The whole reason anyone was going to tune into the Northwestern-Illinois game this weekend wasn't because we have two competitive football teams, nor because the game was being played at Wrigley Field. People were going to watch to see if anyone would get concussed running into the wall in the East endzone.
Now, according to ESPN, the NCAA/Big 10/school officials have decided that only one end zone will be used on offense throughout the entire game. Are you kidding me? What is this, one long overtime period? What baffles me is the idea to hold the game at Wrigley was obviously not a decision made overnight. It was most likely a long, drawn out process that factored in a lot of discussion and debate before being finalized. The dimensions of the field should have come at no surprise. What does come as a surprise is the ineptitude of the officials at hand who did not originally forecast any danger nor backlash from hosting a game where the fence and padding would be so close to the back of the end zone on the East side. These folks are being paid a lot of money to hold the positions they do, we should hope they'd be educated enough to recognize this type of concern early on in the process. However, what clouded their judgement was the novelty to hold a game at an historic monument of baseball history, much like Notre Dame and Army will do this weekend at Yankee Stadium. The difference is they have constructed a field which does not put the players in harms way like Wrigley Field's layout does.
Unfortunately, these officials were so caught up in making a meaningless game meaningful by adding in a novelty for a location, and thus ended making the entire event a joke. Well done. You managed to make people care even less about watching this game.
-Bess
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