This isn't a fad: Northwestern football is good

CHICAGO - Some Iowa football fans still refer to the Dark Ages, the 19-year run without a winning season from 1962 through 1980.

Northwestern snickers at that. The Hawkeyes had two .500 seasons in that period, and were 5-6 three times. But the Wildcats went from 1972 to 1994 without winning more than four games in a season. From 1976 to 1981, they were 3-62-1. They were 0-11 in 1989.

That will leave a mark.

But the world changes and those who are hurt most by it are those who don't accept the changes and adapt to them. If anyone in the Big Ten is waiting for Northwestern to go back to being that Northwestern, lotsa luck with that.

Current Wildcats Coach Pat Fitzgerald played on the 1995 Northwestern team that blasted through that wall of woe, winning 10 games and the Big Ten championship, and playing in the Rose Bowl.

But it took another 17 seasons for Northwestern to get its first bowl win since 1949. When Fitzgerald's ‘Cats handled Mississippi State 34-20 in last January's Gator Bowl, the last lid lifted for the program.

“I think that it was the last negative hurdle as a program that we needed to get over,” Fitzgerald said at July's Big Ten's media days, “the springboard of confidence that it gave our entire football program - current players, guys that are grinding through the off-season, the fan base, everyone on campus, all of our alumni throughout the country. For me, what was the most fun was those who have been here before us and put on the purple and white.

“We went from '72 to '94 and had some really tough times, and to have the amount of dialogue from that group of men has been really special. We've been able to work really hard as a program to re-recruit a bunch of guys whose experiences weren't those that we are experiencing today. We don't lose sight of those who have been here before.”

“That group of men, for so long would not really have the conversation, ‘Yeah, I played football at Northwestern and I graduated in 1982 or '81. Now they say ‘That's right, I played at Northwestern.' ”

Northwestern typifies what's quietly going on in Big Ten football. Iowa's five foes in the soon-to-be-defunct Legends Division aren't backsliding. Michigan certainly isn't. Nebraska isn't. Michigan State has two 11-win seasons in the last three years. Minnesota is quietly improving.

Northwestern was 10-3 last season, and is well-regarded by many when the subject is the coming season. The footwipe of a previous generation has been to bowls the last five seasons under Fitzgerald, a still-young man with seemingly boundless energy. His record against Iowa, by the way, is 5-2.

Recruiting is getting better for “Fitz,” and easier.

“Momentum's unbelievable,” he said. “You take beating the SEC twice last year (the Wildcats also beat 9-win Vanderbilt in Evanston), winning a bowl game in SEC country, playing the way that we played a year ago.

“The big four in our league have always had national exposure. The Northwesterns of the world, since the Big Ten Network has come aboard, people know that we're not in Seattle anymore.”

Not that Northwestern was ever located in the Pacific Northwest.

“When I got back here 14 years ago on staff and I went to Houston to recruit,” Fitzgerald said, “I was talking to a kid in the early recruiting period. I said ‘Hey, Pat Fitzgerald of Northwestern.' The kid would go ‘Where is that? Is that in Seattle?' I said ‘No, the shores of Lake Michigan in suburban Chicago.' Obviously, that was a kid I maybe I shouldn't have wasted my time recruiting.

“We're now a brand that goes across the country. The Stanfords and the Notre Dames of the academic world in college football have had cachet for a number of years. But we're coming. We're not there yet. But we're coming.”