SPORTING NUZ; Chicago-style: Who's bigger – Bears, or Wildcats?

I’m not much of a football fan. Yet even I can appreciate just how unique this season is for those of us Chicago-area people who take to the gridiron.

Maybe we could have a fantasy championship at Wrigley between the Bears and the Wildcats?

The Chicago Bears don’t actually suck, for a change. They’re in first place in their division, and it would take a collapse of historic proportions for them to fail to at least make it to the playoffs.

WE’RE GOING TO have people in coming weeks getting all worked up at the thought of a Super Bowl involving a Chicago team. The delusional thoughts will run rampant. They’re not going to dump the ’85 Bears (whose coach, Mike Ditka, these days is recovering from a heart attack) in Chicago’s sporting mentality. But they’ll come close.

Yet let’s be honest. They might turn out to be the second-most interesting local football tale of the year.

For we have the Wildcats of Northwestern University playing absurdly well. They are the top team in the Big Ten’s western division.

And after seeing Ohio State whomp all over Michigan, there will be those eager to see if Northwestern can actually win the conference – which would most definitely put them in line for a significant bowl game.

Wildcats to get better bowl venue than Yankee Stadium

CERTAINLY SOMETHING MORE prominent than the Pinstripe Bowl, to be played Dec. 27 at Yankee Stadium. Can the Wildcats actually manage to steal the thunder away from Da Bears? It’s possible, since a successful Bears season would be not getting totally humiliated in the playoffs, Whereas the Wildcats could actually wind up winning a bowl game.

Even though I’m sure the SEC-types who want to think the world doesn’t extend beyond Dixie will want to believe Alabama is the supreme football power – regardless of how anyone else actually plays.

Although it occurs to me there’s one way that this season tops the ’85 Bears – what if the Wildcats were to win a major bowl game, while the Bears also got into their third Super Bowl appearance ever. More likely than not, it won’t happen – but it’s something for some of us to fantasize about.

What else is notable on our city’s sporting scene these days?

Remembering their '05 victories?

HALL OF FAME FANTASIES: We’re at that time of year where the Baseball Hall of Fame is contemplating which former ballplayers deserve to be inducted amongst its newest members come 2019.

Two of the players getting their first – and most likely only – chance at induction are former Chicago White Sox pitchers Jon Garland and Freddy Garcia. Both of whom were a part of that outstanding starting rotation that enabled the Sox to win a World Series back in 2005.

The ’05 Sox technically already have one of their members in the Hall of Fame in the form of Frank Thomas (the slugger turned Nugenix pitchman), although Thomas actually spent most of that season injured and didn’t play a single game in the World Series.

Or have many forgotten by now?

Personally, I thought it an intriguing sporting happening when, in the final round of the American League playoffs that year, the White Sox beat the Los Angeles Angels – with the four Sox victories being complete game victories and Garland and Garcia ringing up two of them. They’ll most likely have to settle for the memories, rather than a bronze plaque in Cooperstown, N.Y.

MOST MEMORABLE?: Of course, one of the reasons that the two pitchers won’t get their moment of immortality is because of the way some people are determined to think that the Chicago Cubs championship of 2016 is all so significant.

Is this really Illinois history?

I couldn’t help but wretch at the thought of the recently-released results of a survey about Illinois history – asking people to pick the most-significant moments in our state’s 200-year history.

Perhaps it’s a plus that Moment No. 1 was Abraham Lincoln’s funeral proceedings – including the funeral train that took Honest Abe’s body from Washington to Springfield, Ill., while stopping in Chicago and passing through northern Illinois.

But the Cubs’ World Series title ranked No. 2 – as in we have people deluded enough to think that nothing else that has happened in the state other than the moment when the Cubs crushed the hopes of Cleveland Indians fans, who came oh so close to winning their own “first World Series” in 70-something years if only they could have held a lead in the final game.

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EXTRA: What would Dawn Clark Netsch think of Illinois’ current debt?!?

We’ve reached a truly sad and pathetic stage in our state’s financial condition – the Illinois comptroller’s office had our accumulation of unpaid bills totaling $12,808,805,651 as of Wednesday.
 

MENDOZA: Ill. w/ debt?

That’s a lot of debt to have built up because of the inability to pay certain bills because we are going on nearly two full fiscal years of state activity without a balanced budget in place.

CONSIDERING THAT THE current Illinois population estimate by the Census Bureau is 12,801,539, it literally translates into just over $1,000 in unpaid bills for each and every resident of the Land of Lincoln.

This figure continues to increase the longer we go without a budget deal in place, yet we don’t seem to be getting any closer to having our government officials realize their short-term political brawls will have long-term consequences.

Because it’s not like the instant we do approve a budget, the problem is suddenly solved. It will take years for us to catch up on the unpaid bills. That is, unless Illinois is becoming the equivalent of a deadbeat who merely quits answering his phone calls so as to avoid the debt collectors.

Not exactly the most flattering image we can have of our home state.

THE REASON WE have these figures is because Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza is going out of her way to publicize them. She doesn’t mind if she winds up making Gov. Bruce Rauner look bad – what with the way he and his allies are always going out of their way to ding Mendoza as being some sort of tool for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

NETSCH: Creating an educational experience?

Her approach fits in with the hostile mood that exists at the Statehouse these days, which is certainly different than the days of a couple of decades ago when I was a reporter-type person there.

I remember how then-Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch used to like to hold monthly press conferences to provide a briefing of the state’s financial situation. Of course, there were times she had all the personality of a dreary, dull constitutional law professor.

She also had a quirky enough sense of humor that when she found out that was how she was perceived, she went with it. We reporter-types became her “class,” and she was going to school us on the details of government finance.

IT MAKES ME wonder how much more feisty Mendoza could be if she tried to take that approach. Would this be the kind of class where the governor winds up sitting in the corner having to wear a dunce cap?

Or would it be the type where the “professor” is eager to be the fun type? Such as Mendoza making it publicly known who she thinks will win the NCAA basketball tourney (North Carolina beats Arizona, she says).

Netsch may have had that one campaign commercial where she shot pool (to show she was a “straight shooter”), but she wasn’t the type to enjoy such frivolity.

And seeing she was a Northwestern alum (and later a faculty member), I doubt she would have been like Mendoza in predicting that the Northwestern Wildcats will see their run come to an end Saturday against the Gonzaga Bulldogs, which means that actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus (a Northwestern alum who has gotten more than her share of public attention for going to basketball games this season) will soon be out of the spotlight.

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Will Northwestern gridders feel fortunate they’re being allowed to play football? Or will they look out for self?

Members of the Northwestern Wildcats football program got their chance to vote on whether they can organize themselves as a union, but we’re not going to know the results for quite a while – if ever.

Ryan Stadium? Or a union shop?

I suspect if the university gets its way, we’ll never get a vote tally from the National Labor Relations Board. Just as they enforced the concept that the Evanston-based campus is private property, and they restricted who could be at the Welsh-Ryan Arena – where the voting took place.

SUPPOSEDLY, IT’S THE players who wanted this sense of privacy on Friday. Although I suspect most of them don’t really care either way, and it’s the university that doesn’t want the site of players talking to reporters about how much they’d like the additional protections that come about from unionization and collective bargaining.

The closest I ever came to being in this situation was a few months after I graduated from college, and I was writing for a suburban newspaper that was going through the process of trying to establish ourselves as a chapter of the Newspaper Guild.

We got as far as an election, and yes, I voted “yes” for union. But a slight majority of my colleagues voted “no,” and the union effort failed.

I’m sure the football players in recent weeks have been getting bombarded with information from both sides, trying to influence the young men of now how they want the football program to be in decades to come.

WHAT I RECALL of my own “union” experience is that I had to go through a summer and autumn of information bombardment before our election came about! Being told by one side how valued my talents were, and by the other how incredibly replaceable I was.

It was an intense-enough experience that I have no interest in going through that process anywhere else. Which I’m sure the Northwestern players will feel following Friday’s vote.

In listening to the rhetoric that has been spewed in recent weeks about the Northwestern situation, I can’t help but notice its similarity to my own memories. Some people want to emphasize how talented these particular athletes are, while others – particularly those who like to devote their lives to athletics – want to believe that people ought to be thankful to live in that world.

And if there happens to be circumstances involving injury that prevents them from playing any longer, perhaps it’s their own fault for getting injured. Some people (and not just in athletics) seem to be inclined to look the other way and ignore the problems that exist.

PERSONALLY, I’M INCLINED to think that the concerns of players about what becomes of them if they suffer a disabling injury is a legitimate one. Universities make enough money off their athletic programs that they ought to have some concern for the physical state of their players.

For as much as the big-time college athletic programs demand of their players with regards to time commitment for practice and promotion, it is difficult – if not impossible – for many of them to be serious students. Even if they were inclined to be!

Universities ought to be taking their students’ personal welfare more seriously. If anything, THAT is what I would hope would be the outcome of this labor situation.

Let the colleges improve conditions for their players to the point where those student-athletes would literally feel like they’re students just like everybody else on campus. And that the idea of needing a labor union to represent their interests would seem to them to be a tad bit of overkill.

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EXTRA: Could ruling turn college gridders into student-athletes for real?

I was surprised to learn Wednesday of the National Labor Relations Board ruling that found the current and former football players at Northwestern University weren’t completely delusional in their view that they amounted to university employees who ought to have the chance to organize as a union.

Referring to college sports teams as "football factories" could take on new meaning for the players.

I thought for sure that the status quo would prevail, and that the universities that have major athletic programs (and even many who don’t) would be allowed to pretend that they use “student athletes” to wear their colors when they play sports for the glory of alma mater.

BUT THE LABOR board issued a ruling, that the university is determined to appeal, that ordered an election for the 85 students now on scholarship as part of the Wildcats’ football program.

I don’t believe the athletes playing for college sports teams ought to be in a position where they could be considered as university employees. But the reality is that probably does best describe how they are viewed, and used, by the colleges they attend/work for.

I would gladly hail Wednesday’s ruling as a plus if it meant that universities were to restudy the role of their athletic departments, and if it meant that the way the ballplayers on college teams were treated were to be something more along the line of students who happen to participate in a campus activity.

Instead of the current role for students in the major sports programs such as basketball or football, where some people who wouldn’t even give a thought to attending college go for a year or two because the NCAA programs have essentially become the equivalent of minor leagues for the National Football League or the National Basketball Association.

EVEN IN BASEBALL, the number of professional ballplayers who attended a college is on the rise. But the number who go to play ball in a competitive atmosphere before signing on to play in the minor leagues is also overwhelming.

It makes me wonder how many of them will have any glory moments of college ball, or are just viewing it as part of the preparation for a long-shot career in professional sports.

Which if they make it is one thing. But if they don’t, then it leaves people in a position where they’ll wish they could have got the education they were supposedly getting while they were wearing the university colors.

I do believe that many universities would alter their policies in terms of athlete treatment and restore them back to something respecting the “student” part of the equation, if it meant they could avoid having to recognize the idea of collegiate student labor unions.

SO WHAT BECOMES of the Northwestern U. gridiron crew? I suspect this case will take so many years to work its way through the courts that none of the current players will be around, should the labor board’s ruling ultimately be upheld.

But perhaps there’s someone about 9 or 10 right now who doesn’t quite develop into a top player worthy of an SEC or Pac 10 school – or Michigan or Ohio State, either.

But as a result, he may get a bit more responsible treatment while taking the field at the former Dyche Stadium. And perhaps even some of those higher-skilled athletes also will gain some respect from their universities/employers as well.

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Bring back the Maroons! It makes more sense than having SIU in Big Ten

Every year in the Illinois General Assembly manages to bring about a bill or two that gets a lot of attention just because the idea being espoused is so knuckleheaded and absurd that we know it’s going nowhere.

Not a ringing endorsement for Ill. flagship

This year, it seems the nonsense bill in question is one based upon the idea that Illinois needs to improve its educational opportunities for students by getting another of its public universities into the Big Ten.

AS IF WE don’t suffer enough by seeing Fighting Illini and Wildcats sports teams get their behinds kicked by Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana, state representatives Michael Connelly, R-Lisle, and Matt Murphy, R-Palatine, somehow think that having the Illinois State Redbirds or the Cougars of Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in the mix will bolster things.

This is just ridiculous on so many levels. But let’s take the key point that Connelly made in talking to the Chicago Sun-Times about this issue. “”Big Ten,’ to me, means a top state school. There’s a lot of pride in that. The Big Ten has a cachet and a record of higher academic and athletic excellence.”

Now I’m not looking to go on a diatribe against the University of Illinois. I have known many people (including my brother, Chris) who were educated there. It’s a fine place. But that statement from Connelly is just a bunch of hooey!

The reason some people choose to attend universities elsewhere is because they have achieved such standards and reputations that those top students want to challenge themselves (either that, or they have “legacy” connections that get them in).



MURPHY: Placing too much faith...

WE ALL KNOW it’s not 100 percent accurate to recall Tom Cruise’s “Joel” character from “Risky Business” and his reaction to learning he probably wasn’t going to be accepted to Princeton. But the Urbana-Champaign campus doesn’t really get bonus points academically because it’s in the Big Ten conference.

And the Big Ten sure doesn’t get much respect athletically when compared to the other major conferences that comprise the world of NCAA Division I sports.

Somehow, I suspect some alum of an SEC school is laughing his behind off at the thought of the Big Ten being elite. Then again, some of those alums may not be literate enough to read this commentary, so who knows how they will react. And as for the Ivy League types, their snootiness lets me easily disregard them.



CONNELLY: ... in Big Ten label?

I just think that some people are equating an athletic conference with way too much significance. And in the case of the Big Ten, it doesn’t help that their latest expansion efforts have been to get into the big media markets. That is, if you think of Rutgers as New York-area and Maryland as Washington, D.C.

THE ONLY WAY I could see the Big Ten wanting a third Illinois-based academic institution is if it would put them in Chicago proper (Northwestern University is, after all, based in suburban Evanston). I just can’t see them caring about Normal, Ill., or suburban St. Louis (as in Edwardsville). And don’t even bring up the main campus in Carbondale – a place so isolated physically it makes Champaign seem cosmopolitan.

Besides, what does any of this have to do with academics? Connelly and Murphy say their concern is that University of Illinois standards have become too high and many students get rejected.

How about working on ways to bolster the level of the other state-funded public universities? Which has nothing to do with the Big Ten label.

There’s also the fact that Connelly and Murphy think that students rejected by Illinois are going to other states, and not coming back. Yet how often do we hear about University of Michigan (or other Midwestern university) alumni who beehive it straight for Chicago once they graduate?

SO WHAT COULD this all mean? Probably nothing. The bill that already has made it through a state Senate committee calls for a commission to spend a year studying the issue – if it even gets approved. Nobody is bound to do anything.

Which means we’re not likely to ever see anything actually happen with this. Not even a return of the one Chicago university that actually has a Big Ten history.

The Stagg Field of old (and its Big Ten memories) are long gone from Hyde Park neighborhood campus. Illustration provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia.

Restore the Chicago Maroons to the athletic conference for the first time since the late 1930s? I doubt it, largely because university officials themselves would see the Big Ten as a hindrance to their academic mission!

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From one gridiron extreme to the other

It amuses me the degree to which some people get all worked up into a frazzle whenever the subject of Notre Dame football is discussed.

How long has it been since "Touchdown Jesus" didn't feel like weeping instead?

While I’ll be the first to admit that some Notre Dame fans can be insufferable (I find the film “Rudy” to be unwatchable), the level to which some people go to express their outright hatred of the Fighting Irish is just downright stupid.

IT IS WITH that latter group in mind that I must confess to being pleased to learn that Notre Dame managed to defeat the University of Southern California Saturday night – and that it would take some serious mathematical juggling worthy of a corrupt Election Day vote counter to deny Notre Dame a spot in the Bowl Championship Series top game.

As for those people who’d really rather think that a legitimate championship should consist of two Southern schools (specifically from the Southeast Conference), to them I can only get in the holiday season and say, “Bah Humbug!”

I don’t know if I really consider the Chicago metro area to stretch as far east as South Bend, Ind. (the way some area sports fans do). But it will be intriguing to have something resembling a local angle come the early January date when Notre Dame takes on the best of Dixieland in an attempt to say which was the best college football team for 2012.

If it winds up being seen as a loogie spit in the face of certain pundits, I’ll root for a Fighting Irish victory on that date.

AND BY PUNDITS, I’m thinking of one New York-based clown I saw talking last week on television about what he regarded as stupid expansion by the Big Ten.

The conference that once was all about our Midwest and the Great Lakes states is now in the New York media market in the form of Rutgers University (it’s “New York” in the same sense that Notre Dame is  “Chicago”).

This pundit (whom I’m going to allow to be nameless largely because I didn’t bother to catch his name, and he was so uninteresting that I figure he’s not worth too much of my time) claimed that New Yorkers are “so sophisticated” that they will only pay attention to the “best game,” and there’s no way the Big Ten will ever produce such a game.

You can argue all you want about the quality of play of Big Ten football these days. All I can say is that perhaps he paid too much attention to the University of Illinois – which on Saturday finished of this dismal season without winning a single in-conference game and having an overall record that makes the Chicago Cubs look successful.

THAT WAS QUITE a walloping the Fighting Illini got from “Chicago’s Big Ten Team.” Although I think the fact that Illini fans would have considered a victory over Northwestern University to be a season salvation is kind of sad.

Is there really any difference between 1-7 and 0-8?

Besides, I can’t quite help but think the slogan is a bunch of bunk. My own observation is that many Northwestern students come to Evanston from out-of-town (out-of-state or out-of-country, more likely) and leave here once they graduate.

Attending a suburban-based university is their “Chicago” experience in life – similar to how I did a semester at American University in Washington and say I once lived, however briefly, in the nation’s capital.

I SENSE MORE Chicago spirit for Illinois, where I have known many area residents who made their “downstate” sojourn for a few years before returning home to have their adult lives.

But even then, the most intense fans of Fighting Illini football are the ones who live in those downstate Illinois communities where it is easier to drive to Champaign to see a game rather than make the trips north or south to see the Bears or Rams, respectively.

Admit it. You looked too!



Which is why I sense that for the bulk of Chicago sports fans, there was probably more interest in Notre Dame’s Saturday victory than in anything that happened at building once known as Dyche Stadium.

And as for me? My attention was more focused on the sidelines for whatever glimpses I could gain from the famed USC Song Girls.

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Did sex class delay death penalty action?

It amazes me the way some people are determined to take irrelevant, and often trivial, actions and turn them into a controversy that taints everything by association.

The most recent example of this is the fact that Gov. Pat Quinn may have gone so far as to delay taking action on the bill that would do away with the death penalty in Illinois, cutting off any act last week and making us wait even longer for his decision (which could wind up being the most significant act he takes as governor).

THE SPECULATION HAS always been that Quinn is leaning toward signing the bill into law, and would somehow use Northwestern University and its Center on Wrongful Convictions as the setting for such a bill-signing ceremony.

That center is the organization that did much work toward promoting the reality that Illinois’ capital crimes statute is flawed in its execution – perhaps meaning that the statute itself is what needs to be executed.

The university also was the scene when Gov. George Ryan back in January 2003 went so far as to impose the moratorium that still prevents executions from taking place, while also commuting all the existing death sentences to prison terms of life without parole.

But in the past week, Northwestern University has received its share of ugly publicity. Not that the Center on Wrongful Convictions was involved in this. But a psychology professor on campus used a live sex act demonstration as part of an impromptu part of his class lecture on deviant sexual practices.

THE IMAGE BEING created by the critics, particularly those of the conservative ideological persuasion, is of innocent, young students being subjected to real-live porn. Seedy sex shows at the wish-it-was-an-Ivy League campus on the North Shore.

Of course, the fact that this course was entitled “Human Sexuality” and was an advanced level course means that none of the 100 or so students whose tuition payments entitle them to sit in on the course should have been shocked or offended by the material. If they were, my only reaction is to ask them, “What did you think you’d be studying?”

QUINN: What would he know about sex?

But after listening to speculation that the bill-signing ceremonies and rituals by which Quinn tries to make the death penalty bill a significant moment in Illinois history were going to take place on the Evanston-based college campus, we made it through last week without any action taking place.

Did Pat Quinn refuse to sign the bill into law at Northwestern because he was afraid he would get ambushed with questions about sexual practices? Would our state’s governor have a clue how to answer those questions? Are there people who are shallow enough to really think that such questions would, in any way, be relevant to an act related to the death penalty?

I’D LIKE TO think that people have enough intelligence to realize that one issue has nothing to do with the other, and that the people who do insist on trying to bring sex up in conjunction with capital punishment would be seen as the ideological nit-wits that they are. Or are we going to start asking Northwestern Wildcats athletics coaches sex questions every time a ballplayer blows a play?

Then again, maybe I’m giving the people credit for more intelligence than they deserve. For I have seen many political campaigns throughout the years end with certain individuals tainted with trash rhetoric that borders on the ridiculous.

And before you try to claim I’m saying that candidates of a more liberal ideological persuasion are being picked on, what I’m saying is that I don’t think state Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, is anywhere near as much of an ideologue as his opposition claimed. It’s just that his downstate orientation put him out of touch with the way that the two-thirds of Illinoisans who live in the Chicago area perceive things.

Which may well include the death penalty, since Brady was the candidate in last year’s gubernatorial election cycle who campaigned on the idea that he would do away with the execution moratorium and restore the process of actually executing people – something that hasn’t happened in 12 years.

SO NOW, WE have to figure out what Quinn WILL do with the state’s capital crimes statute.

Is he going to search for an alternate site to stage an event (as though joining our Midwestern brethren in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin in doing away with death as a criminal punishment wouldn’t be major without staging)?

Or are we literally going to get just a brief statement released in the name of the governor informing us that the bill in question has been signed into law? Or vetoed? Who’s to say?

Either way, we’re running out of time. State law puts a time limit on when the governor must act – and that deadline is coming up next week Friday.

SO SOME TIME soon, Quinn is either going to seriously please or grossly offend the bulk of the people who picked him over Brady last year to be Illinois governor. As for those who didn’t vote for him, they’re going to remain miffed EVEN if he does what they’d like on this issue.

Then after the debate is complete on that issue, we can shift gears and argue about whether a man using a machine-powered phallic device to penetrate a nude woman is an appropriate part of a classroom discussion.

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EXTRA: A three-way tie!?!

It must have been ugly in the early hour of Friday (also the beginning of a new decade in Chicago), as hospital officials eager to give their facilities a plug were hastily making calls to reporter-types to claim that they had helped to give birth to the first new Chicagoan of 2010.

The reports now turning up on the Internet seem to be proclaiming a three-way tie for Stroger and Northwestern Memorial hospitals, along with St. Joseph Hospital.

AS IT TURNS out, the latter hospital located in the Lakeview neighborhood was the only one willing to identify the new parents, so it’s their kid who will get the fleeting seconds of attention. So welcome to the world, Miya Tanni.

It never fails to amaze me the degree to which hospital officials take this baby “designation” so seriously. It’s not like there are serious cash and prizes on hand for the parents of the (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/01/cutesy-first-baby-stories-become-ugly.html) first newborn.

And I’m sure there will be little difference between baby Miya born at 12:00:10 a.m. and the kid who was born two minutes earlier.

But then again, it’s New Year’s Day, and there isn’t much other activity passing for “news” that can be reported. Learning that a baby boy was born 30 seconds after midnight at Northwestern Memorial Hospital is more pleasant to learn than to focus on the fact that Northwestern University’s football team got beat (http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/01/northwestern-outback-bowl-auburn.html) in overtime playing Auburn University in the Outback Bowl - or those Polar Bear types hanging out at North Avenue beach.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: For those who need to know, the “first baby” details were reported promptly by the websites (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/infants-battle-for-first-2010-baby-title.html) of our city’s (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1969080,first-births-of-2010-chicago-010110.article) dueling newspapers.

Don't they realize that Daley-speak could give them one of the most unusual commencement speech experiences ever?

I have always thought of Northwestern University types as a batch of whiny fools from out-of-town whom we Chicagoans are forced to endure in our midst. Now, I have the bit of evidence that proves my point.

It seems the students of the school in suburban Evanston (who like to think they attend college in the nitty-gritty, urban atmosphere of Chicago) are upset that their graduation ceremony on June 20 will have the ultimate face of Chicago present – Hizzoner Jr.

RICHARD M. DALEY will give the commencement address, and will be the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree. His presence is meant to provide the 2008 graduation events with its unique touch.

Northwestern University officials actually thought their announcement would garner some positive press, since Daley is not the type who needs to feed his ego by seeking out commencement speeches (unlike someone like television personality Tavis Smiley, who is doing at least four graduation speeches this spring).

But all they got were complaints from students who feel that Daley is not worthy of their time.

One student who posted a message on the website of the Daily Northwestern student newspaper went so far as to say that Daley does not deserve to speak to them because he only attended DePaul University – which makes him not that bright. Another student sent his complaints by e-mail to university President Henry Beinen, who shot back a response that the student should “grow up.”

I HAVE TO agree.

It dismays me that a new group of students is going into the world who did their college time so close to Chicago, yet seem to have no comprehension of just what it was they experienced while living here.

Daley is a national figure, both because of his family’s political legacy (his father and brothers) and because of the size of his home city (just under 3 million people, and the focus of more than 8-million person metropolitan area).

Daley has responsibilities that would extend beyond those of governors of small and mid-sized states. In fact, some people would argue that the reason Democratic politics in Illinois is in such disarray these days is because our governor doesn’t like the fact that Daley is more powerful than he is.

DALEY FALLS INTO the same category of politicos as the nationally known mayors of New York and Los Angeles.

Yet I don’t hear the student bodies of the University of Pennsylvania (where New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is giving the commencement speech this year) or Occidental College (where Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will speak) claiming their educational experiences will be sullied because all they got was a mayor.

Now some of the students said that, if they had to get a political person, they would have preferred someone of the stature of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. That is just a case of students being clueless about the realities of politics.

Obama’s career advanced beyond the realm of representing Hyde Park in the Illinois Legislature because he made his ties to the political power of Daley and the Democratic organization in Chicago. In the world of politics, Daley is bigger than Obama until the day Obama takes the oath of office as president.

THEN, DALEY’S REPUTATION will grow even further nationally because he will be able to claim he “made” Obama into a nationally worthy figure.

Even if it’s not really true, it will be what people across the country will want to believe, particularly those who want to smear Obama with Daley because they believe the mayor represents everything that is wrong with politics in the United States.

There’s also the fact that Obama doesn’t appear to be doing any commencement speeches this year (running against John McCain is keeping him busy). But he has done four such speeches since becoming a U.S. senator, including the Northwestern address of 2006.

These Northwestern geeks apparently view Obama as their personal motivational speaker. It’s a good thing that Northwestern looked to someone else.

NOW I WILL be the first to admit that the thought of Daley giving a speech makes me chuckle a bit. He is far from a classic public speaker. There will be those who will giggle at the way he exits a sentence from a different grammatical universe than he entered it.

But his blunt-spoken earthiness can be reassuring. It tends to make you think this man is speaking the truth – even when he’s engaging in political double-talk. It is a significant part of the man’s appeal to Chicago voters during the past two decades.

What I’m saying is that the man who once told a gathering of reporters that, “you’d want to know if there’s a rat in your sandwich” when asked about citywide crackdowns on unsanitary restaurants is likely to come up with a good line or two – something that will be remembered.

It’s bound to be more memorable than the other local politico who gave a commencement speech – Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan spoke to the graduates of Chicago-Kent College of Law.

IF ANYTHING, WHAT a student should want from their commencement speaker is a quotable line that will help break up what otherwise is a dreadful routine of pomp and ceremony. Somebody with the potential to be funny is better than someone deadly serious.

I should know.

I still remember by own graduation from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1987. After four years of academia, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton gave me his advice. He chose to speak on the subject of “Our Nuclear Age – a Time of Hope.”

Was it awful! He spoke in a monotone and, to this day, I cannot remember a single line of what he said. In fact, my only real memories were looking over at my family and seeing my grandmother literally asleep, and my stepmother’s father spending the rest of the day ragging on me for making him have to sit through such a dreadful speaker.

DALEY IS NOT the classic orator. But he will give the Northwestern kids a memory they won’t forget, even if they still have a buzz going from the wild partying they did the night before commencement.

Besides, it could be worse. The university could have followed the lead of many colleges in picking out an alumnus who has “made good.” Northwestern could have sought a local politico by picking Blagojevich to speak (he received his bachelor’s degree from there in 1979).

His nasally tone and lack of anything significant to say would be dreadful to sit through, as I’m sure the graduating students at the University of Tampa (where Blagojevich also attended for a couple of years) who endured his commencement speech on May 10 would testify to.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Northwestern U. types are miffed they didn’t get a Hollywood celebrity to speak at their graduation (http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/news/2008/05/28/Campus/Chicago.Mayor.Richard.Daley.To.Speak.At.Commencement-3375913.shtml?reffeature=recentlycommentedstoriestab). Perhaps they’d prefer the Law School’s commencement speaker?

The Dalai Lama (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-daley-northwesternmay29,0,1022702.story) would have been a catch.

So who is speaking at which college for the honor and glory of receiving (http://chronicle.com/free/speakers/?handler=search&Last_Name=&Institution=&State=&order=&year=2008) an honorary degree?

I realize he was academically distinguished, but Robert Jay Lifton managed to leave a (http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Lifton/lifton-con0.html) number of students under-whelmed when he gave a commencement address in 1987.