"I don’t spend my Saturdays waving purple pompoms at my TV "

A Medill alum working in the sports world today reconsiders: 

 For those of us old enough to have experienced that historic ’95 season — in which the Wildcats came out of nowhere after 24 straight losing seasons to beat Notre Dame, Michigan and Penn State and finish 8-0 in the Big Ten — it was probably instinctual to view Northwestern football as the Little Engine That Could. A small private school with strict academic requirements playing in a conference with Ohio State and Michigan always felt like the farthest thing from a “sports school,” no matter how many bowl games and Big Ten division titles Fitzgerald’s program won.

In reality, Northwestern long ago made an institutional decision to participate in Big-Time Athletics. Under the leadership of sports-minded former president Morty Schapiro and renowned AD-turned-ACC-commissioner Jim Phillips, it went from having the most outdated facilities in the conference to spending $110 million to renovate its dilapidated basketball arena and $270 million to build a palatial lakeside football complex, and just last year it announced plans for a brand-new $800 million football stadium to replace long-outdated Ryan Field.

High graduation rates be damned, this is how a high-level Big Ten or SEC university operates.

But that doesn’t mean it knows what it’s doing...

Now might be an opportune moment for Northwestern as a university to hit pause and do some soul-searching.