You guys are unbelievable. You’re right. 34 losses in a row wasn’t that bad. We played 34 juggernauts. It could happen to anybody.
This is absolutely unwatchable right now.
- Thread starter Alvious
- Start date
I remember being hopeful that we might beat Utah in 1981, my soph year. It was the first home game for students, and Utah beat us 42-0. That was the very depths of the Dark Ages. According to CFB reference, we were 136th of 137 in offense ppg and 137 of 137 defense ppg. The 1980 team was 0-11 but scored some points. The 1982 team won 3 games. 1981 was bad. We averaged 44 yards rushing a game and our leading rusher, Jim Browne (no relation) had 162 yards. Interesting factoid: Chris Hinton led us in receiving yards that year.
Put words in my mouth much? I watched all of the consecutive losses that weren't on the road. I had to. I was in the band. And unlike most of the student body, I got to watch them stone-cold sober. What a treat! (sarcasm if I need to point it out).
Just wanted to note that the schedulers didn't help us, and we (most years) have more road-kill teams on our schedule now than we did then.
1981 was Denny Green's first year. People who think this year is like the Dark Ages should check out that year's stats. The most awful stat is one you didn't mention: 505 points given up in 11 games.
This is a blip. An ugly, painful blip that could easily extend into next season, but I think the sport of CFB moves too fast for any FBS program (including us!) to get to dark ages bad. Unfortunately that also means our infamous record will basically exist forever or until the zombie apocalypse.
That game was my first date with my (at that time) girlfriend. She married me anyway.
That 1981 Utah game was my very first NU game ever, when I was a freshman. I remember the prior week's game at Arkansas playing on the radio near the entrance of my dorm the night I moved in.
Sort of a similar story. The following year, 1982, I took my girlfriend (now wife of 37 years) to the Miami Hydroxide game. Our good friend/future best man played for Miami. We lost, but we came back the following week for the NIU game. My future brother in law was a frosh on NIU team but not traveling so he was in the stands with us for the streak breaker.
A year later, we got married and lived in Rogers Park my senior year.
All these comments about that Utah game and no mention of the deluge we sat through lol????
My friend quipped that God didn't want to watch us so he covered the area with a rain storm.
I did the same thing... listened to the Arkansas game on the radio in the Plex with the other guys on the floor. I also had high hopes for the Utah game.
My next door neighbor in the Plex was Jim Bobbit, a freshman LB - still one of my all time favorite Cats. So I learned a whole lot about what was really going on with the team from JimBob. He was one of probably ten true freshmen who started some or all of the games that year. Just by memory I can name a bunch of them: LBs Bobbit, Alex Moyer, and Darin Morgan; RB Marc Hujik, QB Kevin Villars (shared time with Kerrigan); DTs Keith Cruise and Jerald Wolff, CB Jankeith Gatewood... probably a few more if I looked it up.
That was the reason we were historically bad in 81, and in particular, gave up over 500 points. Dennis Green was determined to jump start the program by getting the freshmen, who he knew weren't close to ready, a lot of playing time immediately. My buddy Bobbit was 5'10, 200 pounds playing starting MLB in the Big Ten. He got beat up bad that year... every night after practice he was moaning about how much pain he was in with his beat up shoulder, but he kept playing. Led the team in tackles as a true freshman.
Oh, so Fitz is borrowing from Dennis Green by focusing all of the "young" players for future years
/s