Back at the start of the decade in 2020, the InsideNU community came together to rank the program’s greatest teams. With a new era proclaimed, a $35 million donation and a stadium near completion, along with the still 24 days until the 2026 season, we figure there is no better time than now to do it again.
This is part three of a three-part series, with four teams in each batch. Each article will have general write-ups for the teams involved to help aid your decisions, and the results of each poll
across our social media pages will determine the seeding for our final bracket.
We began with the teams that predate even the NU Lakefill in 1903, 1930, 1931 and 1936.
Then, we looked at squads defined by their bowl breakthroughs, rather than simply their dominance: 1948, 1995, 1996 and 2012.
We finish with the modern entries, including one season after the original version of this series was posted: 2000, 2017, 2018 and 2020
These are the modern Wildcats, those who made watching NU football truly exciting, the latter of which made Big Ten West a real thing and turned bowl games from a punchline into an expectation. Vote accordingly.
2000: The Spread Arrives
Record: 8-4 (6-2 Big Ten) | Big Ten co-champion (with Michigan and Purdue)
Final Rankings: NR (AP) / NR (Coaches) | Head Coach: Randy Walker
Following a forgettable 3-8 (1-7) finish the year prior, Northwestern was picked to finish dead last in the Big Ten in the 2000 preseason media poll, which wasn’t really all that surprising. What was though? Randy Walker’s second crack at it decisively delivered the program’s third conference title in six years, an 8-4 finish that included a share of the Big Ten crown with Michigan and Purdue. Unfortunately, there was no trip to Pasadena this time around as the conference’s tiebreakers sent Michigan to the Rose Bowl instead, leaving Northwestern with an Alamo Bowl bid against Nebraska. More on that later, and it’s probably not important anyway.
Offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson installed a new no-huddle, run-first spread attack and the results were immediate, as unranked Northwestern would open conference play by stunning Camp Randall with a statement double-overtime, shootout win at No. 7 Wisconsin. The team averaged 38.5 points a game throughout the season, the ninth-best mark in the country, unheard-of status for a Wildcats offense.
No single player embodied the transformation more than senior running back Damien Anderson. He ran for 2,063 yards on the season, becoming just the fourth player in Big Ten history to clear 2,000 yards rushing, and finished second nationally behind LaDainian Tomlinson. His conference mark of 1,549 rushing yards in Big Ten games alone still stands as a league record. Anderson finished fifth in Heisman voting, was a consensus All-American and closed his career as the program’s all-time leading rusher with 4,485 yards, a total that still ranks among the top 20 in Big Ten history.
The season, of course, is remembered for one night above everything else. On Nov. 4, 2000, on national television, Northwestern hosted No. 12 Michigan at Ryan Field and won 54-51 in what’s still called one of the wildest games in the sport’s history. The two teams combined for 1,189 total yards and 105 points, both school records for a single game at the time. Anthony Thomas ran for 199 yards and three scores for Michigan, but he also coughed up a fumble that set up junior receiver Sam Simmons’ game-winning 11-yard touchdown catch with 20 seconds left. ‘Cats quarterback Zak Kustok threw for 322 yards and two scores and ran for two more, and thousands of fans stormed the field afterward.
The Michigan extravaganza is widely credited as one of, if not THE, standout games that put the spread offense on the sport’s radar nationally, years before it became the default across college football. It wasn’t just a signature win. It was a proof of concept that a program with Northwestern’s admissions standards and facilities could outscheme bigger, more talented rosters.
Two weeks later, Northwestern clinched its share of the title in commanding fashion. The Wildcats hung 61 points on rival Illinois in a 61-23 win at Ryan Field, with Anderson and the spread offense running the Illini off their own field in front of more than 40,000 fans. It remains one of the most lopsided *positive* results in the history of a rivalry that dates back to 1892.
That brings us to the other lopsided score of the year. Northwestern closed the season ranked No. 18 in the country and headed to the Alamo Bowl to face Nebraska, only to get run off the field in the opposite direction, losing 66-17 in what was, at the time, an NCAA bowl record for points scored by one team. Anderson broke off a 69-yard touchdown run that capped off an amazing individual season, but Northwestern dropped out of the final AP poll entirely as a result of its otherwise abysmal performance. So, when you’re building your bracket ballot, may we humbly suggest remembering the 61-23 beatdown of Illinois that clinched a share of the Big Ten title as the final game of the season, and not the 66-17 beatdown Nebraska put on the Wildcats three weeks later. One of those is a signature win. The other just happened to also be 40-something points.
Walker would coach seven seasons in Evanston before his sudden death from a heart attack in the summer of 2006. The 2000 title remains the only Big Ten championship of his tenure, and it still stands as the program’s most recent overall conference crown.
Big happening: A 54-51 track meet against Michigan didn’t just deliver the signature win of Randy Walker’s career, arguably the greatest single win in school history, but it also announced the spread offense to a sport that now uses the concept practically all the time.
2017: Ten Wins the Hard Way
Record: 10-3 (7-2 Big Ten) | West Division Runner-Up, Music City Bowl Champion
Final Rankings: No. 17 (AP) / No. 17 (Coaches) | Head Coach: Pat Fitzgerald
Northwestern opened 2017 at 2-3 and looked like a team potentially destined for a middling bowl at best. The Wildcats dropped two games away at Duke and No. 10 Wisconsin, then followed that up by getting smoked 31-7 on homecoming against No. 4 Penn State.
Then everything turned. Northwestern won eight straight games to close the year, including a three-game stretch in which the Wildcats won in overtime (Iowa), triple overtime (No. 16 Michigan State), and overtime again (at Nebraska). This was the program’s longest winning streak since the 1995 Rose Bowl season, and Northwestern capped it with a 24-23 win over Kentucky in the Music City Bowl that made Fitzgerald the first coach in school history to string together consecutive bowl victories, following the 2016 Pinstripe Bowl title over Pitt.
Senior running back Justin Jackson closed out his career in style, carrying 32 times for 157 yards and two touchdowns in Nashville to finish as the program’s all-time leading rusher. His 5,440 career rushing yards place him third on the overall Big Ten leaderboard, behind Badger greats Ron Dayne and Jonathan Taylor.
He certainly needed every bit of those yards, because at the end of a 23-yard gain on a trick play, field general Clayton Thorson went down with a severe leg injury in the second quarter. It was a gut punch to an offense that had leaned on him all season, and could very well have interrupted the ‘Cats’ momentum after he was carted off the field in excruciating pain. Jackson answered by scoring on the very next snap to take a 10-7 lead.
After holding steady for a long time, the defense delivered the decisive blow late in the fourth quarter. Senior safety Kyle Queiro, perhaps best known for his remarkable one-handed interception against Indiana the year before, picked off a pass and returned it 26 yards for a touchdown to put Northwestern up 24-14. Kentucky clawed back within one point with fewer than two minutes remaining, but a failed two-point try sealed the win for good.
It was the program’s fifth 10-win season and third under Fitzgerald, finishing second in the West behind Wisconsin. The bowl trophy also carried some extra weight given the chaos that surrounded it, from a controversial player ejection to Thorson’s injury, a fitting bit of adversity for a program that had built its whole modern identity around grinding out wins nobody expected.
Big happening: Win after win after win propelled Northwestern from a poor start to the season to a bowl berth and eventual triumph in Nashville, in a season remembered for the team’s resilience and Justin Jackson’s ability to not be denied.
2018: Back-to-Back-to-Back
Record: 9-5 (8-1 Big Ten) | Big Ten West Division Champion, Holiday Bowl Champion
Final Rankings: No. 21 (AP) / No. 19 (Coaches) | Head Coach: Pat Fitzgerald
No team on this list looked less like a champion four games into its season.
After opening the season with an August win at Purdue, Northwestern dropped its next three games, all at home. The Wildcats lost to Duke for a second straight season, fell to the MAC-tion that was Akron (which would then lose eight of its next 10 games) and suffered a comeback loss to No. 14 Michigan. By early October, the Wildcats were sitting outside any reasonable conversation about a division race (although of course, that is why you can’t make determinations like that so early in a season).
Northwestern won its final seven Big Ten games, just as it had in 2017. The Wildcats upset a ranked Michigan State team on the road, gained homecoming redemption in overtime against Nebraska and handled a ranked Wisconsin squad by two touchdowns at Ryan Field. This netted them an 8-1 finish in conference play, the program’s best Big Ten mark since 1996.
The division clincher came on the road at Iowa, a 14-10 grind played in below-freezing conditions yet in front of a packed stadium where freshman running back Isaiah Bowser ran for 165 yards, including a 34-yard go-ahead touchdown, and Thorson found Bennett Skowronek for a spectacular 32-yard score in the fourth quarter to seal it.
The win, paired with losses by Wisconsin and Purdue that same afternoon, handed Northwestern its firstBig Ten West title and its first chance to play in a conference championship game. Yes, Ohio State pulled away for a 45-24 win in Indianapolis, but it still marked the first time in program history that a Northwestern team had a chance to win a Big Ten title since the turn of the century, and it came from a team that had trailed Duke and Akron just two months earlier.
The Wildcats still had one more twist left. In the Holiday Bowl against No. 17 Utah, Northwestern trailed 20-3 at halftime in pouring San Diego rain before scoring 28 unanswered points in the third quarter alone, turning three Utah turnovers into 21 points, including Jared McGee’s 82-yard fumble return for a touchdown. Thorson finished his college career as the program’s all-time leading passer and was named the game’s offensive MVP, while sophomore JR Pace took home defensive MVP honors after seven tackles, an interception and a fumble recovery. The 31-20 win made it three straight bowl victories under Fitzgerald, a streak that would have sounded absurd to the fan base watching an infuriating Akron loss in September.
Big happening: Lost to the Zips, got rid of the yips and a grade-A season was apparently amidst.
2020: Gimme Some Oranges
Record: 7-2 (6-1 Big Ten) | Big Ten West Division Champion, Citrus Bowl Champion
Final Rankings: No. 10 (AP) / No. 10 (Coaches) | Head Coach: Pat Fitzgerald
The 2020 season almost didn’t happen at all. The Big Ten suspended fall football on Aug. 11 over COVID-19 concerns before reversing course and starting a conference-only slate in late October.
After a 2019 to forget at the bottom of the West, Northwestern used the compressed schedule, a new starting quarterback in Indiana graduate transfer Peyton Ramsey and first-year offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian to put together its best season in a quarter century. Note that it did all that while navigating pandemic protocols that limited practice time, travel and nearly every other aspect of a normal fall.
The signature regular-season win came at Iowa, where the Wildcats erased a 17-point deficit to steal a road victory and build momentum that carried through wins over Purdue, Wisconsin and Michigan State to close the year. Cornerback Greg Newsome II anchored a defense that allowed just 0.44 yards per coverage snap on him individually, the lowest mark in the following spring’s NFL Draft class, and he led the Big Ten with 10 passes defended. That run delivered Northwestern’s second Big Ten West title in three seasons and a second trip to the conference championship game, where Ohio State again proved to be the roadblock, winning 22-10. Newsome suffered a lower-body injury in that game, declared for the NFL Draft afterward and missed the bowl game entirely. In any future big games for the Wildcats, the hope was that Thorson and Newsome’s injuries were not a trend.
None of that stopped Northwestern from closing the year in style. Facing Auburn in the Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Day at a nearly empty Camping World Stadium, Ramsey threw for a career-high 291 yards and accounted for four total touchdowns in a comfortable 35-19 win. More vindication came from the fact that the Wildcats did so by taking down an SEC team.
It was Northwestern’s fourth bowl win in five seasons under Fitzgerald and pushed the Wildcats to a No. 10 final ranking in both major polls, the program’s first top-10 finish since that 1995 Rose Bowl team from part two of this series. Ramsey, a graduate transfer nobody outside Bloomington had heard of a year earlier, walked away with the bowl’s MVP award and a season nobody saw coming when the whole thing nearly was canceled in August.
Big happening: A pandemic nearly wiped out the season before it started, but Northwestern was able to turn a nine-game sprint into its best finish since 1995, playing a Big Ten Championship Game and a New Year’s Day bowl in front of essentially nobody.
