman in 2006 by accident—the sudden death in July of that year of his predecessor, Randy Walker. The appointment surprised many people, probably including him; he was the team’s linebackers coach at the time and, at age 31, five years younger than any other top-division collegiate head football coach.

 Before he took the job the Wildcats mostly had been joke-level bad, with just five winning seasons in the previous 40. From 1976 through 1981 their win-loss-tie record was 3-62-1. A high-toned private institution with just 8,000 or so undergrads in a conference of state-school behemoths, their Big Ten status often was questioned, the mid-major Mid-American Conference seemingly a more-appropriate roost.

Fitzgerald, though, knew what he was getting into. Chicago born and raised, and an ex-NU linebacker and grad, he’d been a three-year assistant coach at the school and its recruiting chief. After an obligatory first-year losing record he’s been plus-.500 nine times, is 106-81 overall and has taken teams to 10 bowl games. That wouldn’t cut it at Ohio State but it’s dreamy good at NU.

About here sportswriters usually opine that Northwestern’s high academic standards mean it can’t recruit with the big fellas, but I won’t say that. Stanford and Duke have standards at least as high and regularly field first-rate football or basketball teams. The collegiate big-timers all recruit from the same talent pool and it was my observation that the biggest difference between the Stanfords and the Ohio States is that the gap between the jocks and the rest of the student body is wider at the formers than at the latters.  Still, people who grade such things say Fitzgerald’s teams outperform their recruiting rankings, so the guy must be a good judge of talent and know his X’s and O’s.

What is unquestioned is his loyalty to his school and the example it creates.  He’s called his position his “dream job” and one can only believe him. He’s reportedly turned down offers from other colleges and the pros, and while his annual salary of $3.3 million ain’t hay it’s less than he could get elsewhere. His roots to Sweet Home Evanston are thick and deep.

Northwestern’s example well might be followed by the U. of Illinois, my school. It has floundered in football’s slough of despond throughout this still-young century and now is on its sixth head coach in that span. Each of that number had good credentials but none had much connection to the institution going in. No matter what they may have said, for them the UI job was a gig, another step in a typically winding career.

In college football them that has gets, so breaking into the title-contending group of any “Power Five” conference requires extraordinary oomph.  Roots seem to be one engine for that. Wisconsin has escaped the mire via a coaching tree started by Barry Alvarez (1990-05). At Iowa the key has been Kirk Ferentz, a nine-year assistant at the school before he got the top job in 1999. Indiana had one of the Big Ten’s saddest football histories before Tom Allen turned things around in 2019. He’s an Indiana native, former state high-school coach and an ex-assistant at the school.

Tom Lasorda, the longtime L.A. Dodgers’ coach, manager and executive, used to talk about “bleeding Dodger blue.” Blood also comes in collegiate colors.