Northwestern’s going bowling for a third straight season — this time off to Dallas for the TicketCity Bowl. Follow North by Northwestern writer and Northwestern defensive end Jake Gregus as he and our Wildcats football team attempt to win their eighth game of the season and first postseason game since 1949 here on NBN’s TicketCity Bowl Blog.
Week-long stays at fancy hotels. All meals paid for. Free gifts. Sounds like a great vacation, right? There’s only one problem.
It’s not a vacation.
Instead, it’s a business trip where all work-related activities revolve around a single goal: to win a football game. Not just any game, but the one that could end the 1949-to-present bowl win drought for a school that is craving a postseason football victory. In order for us to achieve our goal, we must give up something to gain something, so we have to relinquish most of our Christmas break to football.
To an average college student, this might seem unfair. Instead, we see it as an opportunity to improve on all aspects of our gameplay from the starting quarterback to the fourth-string walk-on defensive end. (Hey, that’s me!) It’s an extra fifteen practices that give us a chance to become a better football team than we were when we walked off the field in Madison, Wis. While these practices can be tough at times, Northwestern does everything in their power and within the rules to help us prepare for our bowl game.
It starts with Finals Week. Even though we don’t have any classes scheduled, our coaches make sure we have the time we need to prepare ourselves for finals. When the tests are over and the dorms close, every football player who lives on campus needs a place to stay. Because of this, the football team puts us up in a nice Evanston hotel until we depart for Dallas. In addition, because the dining halls are closed, we are given $195 to pay for meals not provided by our training table. (Personally, I don’t want to consume more dining hall food after eating it for all of fall quarter.) With Evanston’s dining scene at our fingertips, no one should go hungry during bowl season.
In addition, we get the opportunity to see a Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks game during our time in Evanston. As a walk-on, I can’t afford tickets to see those teams on my own. The incentive to get to see both of these professional teams play for free is always good motivation for winning enough games to go to a bowl.
These perks are something that my teammates and I appreciate, especially since we have to practice on a daily basis. Our practices are usually 18 periods (one period is six minutes in length), which is about two hours long. While this may not seem like a very long time, we play fast during our practices. We practice at such a fast tempo that there is no need for us to run wind sprints for conditioning. Instead, our practices are filled with drills such as “combo, board drill and interior” that are designed to teach us as well as test our mental toughness. The best thing about these extra bowl practices is that Coach Fitzgerald will often use the end of each practice for a “D-squad Bowl,” a period that I use to demonstrate how much I’ve invested in workouts and practices by getting a chance to scrimmage against other players who are fighting for playing time. Since I don’t get many opportunities as a walk-on to show what I can do, it’s critical that I play well during this period in order to be evaluated for playing time (and hopefully a scholarship) in the future.
With only three practices left before we get a short break for Christmas, our team is running out of time to get ready for Texas Tech. However, we always make the most of our opportunities, and every day we’re getting one step closer to achieving our goal and making this the business trip of a lifetime.