Fitzgerald does nu proud
Coach has done the once-unthinkable in evanston by building the cats into a perennial big ten contender
One play. That’s all it took Friday for Northwestern to look nothing like it did in 2020, when it won the Big Ten West on the strength of a stifling, in-your-face defense and played in the conference championship game for the second time in three seasons.
One play — the first one of the game — a simple run that Michigan State’s Kenneth Walker III took 75 yards up the left sideline, untouched, then up the little hill behind the south end zone at Ryan Field. And, well, who knows from there? It’s a long season, after all.
To any of us who witnessed football games in Evanston in times when the Wildcats were routinely — and cartoonishly — overmatched by Big Ten opponents, the site of dudes in purple trailing a runaway jersey they’re never going to catch conjures a familiar old feeling.
But here’s the thing: Nothing about that feeling is real or relevant anymore, even in the wake of Walker rushing for 264 yards and four touchdowns in the Spartans’ 38-21 victory.
And here’s something else we might as well say out loud: What 16th-year coach Pat Fitzgerald has accomplished with the Wildcats boggles the mind.
Maybe that goes without saying, too. Maybe it isn’t said often enough.
‘‘Champions,’’ Fitzgerald said after NU’s final game last season. ‘‘We are Big Ten West champs. We are Citrus Bowl champions. We are knocking on the door to where we want to get this program to consistently be.’’
In a pandemic season — the fans not there, the media not there — it’s possible what the Wildcats pulled off wasn’t appreciated enough. They beat Iowa. They beat Wisconsin. They went to a New Year’s Day bowl and kicked Auburn around like it was nothing.
NU has won 17 division games since the start of the 2017 season. That’s as many as Wisconsin and more than anybody else in the West. That’s a 17-7 division record — the sort of stretch at a non-traditional power that gets a coach any job he wants. But Fitzgerald is too at home, too entrenched, at his alma mater to worry about that.
How entrenched? Think of it this way. Only four active FBS coaches are past season No. 16 at their schools: Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz (23rd season), TCU’s Gary Patterson (21st), Utah’s Kyle Whittingham (17th) and Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy (17th).
Ferentz is 66, and Patterson and Whittingham are each 61. Gundy is only 54, but his name is tied to a new coaching rumor every 15 minutes. Plus, he behaves half the time like he’s miserable in his job.
Fitzgerald is 46. The next day he isn’t fired up to go to work will be the first. It’s not hard to envision him reaching a point when he is the dean of coaches in the Big Ten and in all of college football. Opposing fans who chafe at Fitzgerald’s success and glowing reputation in the media sure wouldn’t love that.
Next time you want to illustrate how good a coach Fitzgerald is, tell someone this: NU has won 48 games by a one-possession margin since Fitzgerald took over in 2006. There is not a single team in the country that has more.
Wisconsin has had eight first-round draft picks since 2006. Iowa has had eight. NU has had two, both of them — tackle Rashawn Slater and cornerback Greg Newsome — in 2021. Before that? Under Fitzgerald, not one Wildcats player drafted before the fourth round.
He beats you with what he has, which often is less than you have, and he does it more than anybody else. That’s something. Decades ago, it would have been impossible to imagine.