The Ryan Field scoreboard showed the painful but unavoidable truth: Michigan State 17, Northwestern 0, with 2:34 left in the first quarter.

In a big game against a ranked opponent, one week after climbing to 22nd in the USA Today Coaches’ Poll, the Wildcats came out flat. It had happened again.

The Cats, accustomed to living in the comfort of relative obscurity, again had stumbled in their first tentative steps into the spotlight. For seniors like me, the phenomenon is not new.

Let’s jump in the ol’ time machine, shall we?

Back in 2005, Northwestern started its Big Ten slate 3-1, moving to 5-2 on the season and No. 21 in the Associated Press Poll. A palpable buzz permeated the campus, and an enthusiastic sellout crowd showed up for the next game, a nationally televised Homecoming tilt against Michigan at Ryan Field.

I stood in the student section that evening and for a fleeting moment felt as though I were at a real Big Ten football game. And then, almost before it began, the game was over.

Michigan scored a touchdown on its first drive and then scored again when Leon Hall returned a Tyrell Sutton fumble 83 yards for a score. Six minutes in, the deficit was 14-0. NU got back into the game but never fully recovered and lost 33-17.

Flash back to the present day.

Another good start to the season. Another wave of spirit washing over the campus. Another climb into one of the major polls. Another Michigan school in town for a nationally televised game, albeit one with 15,000 fewer people in attendance.

Choose your favorite cliché about history repeating itself. They all apply.

The Spartans scored first on a Brian Hoyer touchdown pass. They scored again after Sherrick McManis fumbled on a kickoff return. They scored again after C.J. Bachér tossed an interception on a throw so ill-advised it might have been authorized by Lehman Brothers.

And here we are again, staring at that cruel scoreboard. Michigan State 17, NU 0. Final score: Spartans 37, Cats 20. Another chance at a big victory over a ranked opponent squandered.

Squandered truly is an appropriate word. Not to take anything away from the Spartans, who played a great game and deserved to win, but the Cats played as if they were determined to place as many obstacles in their way as possible.

In the postgame press conference, coach Pat Fitzgerald said NU beat itself, and his players echoed his sentiments.

“They made plays. They’re a great team,” safety Brendan Smith said of the Spartans. “You know, we just shot ourselves in the foot and didn’t give ourselves more opportunities to make plays. And when the plays were there, we didn’t come up with them.”

In the first 12:26 of the game, NU botched two kick coverage plays and two kick returns, gained one first down in two offensive possessions and threw an interception. Michigan State had four possessions in that span and started inside the NU 40-yard line on average.

The question is, why did this happen again? The Cats now have been ranked three times since 2001; they also reached No. 25 later in the 2005 season before losing to Ohio State. In the games following their vault into the rankings, the Cats are 0-3, losing by a combined score of 118-44. Each time, they fell out of the polls immediately.

In the week leading up to the Michigan State game, the Cats insisted rankings and national attention meant nothing to them and would have no effect on their performance against the Spartans. After the game, the NU players denied any outside distractions played a role in their defeat.

I’d like to take their word for it, but it’s difficult to find another explanation for why the team came out playing like one of those hopeless squads from the 1980s. Blaming the bye week is a pretty lame excuse.

Whatever the reason is, Fitzgerald and his staff had better find a way to keep it from happening again. The Cats have a shot to win their next three games against Purdue, Indiana and Minnesota. Those victories would propel them back into the top 25 going into their Nov. 8 home contest against Ohio State.

Once again, the buzz around NU would be growing, and the team would have another shot to capitalize on that buzz by beating a ranked opponent. That is, unless the Cats come out flat again and trip over their own spotlight-induced shadows.

a-simon@u.northwestern.edu

Tags: Andrew Simon column, Brendan Smith, C.J. Bacher, Michigan State, Northwestern, Pat Fitzgerald, Sherrick McManis