On November 11, I stood in the freezing cold with a group of friends as Northwestern put away Purdue. Most of the students had left by this point. After all, it was, well, very cold, it was family weekend, and it wasn’t the most exciting game in the history of college football.
Even as the once-occupied rows of bleachers in front of us in the student section turned empty, even as the brutal cold winds whipped around, and even as most of the fans had exited, leaving Ryan Field an eerie quiet scene under the lights, we stood in our spots and took in Northwestern’s fifth win in a row, a no-nonsense 23-13 victory.