Looking to impress your fellow football fans? Want to be the biggest nerd in the living room? North by Northwestern has got you covered. Beyond the Gridiron provides you with all the essential and useless trivia you need to understand our enemies on the football field. This week: Northwestern vs. Vanderbilt.
School Size (undergraduates)
(source: Collegeboard.com)
NORTHWESTERN: 8,637
VANDERBILT: 6,794
ADVANTAGE: EVEN
It all depends on the individual. We’re students, not numbers!
Local City
NORTHWESTERN: Chicago
VANDERBILT: Nashville
ADVANTAGE: Northwestern
Say what you will about the freezing winters and political corruption, Chicago’s diversity and overall atmosphere gives it the thumbs-up over… is there anything other than country music down there?
Endowment
(source: 2009 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments)
NORTHWESTERN: $5.45 billion
VANDERBILT: $2.83 billion
ADVANTAGE: Northwestern
Money makes the world go round. Especially south of the Mason-Dixon line. Sorry, Vanderbilt, maybe next time.
Average Stadium Capacity, 2009 (% filled)
NORTHWESTERN: 24,190 (51.3%)
VANDERBILT: 35,015 (88%)
ADVANTAGE: Vanderbilt
Disregard the fact that Ryan Field is larger than Vanderbilt Stadium. Getting eclipsed in attendance figures by a team considered lesser than the ‘Cats speaks to the massive strides necessary to establish Northwestern as a Chicago-compatible product. Maybe if we tailgated as hard as the Commodores and dressed to the nines with pearls and champagne, we could draw a few more purple fans. But the color is probably from the pneumonia.
US News Ranking
NORTHWESTERN: 12
VANDERBILT: 17
ADVANTAGE: Northwestern
It’s a cheap shot, since these rankings are pretty trivial. But still, someone thinks we’re better than them.
Famous Alumni – Entertainment
To qualify, an alumnus must have completed a degree at their respective schools. So NU can’t count Cindy Crawford and Vandy can’t count Molly Sims. Shoot.
NORTHWESTERN: Stephen Colbert
VANDERBILT: Randy Brooks
ADVANTAGE: Northwestern
I couldn’t find anybody of worth in Vanderbilt’s alumni pool, so I went with the man credited for penning the holiday favorite, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Enough said.
Famous Alumni – NFL
NORTHWESTERN: Luis Castillo, Chargers
VANDERBILT: Jay Cutler, Bears
ADVANTAGE: Vanderbilt
Beyond these two, Vanderbilt fields a deeper NFL group than Northwestern, and though Cutler is coming off a dismal freshman Bears campaign, he still commands greater hubris than does San Diego’s defensive end.
Famous Alumni – Government
NORTHWESTERN: Rahm Emanuel
VANDERBILT: Fred Thompson
ADVANTAGE: Northwestern.
OK, OK, so Thompson is eligible for the Entertainment category, but so is David Schwimmer. Meanwhile, Emanuel works for the current president. Thompson couldn’t even make it out of primaries.
Infamous alumni
NORTHWESTERN: Rod Blagojevich
VANDERBILT: Al Gore
ADVANTAGE: Northwestern
Gore isn’t necessarily infamous, but he has been a pivotal figure in presidential elections and climate issues since his last tenure as vice president. Does not compare to the Mighty Toupee.
Scandal
NORTHWESTERN: Point-shaving
VANDERBILT: Lavish administrative spending
ADVANTAGE: Vanderbilt, erm, Northwestern?
While Northwestern’s point-shaving incident back in 1998 was a major deal for the image of the school and its athletics, one could make the argument that former Vanderbilt chancellor Gordon Gee was worse; he spent $6 million of Vanderbilt’s money to refurbish his house, which was university-owned.
Prominent athletics
NORTHWESTERN VANDERBILT
Women’s Lacrosse Men’s Baseball
ADVANTAGE: Northwestern
Northwestern’s got our 5-time consecutive NCAA Champions (the first to do so outside the Eastern time zone, we might add). Vanderbilt, on the other hand, has a really good baseball team. But they earned their first NCAA championship in history in bowling. We win everywhere here. Except basketball.