Best Moments in Big Ten Football History #4: Northwestern Smells the Roses, 1996

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

Howard Stern could take over for Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News. Your cat could win the Nobel Prize in physics. Guns 'N Roses could actually release Chinese Democracy. Those are three things which seem as unlikely now as Northwestern's 1995 Rose Bowl run seemed at the time.

Northwestern had occupied a certain niche in the Big Ten's ecosystem, that of the perennial homecoming date. The Wildcats could be counted on to show up sometime between late September and late October to provide an all but guaranteed W for the returning alumni. And as long as they still played football in Evanston, every Big Ten team knew that no matter what other outrageous fortune befell them, they wouldn't go winless in the conference unless it was one of those years Northwestern just wasn't on the schedule.

A lot of coaches sacrificed large parts of their careers coaching in Evanston, trying to face up to the challenge of turning around a football team that hadn't won a conference title since 1949. But not even legitimately good coaches like Lou Saban, Ara Parseghian, and Dennis Green could accomplish anything with the Wildcats. So how did Gary Barnett do it?

Barnett had been the offensive coordinator for Bill McCartney's great Colorado team of 1990, the one that split the national championship with Georgia Tech. He could have had any of a number of college jobs. He picked Northwestern, for the same reason so many other coaches had. He loved the challenge, and he knew that if he succeeded there, he could succeed anywhere.

Barnett's first three seasons didn't exactly suggest that he had a bright future as a head coach. He went 9-23-1 and in the best of those first three seasons the Wildcats were only outscored by 141 points. 1995, however, proved to be different. On offense, running back Darnell Autry was a one-man ball control system, allowing Northwestern to keep their opponents off the field. When the defense, captained by current NU coach Pat Fitzgerald, took the field, they more than did their part. The Wildcats went from being outscored by 141 points the previous season to outscoring their opponents by 130. The only loss all year (prior to the Rose Bowl) was a two-point loss to Miami of Ohio in the second game of the season.

Ohio State, in Eddie George's Heisman season, did nearly as well but couldn't beat Michigan in the season finale. (It was the John Cooper era, after all.) That gave NU the outright Big Ten title for the first time in 46 years and sent them to Pasadena to face Southern Cal.

The Cats lost, 42-31, but they made a game of it. Not even losing could distract from the sheer amazement the college football world felt that a punchline program like Northwestern could rise up and claim a conference crown. At the time we didn't realize the new era of parity was beginning. But we know it now.

Barnett would share the Big Ten title with Ohio State in 1996 before a little regression to the mean would occur. He left for Colorado in 1998. Northwestern brought in Miami's Randy Walker, who had been the only coach to beat NU during the 1995 regular season. His brand of creepy ninja football got Northwestern to four bowls in six years before his tragic death. Now, of course, Pat Fitzgerald walks the Ryan Field sidelines. And nobody pencils in Northwestern as a guaranteed W any more.