Road Trip Captain: Elements of Style

In this four-part series, A Blogger, Idiot takes you on the road as he follows the Washington Huskies football team on its ongoing quest to return to prominence.

PART 2: 9/14/2013 - #19 Washington at Illinois

"Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world."

World War II was dawning in Europe when Frank Lloyd Wright made that statement.  75 years later, elements of the early Chicago style  - authored by Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, and their contemporaries, and later impressed upon Wright as he spun off on his 0wn directions - still define the city, making it a destination for anyone interested in architecture, or perhaps even the broader American story.  This past weekend, a different sort of story was playing out alongside Lake Michigan: the Washington Huskies, fresh off a dismantling of ranked Boise State in both teams' season openers, traveled to the Windy City to take on the Illinois Fighting Illini.  Following the Boise State game, UW vaulted into the top 25 rankings, while also observing their lone bye week of the season.  They arrived in Chicago¹ to face an Illinois team that had embarked upon a surprising 2-0 start to the year, and had designs of doing more than just beating the 10-point Vegas line that favored UW.  


Friday, September 13

From San Francisco, it is a thirty hour drive four hour flight and a quick train ride to arrive in Chicago's Loop district, which is where I'd be staying for a few nights.  Longtime away-game veteran Brian was coming in from Seattle, but his flight had been cancelled at the 11th hour by United.   There were already a number of UW'ers roaming the streets when I arrived², though, and I located my friends Pete and Keri a short distance from my hotel, and together we explored the city late into the night.      

Saturday, September 14

Given the 5:00 kickoff in the UW game, there was plenty of time on Saturday for brunch and some viewing of the earlier contests.  Soldier Field, normally the home stadium for the Chicago Bears, was today's venue, and it sits about a mile and a half south of downtown, at the end of a long series of parks and open spaces.  Dick Butkus, an NFL legend and revered Illini³ alum, was to be featured in the pre-game coin toss.

FIRST HALF

Brian managed to screech into the stadium as the anthem was playing, so our full group was finally assembled.  Meanwhile, the two teams slug it out to a 10-3 halftime score, with UW out in front.  The Huskies are moving the ball pretty well, but have fumbled twice near midfield, killing a pair of promising drives.  But the defense has looked stingy, and after what happened in the season opener, many of us in the stands feel that a big lead is set to open up soon.

SECOND HALF

That feeling was soon validated.  Washington came out of halftime with a touchdown drive featuring nothing but running plays.  Near the end of the quarter, the lead was up to 31-10.  At that point, Washington's QB and main running back were both having field days, and Illinois was on the ropes.  And then the Huskies made their one major mistake of the game - allowing a deep pass on the first play of the ensuing possession that cut the lead right back to 31-17.  The game would end 34-24, but I'm not sure it was really that close, considering that Washington had 615 yards of total offense and controlled time of possession.  I left dwelling a little bit on the two turnovers and the blown pass coverage, but I had to also remind myself that winning on the road - especially when you don't play your best game - is nothing to be overly unhappy with.  

Brian and I ended up spending part of the evening watching Floyd Mayweather soundly defeat Canelo Alvarez.  I hope that by the time I next see the Huskies, in Palo Alto in three weeks, they have a little bit of the Mayweather swagger.  As the most difficult stretch of the schedule approaches, they'll need it.

¹ Illinois' campus is actually in Champaign, but I assume there were multiple considerations at play in scheduling the game in Chicago: 1, a desire to play to both the metro fan base and to inner city recruits; 2, an opportunity to make some more revenue with ticket prices and merchandise sales; and 3, to convince traveling fans from Seattle that may have been on the fence to make a quicker, easier commute.  Except for Brian, obviously.  
² Game attendance was announced as 47,000, and about 8,000 of those (according to the estimate of the official AB,I stats department, as well as one even less credible internet source) were UW supporters.
³ It's possible that some fans on the west coast have limited knowledge of the what exactly goes on at the University of Illinois.  It seems that academically, the Illini are no slouches.  They rank high in US News' list of top public universities, and have a reputation as an influential research school.  Discoveries/  initiatives at UI contributed to, among other things, development of the internet and the plasma display.