Northwestern didn’t know how much it yearned for the college football experience until the fun arrived — magically and unexpectedly — in 1995. After decades of athletic embarrassment, the Wildcats won 10 games for the first time in school history and went to the Rose Bowl. NU finally had something worthy of a tailgate party, and it didn’t want that party to end.
The success led to dreams of sports excellence that would match the university’s educational excellence. Eventually, thanks to donor money, sports programs were upgraded, better facilities were built and alumni were stoked. Doctors and lawyers who hadn’t seen much winning when they had attended NU became football fanboys and fangirls. Even grads with a degree from the just-the-facts Medill School of Journalism proved as hungry for a winner as any physical-education major from Ohio State.
