Worst Moments in Big Ten Football History #9: Northwestern Sets the Futility Record, 1979-82

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

ABOVE: "Interstate 94, Northwestern 0" was a common joke in Evanston during the early 1980s.

Every team has an off season now and then. Northwestern had a couple of off decades, and they were called the 70s and the 80s. Right in the middle of that stretch, the Wildcats racked up an accomplishment which may never be equaled by any other Division I-A Football Bowl Subdivision program.

Northwestern coach Rick Venturi took over for the deposed John Pont in 1978. Pont's Wildcats had put together back-to-back 1-10 seasons, which is enough to get anybody fired. You might think there's nowhere to go but up from that point. You might want to think about that again.

Northwestern went winless in 1978, losing ten games but tying one. That one tie came in Venturi's debut, when the Wildcats tied Illinois, 0-0. (It wasn't a very good time for football in Champaign, either.) A 27-22 win over Wyoming in the second game of the 1979 season (it wasn't a very good time for football in Laramie, either) had to feel like an incredible relief. Venturi certainly savored his first win as Northwestern's coach.

Wait, did I say Venturi's first win? My bad. I should have said Venturi's only win as Northwestern's coach.

You read that right. The Cats went winless for the rest of the 1979 season and all of 1980 as well. Venturi was let go after that. Enter Dennis Green (yes, that Dennis Green), whose opening season was probably the worst of any major program in the past fifty years.

Mind you, it got off to a good start. In Green's debut the Cats hung with Indiana, losing 21-20. It would be their best game all season. The average NU game in 1981 was a 49-7 sucker punch ... and that includes the one-point loss to IU.

After losing their record-setting 29th game in a row, a 61-14 atomic wedgie from Michigan State, Northwestern students reacted the only way they could: by ripping down the goalposts and throwing them into Lake Michigan. But they weren't done losing yet. The next week they lost to Ohio State, 70-6.

It was not until September 25, 1982, more than three years after the Wyoming win, and following a credibility-stretching 34 consecutive losses, that Northwestern would get a win. The unfortunate victim was Bill Mallory's Northern Illinois squad, which actually wasn't that bad of a team. With the floodgates now open, the Cats would go on to finish 3-8, actually winning two conference games. Was this a sign of things to come?

Yes, it was. The Cats also won two conference games in 1983 and 1984, their only victories in both seasons. After a 3-8 year in 1985, Green was gone and things ... um, well, things didn't change very much until the mid-90s, but we've been over that already.

With just about every team scheduling a lower-division creampuff these days, we'll probably never see another Division I-A Football Bowl Subdivision team lose 34 games in a row. Northwestern's accomplishment stands alone, but do bear in mind that Northwestern only holds the FBS futility record. The all-division record is 80 straight losses, by Prairie View A&M from 1989 to 1998.

Wow.