A Sudden Abundance Of Big Lines In The Big Ten

"I guess they're scoring less because of the tougher defenses," says Parseghian. "But the season's only half over. I think you'll see some scoring."

Northwestern is now, at a very early date, almost out of the championship race after being the favorite. While most Big Ten people believe that Northwestern will never win a championship because it cannot recruit enough of the quality interior linemen it needs to last through the rugged season, Parseghian refuses to agree. "I've seen some good line play for us this year," he said. "Certainly if we had Cvercko, people would see a great one. But we have two or three players who have a chance to be real good. Kids like Cerne, Szczecko and Mike Schwager. We've been close to a championship two or three times, but have lost out late in the season. Because injuries have hurt us, we got hit early. In the past five years it was our schedule that got us. For example, in that time, the first six teams we've played each year have won 48% of their games, and the last three have won 68%."

Doc Urich, Northwestern's end coach, probably put it better than anyone else when he said, "About the best we can hope for is that every three or four years we can get a group that can make a good run, like some of those others do all of the time. And then we'll need luck."

So far, Northwestern seems to have had everything but luck. Last week in a conference where the big, powerful linemen make the difference, Northwestern's best were limping on the sideline.