Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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GAME PREVIEW: NORTHWESTERN season win, in the Gator Bowl (ver- sus current No. 1 Mississippi State), and the first since the 1948 season. The Wildcats finished No. 17 in the AP poll and No. 16 in USA Today coaches' rankings, the highest among any Big Ten team that season. Fitzgerald was the first Northwestern coach to spearhead three consecutive winning seasons since Parseghian from 1958-60; Fitzgerald's .544 winning per- centage at NU is also the highest since Parseghian (.507). Because of Northwestern's consis- tent overachievement in football, it was expected that Fitzgerald — whose 58 career wins entering the weekend of Nov. 8 are already the most in school history — would eventually land a plum job where a national title is viable, maybe even down the road at Notre Dame to follow Parseghian's trajectory. Back in 2009 during an interview with Sports Illustrated's Stewart Man- del, though, Fitzgerald noted how academically renowned schools Notre Dame, Stanford and Northwestern are almost the same. "Even though we're similar academ- ically, we're in a little different boat as Stanford and Notre Dame," Fitzgerald said. "We've been consistently win- ning since 1995. They're still saying they can do it, but we're doing it." In May 2011, Northwestern direc- tor of athletics Jim Phillips — who worked at Notre Dame from 2000-04 — announced that Fitzgerald and the school agreed to a new 10-year deal that will keep him on the Northwest- ern sidelines through 2020. The 10- year deal is unprecedented in North- western athletics history. "I'm humbled and appreciative of the commitment shown by North- western," Fitzgerald said. "With this support from our administration, our coaches and players expect to compete for championships." DOWN TIME Since October 2013, Northwestern has hit its worst stretch in the Fitzger- ald era, both on the field and off, from key injuries to offseason news about its student-athletes possibly forming the first players' union on campus. In October 2013, 4-0 Northwestern was ranked No. 16 nationally and just moved ahead of No. 4 Ohio State 30-27 with 9:10 left in the game. OSU ral- lied for the win, and it's been mainly downhill since then for the Wildcats. It precipitated a seven-game los- ing streak for a final 5-7 mark. The setbacks during that time included a 20-17 loss to Minnesota, a 17-10 de- feat at Iowa in overtime, losing 27-24 at Nebraska when the Cornhuskers connected on a 49-yard "Hail Mary" touchdown pass as time expired, and Michigan kicking a 44-yard field goal as regulation time expired to tie the score before eventually winning in the third overtime. Still, it demonstrated that even at 5-7, Northwestern has been able to compete consistently with anyone in the Big Ten. It has done the same this year with impressive back-to-back wins against