Hope For Every College Football Fan: Northwestern in 1995

Why do fans of every team get excited at the beginning of another college football season? In short, because every team has a chance for greatness. No matter how long it has been since the last shining moment, this year could be the beginning of a new era of success

Now, some naysayers might respond that the same teams are the cellar dwellers year after year, that these teams have no shot at winning more than they lose let alone winning their conference or going to a major bowl game. However, they must not know the story of the 1995 Northwestern Wildcats.  

Pre-1995, Northwestern was bad. In fact, bad does not even begin to describe the level of hopelessness that the Wildcats had reached. Over the previous 20 years, Northwestern had a total of 38 wins. Their best season in that time was 1986, when they broke out to win four games. While Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Penn State combined for only 148 losses in that period, Northwestern had 178. That 20 year period was the worst of any team ever.  

On a larger level, the record books do not really capture the full breadth of how inept the Wildcats had become. To fully understand, you must hear the stories.  

The tradition of having the mascot caged to start each game only to leap out at the first score had to be discontinued after too many games of Willie the Wildcat spending the entire game behind bars. A local sign was graffitied "Interstate 94, Northwestern 0". After the miraculous event of scoring first against Ohio State one year, fans ran onto the field and tore down the goalposts. They also tore down the goalposts to celebrate setting the record for most consecutive losses at 34, chanting "we're the worst".

Underlying these struggles were a series of obstacles thought insurmountable. Northwestern is a small private school in suburban Chicago. It has a third as many students (and alumni) as the next smallest Big Ten school, many of whom spread out to all over the country after graduation.  

Like many small schools near urban centers, it has trouble competing with local professional teams for fan support and attendance. Though its stadium is still not considered a great venue, before its renovation it was an even less of an attraction. For weight training, the players lifted in the basement of a gym built in the 1930s. Northwestern was not a sleeping giant; it was a comatose midget.  

Going into the 1995 season, the professional prognosticators had low expectations again. Athlon and Sports Illustrated picked the Wildcats to finish 11th in the Big Ten. Phil Steele thought better of their chances, as he had them at 10th. No major publication had them higher than ninth and the overwhelming consensus was for another year at the very bottom.

Then the season happened.  

In the first game, Northwestern was a four touchdown underdog to Notre Dame and had not beaten them in 14 tries going back to 1962. The phrase "shock the world" is overused, but literally no one outside of the Wildcat locker room expected their 17-15 victory. SI's Stewart Mandel described the game as "akin to Appalachian State beating Michigan—if Appalachian State had completely stunk the year before and also gone on to beat Notre Dame, Penn State, and Wisconsin".  

But that's just what Northwestern did, going 8-0 in the Big Ten to win the outright conference title and a spot in the Rose Bowl for the first time in almost 50 years. On the way, they also beat Michigan for the first time since 1965 and Iowa for the first time since 1973.  

Almost more surprisingly, Northwestern has managed to build off that success into a consistently competitive program. While not reaching the same heights as 1995, they have since won two more conference championships and are above .500 overall in the last 15 years. The stadium was renovated and a new athletics center was built on campus. The school seems to be in good shape to be an every year bowl team and challenge the top teams in the conference.  

So if you are getting excited about your team this year and a hater tries to tell you that they have no shot, just remind them of Northwestern in 1995.