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Even a baseball fan knows that when you’re squared off against a college football superpower such as No. 2-ranked Ohio State, you don’t fumble away a prime scoring opportunity on your very opening possession.
And perhaps the very last thing you do is what Northwestern did Saturday with 5:55 left in the first half of what, to that point, had been a surprisingly competitive 7-7 game at Wrigley Field. In punt formation from the Wildcats’ 31-yard line, long snapper Will Halkyard sailed the ball through the fingertips of leaping punter Hunter Renner, who raced back to retrieve the ball at the goal line, made one Buckeye miss and — instead of taking a safety, which would’ve been the right play — tried to boot the ball away.