Northwestern came off the high of its commanding victory over UTEP, an important win that indicated that the Wildcats would be closer to normal bad this season rather than apocalyptically bad. The dozens of fans who were not put off by the program's futility "on American soil" and the scandal that engulfed the program and several of the people who were all in charge when it happened and are still there defiantly standing tall against themselves got to finally celebrate a win at Ryan Field for the first time since 2021. But despite the excitement of vanquishing the UTEP Miners as a home underdog, most people understood they probably would not fare as well against a surging nationally-ranked Duke team, and they didn't.
The P.J. Fleck Fiction Issue
