FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.
Howard Stern could take over for Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News. Your cat could win the Nobel Prize in physics. Guns 'N Roses could actually release Chinese Democracy. Those are three things which seem as unlikely now as Northwestern's 1995 Rose Bowl run seemed at the time.
Northwestern had occupied a certain niche in the Big Ten's ecosystem, that of the perennial homecoming date. The Wildcats could be counted on to show up sometime between late September and late October to provide an all but guaranteed W for the returning alumni. And as long as they still played football in Evanston, every Big Ten team knew that no matter what other outrageous fortune befell them, they wouldn't go winless in the conference unless it was one of those years Northwestern just wasn't on the schedule.
A lot of coaches sacrificed large parts of their careers coaching in Evanston, trying to face up to the challenge of turning around a football team that hadn't won a conference title since 1949. But not even legitimately good coaches like Lou Saban, Ara Parseghian, and Dennis Green could accomplish anything with the Wildcats. So how did Gary Barnett do it?
