Nebraska, Iowa, Purdue and Illinois are all somewhere between struggling and inconsistent, so every one of those games is potentially winnable, though the Cats will probably not be favored in any of those games. Will Ben Bryant be back at QB at some point? Someone said ‘collarbone’ last week, but ‘upper body injury’ is all the Cats have said officially. Brendan Sulllivan doesn’t have his legs or his arm, though he did hit a few nice passes today.
Maureen got the collarbone information off of Facebook supposedly coming from the BTN announcer.
I know, not very reliable.
On Friday morning someone asked me about the games. I had 3 thoughts:
tOSU would win, but it would be tight
Nebraska isn’t very good and generally plays poorly in Champaign even when they’re decent
Rutgers should cover and could win straight up at Madison
Obviously I know nothing about college football.
What I noticed from the stands:
Howard brought its band, which was entertaining, however normally bringing a band to homecoming is a no-go. Was an exception made?
Howard was very chippy. I don’t understand. We aren’t from the DMV area, nor are we historically chippy so why?
Attendance again was very poor for a beautiful weather day. If NU told the truth I think this might set the lowest average attendance at Ryan field in ANY season based on the upcoming schedule.
Howard is normally very chippy, that’s just part of their image.
My suspicion is that Howard was invited to bring their band, it is a very good one. (It might have even been part of the deal for Howard to play in Evanston.)
From what they showed of their band on BTN, their reputation remains solid.
As to attendance, it wasn’t exactly a sterling set of home games, especially with the Iowa game at Wrigley Field. And with the firing of Fitz and all the lawsuits and bad publicity, including the locals objecting to the stadium proposal, attendance was probably doomed before the first kickoff.
With the addition of 4 west coast teams, visiting attendance is likely to suffer in general.