Welsh-Ryan Ramblings: A Northwestern Basketball Blog: More Historic Northwestern Memorabilia

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

More Historic Northwestern Memorabilia

1993 Poster showing Lee Gissendaner catching the pass from Len Williams to finish "The Comeback"

Continuing my offseason trip through my archives, I’ve found more Northwestern memorabilia of which I’d like to see modern versions. What we have today are poster programs. These programs started in the 1993 season for both football and basketball and ran through I believe 1998. Now, I’ll admit the poster programs had some serious problems when it came to reading them if someone was next to you, but as a collectable they are pretty cool, plus the allowed for the preservation of some historic moments. Above, you see the most famous of poster programs which shows Lee Gissendaner making the catch to complete “The Comeback” against Illinois I was lucky enough to get a copy signed by Gary Barnett, but actually do have an original as well. Below, is the program from the 1993 football opener which show quarterback Len Williams and his receivers and reads “Lenny and the Jets” despite the fact that season didn’t go very well (2-9), I think the idea of promoting star players is a good one. I’d love to see basketball posters next year touting Kevin Coble as a possible Big Ten MVP candidate. They would certainly be better than the poster from two years ago on which an adidas shoe picture larger than the photo of any NU player. Another item I liked about the poster programs which I would like to see on future NU materials is the ability to use clear action shots like the Gissendaner catch or the Pat Baldwin dunk shown below on the program for the 1994 NIT tilt with DePaul. Bottom line, which I don’t think the poster programs themselves should come back, I’d love to see this years schedule posters for both football and basketball take the same approach these poster programs did and clearly recognize top players and events in creative ways.