Will will finally see a Bowling Green Massacre? Could the figment of KellyAnne Conway’s imagination finally be realized at Ryan Field Saturday night? Las Vegas seems to think so as this Northwestern football team are 22 point favorites. Yes, in spite of the Wildcats’ complete annihilation at Duke this past weekend, the bookies are backing them to blowout Bowling Green State University.
Actually, we already saw a Bowling Green Massacre this very young college football season, and it was at the hands of another B1G Side. Michigan State was routing the Falcons 35-3 late in their week one clash before BGSU added a late, meaningless touchdown to window dress the score a bit.
For Northwestern football this week isn’t about style points or beating the spread; it’s about bouncing back and regaining confidence. They have the perfect opponent for this kind of situation coming to Evanston.
KICKOFF: 6:30 pm Saturday
SPREAD: Northwestern football -22
Northwestern Football Preview:
Let’s say you DVRed the NU game this past weekend because you couldn’t watch it. Once you found out the score, because in this day and age that’s unavoidable, you probably just deleted the game without watching it. Unless you’re ridiculously wonky and or/excessively devoted.
It’s the very classic definition of a well known Pat Fitzgeraldism- “flush it.” The phrase is right up there with some of the other popular press conference prose from the Northwestern football coach- “young men,” “stats are for losers,” “good clean American fun” etc.
The Cats secondary is very banged up right now, especially for this early in the season. Obviously, Daniel Jones greatly exploited that to have a career day. On the other side of the ball Justin Jackson was held to just 18 yards on seven carries; both career lows. Northwestern football fans probably had to look at that box score two or three times before they actually believed it.
Moving forward, will this just be another September game lost by NU that they should have no business losing?
It’s certainly been a trend stretching all the way back to the early Fitzgerald years and even before then- the Cats lose a game in September that, when you revisit it in November, you scratch your head thinking “how the hell did that happen?”
It seems to happen at least two out of every three years in recent history. You had Illinois State last year, Cal and NIU in 2014, Army in 2011, Syracuse in 2009, Duke again in 2007, Nevada in 2006. It even happened in the modern Northwestern football year of our lord Anno Domini, 1995 as the Rose Bowl team fell to Miami of Ohio in week two.
Week 3 Depth Chart#B1GCats vs. @BG_Football
9.16.17 | 6:30 pm | @BigTenNetwork pic.twitter.com/w17ZIEnZUY
— Northwestern Football (@NUFBFamily) September 11, 2017
Bowling Green State Preview:
For the Falcons to have any hopes of pulling off the upset, they need to go right after the two weaknesses of this Northwestern football team- the offensive line and the secondary. The former has been the biggest question mark since spring ball, the latter is actually rather surprising. The DBs were supposed to be a strength.
BG doesn’t have the personnel to truly exploit either vulnerability though. There’s a reason this team is three touchdown+ underdog to a team that some B1G power rankings are placing 12th or even 13th (Although those rankings aren’t very meaningful).
Why no love for Bowling Green? Well, they lost to a FCS foe, South Dakota, by 8 last week, and of course we already told you what the Spartans did to them in week one. While this program has had a rough transition from Dino Babers to Mike Jinks, Street & Smith’s forecasted them to finish second and be a major factor in the MAC East, with a Bahamas Bowl trip as a year end reward.
Athlon pegged them to finish fourth in their division. Lindy’s had them just 101st nationally, and seventh in the MAC
Prediction for novelty purposes only: Northwestern football 41, Bowling Green 17
No, this is not a game in which people will sleeping outside by the box office to wait for ticket sales. However, take a look at the rest of the B1G. Yes, this is that September week where almost all of the games are extremely blah. It’s become a tradition unlike any other recently. Next week you have a couple decent games, but you can’t say it’s really that much better as so many league teams are already getting their bye; for some dumb reason.
Just like with everything else that you don’t like in sports these days, you can easily find a way to blame this on the league owned and controlled television networks, and their wholistic hegemony over the establishment.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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