WEEK ZERO: SCOTT FROST AND THE SOUL OF A LOSER
First, a programming note.
My hope is, as it was last year, to write something weekly about Northwestern football this season. I also plan to try to write about stuff that isn’t Northwestern football within these blogs, partially because Northwestern football is bleak, partially because I want to figure out if I can write about something other than sports.
I have also opened paid subscriptions for this Substack. I don’t recommend a paid subscription if you are expecting to receive that money worth of content per month. I am not sure I will be able to write enough that I could say honestly that it’s worth that money. But if you think past services rendered are worth that cup of coffee a month, that paid subscription is for you.
I also will again link the full Northwestern season preview I wrote over at MeetAtMidfield.com. That article is behind a paywall and will not be unlocked. I give Meet At Midfield my highest recommendation if you are looking for an outlet that covers college football in a way that appreciates the seriousness of the sport as much as the deeply unserious parts of it. Also my article is there, so if you want to read it, the trial run of a one-month sub feels like a good investment.
Cheers.
WELCOME TO WEEK ZERO.
College football, unfortunately, is back.
The powers at be looked at the wide world of college football, a deranged sport that becomes more depraved by the day, tried to figure out which game would make the least amount of sense as a season opener, and decided on Northwestern vs. Nebraska in Dublin, Ireland, a city just over 3,650 miles from Northwestern’s campus and just over 4,000 miles from Nebraska’s campus.
Trying to figure out why two teams are going halfway around the world sends one down a very strange rabbit hole of semi-functional websites. Initially, this game was supposed to be played in 2021 and was supposed to include Illinois in Northwestern’s stead. Illinois-Nebraska is, somehow, a combination of teams that makes less sense than the final iteration. With Covid pushing the game back a year, Northwestern slid in, providing the matchup with the only tangible tie to Ireland: Patrick Fitzgerald and his very Irish name and Irish Dad Sensibilities.
Hilariously, the Aer Lingus College Football Classic Pravda claims the game will bring “a massive €63 million for the Irish Economy,” a number too divorced from reality to even be insulting and crosses over to the absurd. That even their rosy prognostication anticipates attendance at 23,000 fans does not bode well for the game day atmosphere.
But even a mostly empty stadium in a foreign country whose apathy for Big Ten West Football is tangible (which, it must be said, is the only sane way to engage with Big Ten West Football) can do little to dampen the mood more than Nebraska’s own head coach, the Petty Tyrant of Lincoln, Nebraska, Scott Frost.
Scott Frost, by the numbers, is a good coach. Depending on what advanced statistical altar you pray at, last year’s Nebraska team was somewhere between the 30th and 40th “best” team in the country by efficiency metrics. Play to play, drive to drive, Nebraska was good.
The list of games Nebraska played well in was long. The Cornhuskers “second-order wins,” which estimates how many wins a team should have with their production, was 6.8. They lost only one game by more than one score, a 9-point loss against #6 Ohio State. They had a positive point differential for the season.
They lost 9 games. They sucked.
Scott Frost is yet to take Nebraska to a bowl game, yet to have a winning season, and yet to have a single win over a ranked opponent during his time in Lincoln. Nebraska is by the dictionary definition a Loser Program and by extension Frost is a Loser Coach. Nebraska played 8 one-score games last year and lost every single one of them. Scott Frost loses football games. He loses games he should win, he loses games he should lose, he loses games by a little, he loses games by a lot, he loses games with style, he loses games in embarrassments.
He is a loser.
He breaks math. At some point, SURELY, the balls will start bouncing in Scott Frost’s direction. They have to. You can’t keep getting this unlucky forever. The spreadsheet will eventually be proven correct.
Or.
Or maybe Nebraska will stink forever.
Scott Frost’s bloodlust is apparently only satiated by watching his offensive lineman coat his practice fields with a thin veneer of stomach fluid.
It’s a hilarious to imagine the type of brain it would take to describe what sounds like cruel and unusual torture as a Good Football Thing. I am not a health professional but I would think that people throwing up several times every day is, in fact, bad, and not at all good. Frost feels differently.
The most likely explanation for what is actually going on here is that Scott Frost is lying. In a ham-fisted attempt to describe how seriously his team is taking fitness this season, he used a weird hyperbole that led to him describing a Marauding Puking Band of Nebraska Men. It’s hard to say whether the lie would be any more or less damning than the truth.
Frost’s Nebraska team is better than Northwestern. The two touchdown line Vegas has set suggests as much, as does the fact that Nebraska is the second-favorite to win the West (+250) and Northwestern’s odds to win the West (+7500) are about the same as my own. But Nebraska is replacing a lot (farewell, Adrian Martinez, hello Casey Thompson), and Scott Frost’s vomit fascination feels like an equalizer.
Northwestern lost to Nebraska 56-7 last year in one of the more embarrassing games of the Fitzgerald tenure. Is revenge on the cards this week? The only thing you can bet on is, this being Northwestern-Nebraska, it will be weird and hard to watch.
College football, thank god, is back.
BYCTOM’S PREVIEW IN A TWEET OF THE WEEK
AN INCOMPLETE BUT INARGUABLE TIER LIST OF FRUITS
Because who doesn’t love listicle content? We will be using this list of the top 20 fruits with a few extra additions (cherries, pears and peaches, weirdly, are nowhere to be found on this list).
S Tier: Strawberry, Blueberry, Lemon
Strawberries and blueberries share the rare combination of extremely high ceilings (fresh picked blueberries from a farmer’s market are among life’s truest of joys) and high floors (even the junky fruit cup strawberries you would get in high school cafeterias were pretty good). Both can be put in dishes as far ranging as milkshakes to scones to pies.
Lemon is the wild card here. One could certainly say that lemon is more like a condiment than a fruit when compared to the other players in this list, but if we take it on its merits, it’s an incredibly important ingredient in far more dishes, both sweet and savory, than anything else on this list. Its place atop the leaderboard is well earned.
A Tier: Good Apple (Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, etc), Blackberry, Pineapple, Cherry
The clear winner in the hand fruit category is the apple, but we will make a split between Good Apples and Bad Apples. Blackberries are the first fruit that brings the ripeness window criteria into play. You don’t have long to attack a crate of blackberries before they go bad, but their ceiling may just be the highest of any fruit on this list. Cherries have similarly high ceilings, though the super sweet cherry isn’t an especially enjoyable hang.
Pineapple was the toughest decision here. I think pineapples suffer from overexposure. If they were a rarer spot like kiwi or even a further off the map fruit like dragonfruit, they may make the S Tier. But too many bad pineapples are on the market. It’s hard done by a lack of scarcity.
B Tier: Banana, Grape, Clementine/Tangerine, Lime, Nectarine
The first three fruits here all share a common trait of Good, But Boring. No one’s ever been excited to eat a banana. No one has ever gone out of their way to eat a clementine. They are serviceable fruits that get a job done. Banana is the closest to moving up a tier list. I do love a banana bread.
Nectarines are the poster child for the tight ripeness window. I don’t think I’ve had more than two perfectly ripe nectarines in my life. Both were religious experiences.
I do not expect to have one again.
C Tier: Plum, Watermelon, Pear
Plums are ultimately nectarines, but not quite as good. Pears are among my favorites but suffer from being impossible to eat without coating your face and shirt in juice and also have narrow ripeness windows.
Watermelon has the least earned credibility in the fruit space. Watermelon is almost always a little too mealy and the seed situation is a serious problem. The watermelon close to the rind is solid, and watermelon drinks are excellent. But as a fruit? It’s extremely overrated.
D Tier: Peach
I don’t understand what peach brings to table that nectarines don’t from a flavor profile, then you’re left with the too-fleshy interior and the fuzzy exterior, both of which are no good. I think there’s a plot by Big Georgia Tourism to inflate the peach’s q scores.
Non Competitive: Bad Apples (all “delicious” varieties), cantaloupe
Cantaloupe gets by too often on being “not honeydew,” but I don’t see what it brings to the table. Has anyone ever opted for cantaloupe over mango? Or cantaloupe over pineapple? It fails when compared to all its competitors other than honeydew. It stinks.
But not enough time is spent talking about how red and yellow delicious apples are completely disgusting. They’re mealy, have no taste whatsoever, and yet can be found in lunch rooms and grocery stores across our supposedly great country. I think we’re better than that. I hope we’re better than that.
ODDS AND ENDS
The Manti Te’o documentary was really good, though I think they could have shown Te’o more sympathetically. There’s a storyline about being a sheltered, religious kid at 21 who was inexperienced enough that what was in reality a 12-Year-Olds-On-AIM relationship felt like a Real Thing…The Big Ten’s new TV deal hopefully means the end of basketball games on BTN+. I’d be happy to pay for Peacock, I’m not paying for BTN+ to catch the women’s and men’s games that BTN doesn’t cover…I’ve really been enjoying this collection of essays from Amos Oz.