Memorabilia: Newspaper Edition and other thoughts

The Chicago Tribue reports that NU beat Purdue to win the Big Ten Title

I used to collect newspapers all the time if the stories involved a game I attended or a big win for a team I follow. I don’t do that any more, but I do still have the Chicago Tribune sports section from November 19, 1995. That is the day after NU clinched its first Big Ten football title in nearly 60 years. I hope someday to have a similar basketball newspaper. The huge headlines and the front page devoted entirely to Northwestern is something we don’t see very often today for either football or basketball. Part of that is no NU story in the 14 years since 1995 matched the magnitude of that season, but it is still really a shame Northwestern must fight so strongly with Notre Dame and Illinois for media coverage in what is really our home town. Of course, we all know the newspaper industry is struggling, but isn’t just papers which pass on covering NU. Local news often times will run longer ND or Illini stories when compared with Northwestern. I also find that despite the fact a ton of NU alums or involved in sports media, it seems Northwestern doesn’t get the nation or semi-nation coverage that you might expect. I do love the fact we now have the Big Ten Network to look towards for coverage of the ‘Cats, but the BTN does have 11 teams to cover and will, probably rightfully, focus on teams which are (or expected) to be among the best in each sport. NU got a lot of nice hoops coverage during the good run last winter, but got a very short segment on the Spring Football Show because most experts see the Wildcats as a bottom half of the Big Ten team. I guess what I wish most of all for NU coverage whether it be on TV or in the paper isn’t so much that it was more expensive, but that it at least acknowledged the great players NU does have. Credit has to go to Adam Rittenberg at ESPN.com for listing Corey Wotton as the 9th best player in the Big Ten. I might list him even higher, but at least it shows respect for an NU player that has 1st round NFL talent. I also give credit to Mark May for placing Brad Philips on his All-May Day team last fall after Philips overcame injury to lead the Wildcat secondary in tackles. Let’s hope ESPN’s basketball personalities acknowledge Kevin Coble this winter when he puts up huge numbers for what I hope is a team which features the near-basketball equivalent of the 1995 football season. If that happens, I bet the Chicago papers once again put up a sports section with the front page all NU.

Also: Single game football tickets are on sale right now for NU's 2009 season. I encourage everyone to try to get their friends and family out to a few games this year. I’m certainly going to try and get some friends who haven’t seen a game at Ryan Field or haven’t seen a game in a while to come to Evanston and watch the ‘Cats.

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.

The Lenny and the Jets poster started the 1993 football season and the poster program era

1994 NIT vs Xavier poster progarm with Kevin Rankin (55) and TJ Rayford (34)

1994 NIT poster from when NU hosted DePaul at Welsh-Ryan Arena

Floyd reportedly resigns as USC hoops coach

A report has Tim Floyd resigning as USC's coach today. More info is here. With all the trouble around USC in the last several months perhaps this won’t surprise some folks, but many other programs have suffered problems and rumors and the coaching staff remains in place. Now, we don’t actually know if Floyd’s resignation has anything to do with possible recruiting violations or not, but certainly this draws more attention to those rumors. It will be interesting to see how this story develops.

More 92-93 NU Player Cards

I've gotten a couple e-mails the last couple days since I posted the Todd Leslie card from 92-93 asking if I had any other examples of cards from that year. I don't have them all, but below I've posted photos of several other examples of player cards. Long time NU fans will note that many of the players commemorated in the 92-93 cards were stars on NU’s 93-94 NIT team.

NU day on BTN is June 8th

Monday June 8th is Northwestern day on the Big Ten Network. Three basketball games make the list, but I have to say my all time favorite, the 75-74 win over Iowa on Michael Jenkins three buzzer-beating three, does not make the list and I’m a little disappointed (thought it is permanently saved on my TIVO). The game which are on are:

5AM 1988 – Northwestern, 66 Indiana, 64. Bill Foster’s biggest win as NU coach and the only time I know of that Dicky V. made it to Welsh-Ryan to broadcast the ‘Cats.

7PM 2009 – Northwestern, 70 Michigan State, 63. Though this didn’t turn out to be the springboard for an NCAA Tournament run I thought it might be, it is still the most impressive win of what was a very solid hoops season.

3AM (June 9) 2006 – Northwestern, 51 Iowa, 48. The year after Michael Jenkins, Evan Seacat and Vedran Vukusic made key three pointers to lead NU back for a double digit deficit.

Also on TV: ESPN College Football Live is having a 50 states in 50 days tour. Illinois will be the focus near the end of the tour on August 3rd.

The End of Media Guides????

Northwestern media guides from recent seasons

Michigan and Ohio State have said they no longer plan to print media guides. Their reasoning has to do with the large amount of money lose each year printing the giant books and giving away far more than they sell. Logically this makes a great deal of sense, but I have say as a fan I hope this doesn’t become a trend. I really enjoy getting a chance to read the media guides NU prints each year. Now admittedly they do become somewhat obsolete as soon as the year ends as various records are broken and players graduate. Still, they are nice memento to keep on hand. As you can see in the picture above, I have several media guides easily accessible and several more which are boxed away elsewhere. If teams go to only on-line guides I’ll be disappointed as sometimes the media guide is the best way to remember a season. They summaries from the year before are great at helping remember games. Also, I really enjoy the first few pages of the media guide which helps set up the upcoming year and tells a little bit about Northwestern as a school and gameday at Ryan Field or Welsh-Ryan Arena. Hopefully, if media guides do disappear this information will still have some method of getting to recruits as I’m sure it is a nice bit of knowledge for kids with little background on NU.

Card for NU guard Todd Leslie

Now to shift gears a little, media guides aren’t the only items lurking around in my collection of NU gear. I recently ran across a series of giveaway items from the 1992-93 season which I think are fantastic. During that year Northwestern issued trading cards for each player. I can remember as a kid thinking this was awesome and I think it is something NU might want to think about again. It is often mentioned that Northwestern athletics are great events for kids and returning to this idea would only add to that notion. Besides, limited addition giveaways are cool to adults as well and anything that help markets your team and players can’t hurt.

In the next few days I'll talk about some other NU memorabilia items of which I’d love to see new versions.