West Lot Pirates

Wow. What a month. With all of the twists and turns and tumult we finally have official word that the Big Ten will indeed be playing football this fall. We discuss the Big Ten's return to play plan and what it might mean for Northwestern.

Well, we hoped that this day wouldn't come, but we feared that it was inevitable. The Big Ten and Pac 12 have cancelled all fall sports with the intention of holding a spring football season. Tonight, we unpack our feelings on everything here and turn an uncertain eye towards the spring of 2021.

We take a quick break from our summer previews to talk about the new Big Ten schedule that was just announced. Northwestern adds a date with Michigan at the end of the season and the schedule is peppered with flexibility in case of cancelled games and COVID outbreaks. We go through the new schedule and briefly touch on what some of the other Power 5 conferences are doing this season.

Purdue's offense was downright scary last year, and that was with their wunderkind Rondale Moore injured for most of the season. Combine him with David Bell and Purdue will definitely score points this season. Will their D be able to make a stop?

When you consider the Iowa Hawkeyes this year, there is a huge elephant in the room where it comes to their off-field issues they have been dealing with this spring/summer. Of course we are going to discuss that, but what do we think of Iowa's chances ON the field?

If you ask the national media, Nebraska is primed to win the national championship year after year. But we all know better. To say Nebraska has struggled since joining the Big Ten would be putting it mildly. Scott Frost enters his 3rd season back in Lincoln, but does he have a team that can make any noise in the West?

The Terps have struggled since joining the Big Ten, which is putting it mildly. Coming off a brutal 3-9 campaign last year, Mike Locksley is trying to put it all together. But will their defense get in the way of what might be an emerging offense?

Penn State comes into 2020 coming off an excellent 2019 season. They return what might be the best defensive player in the country in Micah Parsons and they poached Minnesota's OC. But will that be enough to take them over the top in the East?

Sparty comes into the season with a brand new Head Coach in Mel Tucker. They are going through a complete culture change, but will a new regime be able to make the changes necessary in these bizarre times?

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Michigan has yet to topple their rivals down south in the Jim Harbaugh era. Will this be the year they get off the schneid? Also, with the news that the Big Ten will be going to a conference-only schedule for the season, could the Wolverines show up on Northwestern's schedule?

We usually kick off our Summer Previews with a look at the Big Ten teams not on Northwestern's schedule, but with the announcement that the Big Ten is going to a 10 game, conference only schedule this year, this preview could become much more relevant if the schedule breaks a certain way. Coming off another Big Ten Championship and a close loss to Clemson in the Playoffs, will Ohio St. just re...

We kick off our Summer Previews with a look at the Big Ten teams not on Northwestern's schedule this year. If you think this is the season that Rutgers could finally put something together in the Big Ten East, maybe you should think again.

We kick off our Summer Previews with a look at the Big Ten teams not on Northwestern's schedule this year. Indiana is a team who you really shouldn't sleep on. They might be better than you think they ought to be.

We're back after a brief hiatus and our summer previews are ready to go. We will get into each team on Northwestern's schedule and touch on at the Big Ten teams Northwestern won't play this year. Before we do that, we have to catch up on some news and notes.

This week we have seen a little news coming out of the Northwestern Football program with Fitz and Co. taking to Zoom to catch up with the media. Not a lot of real news to report, but it's been a minute since we all caught up.

After a little down time after NFL Draft, we catch up on some recruiting news from the NU Football team.

It's our annual tradition, the live draft podcast. This year we were joined by our good friends over at Winning Cures Everything. Enjoy the chaos!

In our second pod of the week, we sat down with Paul Hletko, the founder of FEW Spirits to talk about how he started the first distillery in Evanston and some of the interesting things they are doing there.

This week, we are recapping the final four days of our Quarantine Trivia challenge. Thanks to everyone who participated! We had a lot of fun putting this together and it seems that you all had a lot of fun playing along with us.

After the first three days of trivia, we jump on real quick to go over the answers so far.

This week need to wipe some egg off our face after our position last week that Northwestern would probably not get any recruits to chose the Cats over some of the top schools in the country. Caleb Tiernan proved us wrong less than 24 hours after our pod posted last week. Also, we have a fun game of Wildcat Football Trivia starting this week.

To take your mind off of the state of the world, we bring you an interesting thought experiment. Today, we look back at the past 10 years of Northwestern football recruiting and look at it from a different perspective.

With the whole world turned upside down by the global pandemic, we aren't going to do our usual bracketology podcast. However, we would be remiss if we didn't bring in Scott Sepich, our resident bracket expert to talk about what might have been in March Madness this year.

This week, we welcome in Lisa Byington, former NU Basketball player and current broadcaster for BTN, FOX, CBS/Turner and more. Lisa brings so much first-hand knowledge about this year's women's team after calling the Big Ten Tournament. What does an early departure mean for the ladies moving into the Big Dance? How do they compare to the all-time NU greats? All this and more including a ne...

With a thrashing of Illinois, the Northwestern Women's Basketball team are Big Ten Champions for the first time in 30 years. With the Big Ten Tournament going on this week we celebrate these amazing women and start to look ahead to the NCAA tournament.