As I watched NU’s football team fall to the lowly Iowa Hawkeyes that day in Kinnick Stadium in 2000, it didn’t occur to me that our best chance to go to the Rose Bowl just got flushed down the toilet.

That win in Iowa would have left us with an amazing 7-1 record in conference play, with improbable last-second victories over Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. Our lone loss would have been to Big Ten runner-up Purdue, who, as a result of our loss to Iowa, finished in a three-way tie with Michigan for first place and earned the right to face Washington in the Rose Bowl.

Since that day in Iowa City, the NU football team has gone nowhere but down.

FORGET THE ALAMO

The team suffered a crushing 66-17 defeat to Nebraska in the 2000 Alamo Bowl, where our players looked like they were afraid the massive Cornhuskers would maim them. The Wildcats then imploded in their 2001 campaign, losing six games in a row and finishing with a 4-7 record and yet another loss to Iowa, 59-16, this time at Ryan Field.

Last season was rife with controversy, with the tragic loss of Rashidi Wheeler and a dismal season where the Wildcats squeaked out just one conference win. The ugliness put Coach Randy Walker, who inked a seven-year extension after the 2000 season, on the dreaded hot seat.

In the NU coaching staff’s words, it was a rebuilding year. To students, alumni and other fans, the season was a huge disappointment.

I fear that my days of seeing a winning NU football team are over and it’s unfortunate for the students, players, alumni and coaching staff. And, unless the school’s attitude toward athlete recruitment changes soon, NU may never see another winning football season.

NU V. BIG-TIME PROGRAMS

The athletes we have are good, but they’re not like the players brought in by big-time programs like University of Miami and Florida State. Those players don’t attend classes and are always an athletic scholarship away from being expelled. They major in football, and it shows on the field.

We don’t have players in trouble for theft, drugs, fighting or even failing out of school. Our athletes truly are student athletes; in fact, a number of our football players chose NU because of its prestigious theater and journalism schools. They go to class like the rest of us, take written exams like the rest of us and are held to the same academic standards as that of the rest of the student body. An Ohio State official once remarked to me back in 2000 that NU had the most impressive program in the Big 10 because we were so strapped by academic confinements when it came to recruiting but still put a winning product out on the field.

That was 2000. This is now.

Why should we continue to handicap ourselves? Why must we insist on having such high admission standards for our student athletes?

LOWER THE BAR

Lowering the bar for 100 or so kids in the whole school wouldn’t be the end of the world. It would allow the coaches to work their magic with some of the best talent in the country and it would bring alumni back to the school in droves. In returning more alumni, NU would profit from extra contributions that would benefit all students and boost our college ranking to new heights.

In effect, this lowering of the bar would create a symbiotic relationship between the football team and the school. On the football side, the coaches would get better players to compete in the Big 10 - one of the most recognizable conferences in college football. For NU administrators, more fans would come to see a better team, increasing school spirit and bringing a small school closer together. And, proud alumni would donate more money, which keeps everyone happy.

One more thing we shouldn’t forget is that football is college athletics’ premier money sport. Ohio State and Miami each received $13 million for their spots in the 2003 Rose Bowl. An improved football team appearing in a bowl game would increase revenue for the conference, garnering us more respect, and no doubt providing a sponsorship by Nike or Adidas or someone, so we wouldn’t have to pay for our gear anymore. A better team would also increase attendance and sales of concessions and apparel that would benefit the school and the community as well.

Now, as I prepare for my last enrolled season of NU football, I am jaded by the fact that we are in a conference that prides athletics, yet we do not have the opportunity to compete on equal footing with our conference counterparts. Even in the Ivy League, Princeton, Harvard, Penn and others have lower admission standards for their athletes than we do, and they do not have to compete against a Michigan or a Penn State - big schools who don’t mind if their student athletes get lost in the shuffle.

As a future alumnus, I hope NU officials know there are sports fans who have attended this school and would appreciate efforts to improve its struggling sports culture.

Unfortunately, until we do some of these things, the 2000 season will be the exception rather than the rule.

It’s going to be a cold November at Ryan Field, even if Iowa isn’t on the schedule.

Want to rant with Phineas about Ohio State sports, ESPN’s demise or NU’s struggling athletics? E-mail him at p-lambert@northwestern.edu