Fox Sports came to Evanston on Saturday for its “Big Noon Kickoff” pregame show, showcasing Northwestern’s Big Ten opener against No. 4 Oregon for a national TV audience.
Despite an early-morning monsoon that turned the Lakefill into a mud pit, all the gang was on hand, except for designated Ohio State-basher Dave Portnoy, who had a prior engagement at a pizza festival that obviously was more important than hyping a game everyone expected would be over by halftime.
Still, it was NU’s first chance to host a big game at cozy Martin Stadium, its Instagrammable field on the shores of Lake Michigan, and the Wildcats were excited about getting some positive national football attention for the first time since you-know-who was fired in a hazing scandal.
“These are days you dream of when you dream of playing college football,” Northwestern coach David Braun said last week.
Some dreams are better than others, and this one turned into a nightmare before long.
It might be a while before the Fox crew returns to the Lakefill after the Ducks manhandled Northwestern 34-14 to keep their perfect Big Ten record intact at 10-0 since joining the conference last season.
“Different,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said of the environment. “I thought they handled it really well. Those have to be the loudest speakers behind us. False crowd noise, right? It was annoying.”
Linebacker Bryce Boettcher said the lack of noise meant the Ducks had to “bring your own juice” to the field.
“It’s easier to communicate obviously, which is nice,” he said. “You can actually talk to people, which is cool. But looking forward to getting back to Autzen Field next week.”
Oregon quarterback Dante Moore said he enjoyed the change of scenery and the crazy weather.
“It’s windy, kind of like high school was for me,” he said. “My high school was right by the water. Coming out and warmup was like ‘Holy (expletive).’ Windy.”
Moore said offensive coordinator Will Stein told him: ‘Let ‘er rip today.’ ”
He did, and was on target for the most part, going 16-for-20 for 178 yards, with a touchdown and an interception.
“Playing in a different environment, thunder and lightning, windy and just a lot of things going on,” he said. “Overall we came out with the win and it wasn’t the best look, but we’re going to go back to the doctor and we’re going to learn, (and fix) our mistakes.”
In the end it turned out to be a beautiful day for football, though a large swath of the NU kids in the student section filed out after the Wildcats trailed 17-0 at halftime, never to return. They had seen enough, and there was no reason to waste the rest of a nice, late-summer afternoon watching the inevitable.
Northwestern (1-2) did make one more attempt to get back in the game, marching to the Oregon 34 on an eight-minute drive to start the second half. But a dropped pass on fourth down ended the momentum, and Dierre Hill Jr. took a handoff on the first play and flew down the sideline for a 66-yard-touchdown that put the last shovel of dirt on the Wildcats.
The Ducks made it 34-0 before NU scored with 6 minutes, 20 seconds remaining to avoid a shutout and added another touchdown on a 79-yard run by Dashun Reeder with less than two minutes left.
Oregon wound up with 373 total yards to Northwestern’s 313, but that was a deceptive stat since the Wildcats piled up most of the yardage when the game was out of hand.
Oregon scored 128 points in its first two wins and was coming off a 69-3 thrashing of Oklahoma State in a game that became personal for Lanning after OSU coach Mike Gundy suggested the Ducks were the best team NIL money could buy.
Lanning joked afterward about his fear of punting against the Cowboys: “I was worried if we didn’t punt, we’d probably lose the punter (James Ferguson-Reynolds) to the portal. So I wanted to make sure we got an opportunity.”
Oregon punted on its first possession Saturday, but that would prove to be an anomaly, and Ferguson-Reynolds was not called on again.
The Wildcats were without running back Cam Porter, who suffered a season-ending leg injury last week. Joseph Himon II and Caleb Komolafe tried to pick up the slack, but the Wildcats couldn’t do much against a defense led by linebackers Boettcher and Matayo Uiagalelei. Quarterback Preston Stone threw two more interceptions, giving him six for the season, and went 11-for-21 for 135 yards.
The Wildcats now have a week off to regroup before playing host to UCLA on Sept. 27. The Bruins are 0-3 and looking even worse than their record, so it should be a winnable game for Northwestern as it hopes to earn a bowl bid. NU will play three more home games at Martin Stadium and two at Wrigley Field in November before moving into new Ryan Field in 2026.
Oregon has a breather next week with its traditional rivalry game against former Pac-12 foe Oregon State before a showdown in Happy Valley, Pa., against No. 2 Penn State, its first real test of the season. If the Ducks can handle Penn State, they might just run the table again in the Big Ten, with neither Michigan nor Ohio State on the schedule.
Near the end of his postgame news conference, Lanning pointed to the team’s togetherness and its diversity while decrying gun violence in the aftermath of the slaying of conservative voice Charlie Kirk. He said “it should be really hard for a sick person to have a gun, and if people can’t see that from both sides, how disappointing is that?”
Lanning thinks his team’s togetherness should be an example to others.
“I think we’re missing some of that in our country,” he said. “I recently found out Charlie Kirk was an Oregon fan. I hurt for his wife, Erika, and their kids. That sort of evil should never exist in our country. … Every day it seems like we deal with some sort of violence in our country, whether it’s school kids in Colorado or kids in Minnesota at churches.
“Life matters, and I think we’ve lost sight of that. I wish the world could learn a little bit of something from our locker room, because we’ve got a bunch of people with difference, and what you’ve got in there is a bunch of people who love (each other).
“There will be some people who will be disappointed about how much I said about all this, but I know there will be some that are disappointed I didn’t say enough. And I really don’t care. What I do care about if is you disagree with me, if you hate me, if you don’t like me, just know this — I love you. I absolutely love you, and life matters.”
