Interstate 94, Northwestern 0

That's a joke, but the 0-29 "Mildcats" aren't laughing

Northwestern's Wildcats, outright Big Ten football champs as recently as 1936, were torn last week over what to do: "Stop State at 28" or go for the record. Should Northwestern, beaten in 28 straight games since September 1979, establish an alltime major college losing streak Saturday, or beat Michigan State?

Willy Wildcat and the cheerleaders were sent from Evanston to downtown Chicago, 20 miles south, to poll pedestrians, who voted for victory. Losing had become fashionable at Northwestern, but no more.

Willy was pleased. By tradition, the mascot (Freshman Keith Lewis in a wildcat suit) is caged at the start of every home game and set loose whenever the first points are scored for Northwestern.

Three home shutouts in a row can make a wildcat stir crazy.

The road to defeat has been as well traveled around Evanston as a nearby highway. A campus joke: Interstate 94, Northwestern 0. The "Mildcats," as they are unkindly called, are 2-50-1 over the past five years. So far this season, the team has yielded an average of more than 500 yds. a game and been outscored 386-64, 114-0 in the first quarter alone. The Wildcats have not led in any game.

Northwestern has plenty of excuses: it is the only private school in the Big Ten, with fewer than 7,000 undergraduates (next smallest in the conference is Iowa with 24,000). Northwestern also believes football players should be able to read and write. A grade point average of at least 2.7 is required, compared with 2.2 at other Big Ten schools. The athletic budget was nearly doubled last year to $4 million, but it is still the lowest in the conference.

Northwestern's football futility is held up as testimony to its lofty academic standards, and successes are usually recounted amid apologies. At the mention of the year Northwestern won the Rose Bowl (1949), it is usually added that the Wildcats were merely Big Ten co-champions in 1948 and made the trip to Pasadena because a conference rule prevented Michigan from go ing two years in a row.

Many men no more tolerant of losing than New York Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner (an assistant coach for Northwestern's winless 1955 team) have been unable to do much about it at North western. Ara Parseghian supplied some euphoric times in the late '50s and early '60s, when the flip-card section at Dyche Stadium reached a point of such giddiness that cards were tossed, spectators hurt and the section disbanded.

According to McLean Stevenson, then in the athletic department, Northwestern has had more than a touch of such luck.

"We kept searching for guys with pointed ears, no necks and crew haircuts," Steven son says, "but all we ever seemed to find were nice-looking, well-mannered kids who were fun on the bus." Northwestern alum ni are more likely to be ac tors (Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty) than pro football players (only two are in the N.F.L. now: Pete Shaw of San Diego and Jack Rudnay of Kansas City). When Stevenson was cast as Colonel Henry Blake in the television show M*A*S*H, a staple of his wardrobe was to be a purple Northwestern sweater with a white N. But the colors glared on-camera; the sweater had to be dyed blue; the N was chopped down to an off-kilter and dyed orange. Suddenly it was an Illinois sweater. Poor Northwestern.

First-year Coach Dennis Green, 32, and Athletic Director Doug Single, 30, served apprenticeships at Stanford, whose strong academics and respectable football program are a model for Northwestern. In an interview with TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs, Single vowed: "We're in the Big Ten to stay." Green, a bullnecked black man in his first head-coaching job, passed up a possible tie in the season opener when he ordered an unsuccessful two-point conversion in a one-point loss to Indiana. He is a straight talker, given to sometimes bitter post-game oratory. After his eighth loss, to Wisconsin (52-0), Green angered longer-sufferers when he said: "I'm embarrassed to have my name associated with North western University." In a much softer voice, he said, "We're not used to playing hard enough at Northwestern."

Last Saturday the Wildcats broke the losing streak record they shared with Virginia (1958-60) and Kansas State (1945-48). And they did it in style. Michigan State marched to a touchdown with the opening kickoff, scored every time it had the ball in the first half, and led 41-0 at intermission.

Northwestern wound up losing 61-14, and with powerful Ohio State and improving Illinois still ahead this season, victory was not yet in sight.

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