Ayo!

This, people, is Sippin' On Purple. Yes, Northwestern has fans. I'm one. You might be one. Thanks to our school's comically bad decision in the 1890's or so to join an athletic conference in which every other school was like, big, and uhh, named after a state, and, like, had good sports teams and stuff, people assume there aren't many of us. (Also adding to this assumption: the fact that for 100 years our teams were a gigantic freaking whirlpool of suckitude and the fact that even though we have the smallest football and basketball stadiums in our conference, they're still comically large in proportion to the amount of people that show up. But all this is besides the point.)

But this blog is here to help flip that assumption around. We do, in fact, exist. 

You see, I'd seen some of the other Big Ten blogs on this network. (They're pretty good, you should check them out. I have a feeling we'll become good friends with the Black Heart Gold Pants crew from Iowa, who are hilarious and hate Northwestern's guts.) And I started wondering, "hey, how many Big Ten blogs do they have overall?"  

Turns out, they had ten blogs for Big Ten teams. Ten. As you mighta heard, there's 11 schools in the Big Ten. And, uh, guess which one didn't have a blog! (I'll give you a hint: the one with the hundred years of sucky teams and the half-empty stadium.) (Or, as the subhead of the site says, half-full. It took me a half-hour to come up with that sub-header, appreciate it, punks.)

The fact that the nerdiest school in the conference ended up being the last one without a blog is on some hardcore oxymoron stuff. Think about it. But alas. 

After an uncomfortably long period of uncontrollable weeping, I got over it, manned up, pushed my glasses as far up on my nose as possible, and started my own blog. You mighta read it. It was called "The Purple Drank", and this site is going to be a lot like that one, except it's going to be way, way, way, better. (Seriously. This platform allows me to do so many cool things, it's ridiculous. The layout is sick, and I have a funny feeling I can bet better access to things reporting from this baby than from my little blogspot account named after a drug popular amongst southern rappers.)

Now, there's one less place in the world where the Big Ten makes sense and has only ten teams. SBNation, thanks for letting me complete the set. 

Anyway, you might have noticed I changed the name. You see, sometimes in life, you decide it's not the best idea to have the first thing that comes up when someone googles your name be a home-brewed hallucinogenic drug.(Instead, now, when you google my name, you're gonna get this site whose logo features a shotglass. I'm movin up in the world, people.) However, I picked a relatively similar name with a similar meaning: the title comes from a really, really, really not safe for work Gucci Mane song in which Gucci says he's "sippin on purple stuff" - referring to the aforementioned home-brewed hallucinogenic drug - but I feel that, unlike the old site's name, this one has connotations that can be understood without having to contemplate buying cough syrup in bulk. Read on:

As mentioned earlier, Northwestern has had a history of outrageously bad sports teams. We know that. It's not going anywhere, and it never will, and when fans of some other team bring it up, guess what, they're right. They'll have that, and they always will. 

But today, we can stand here, look each other in the eyes (pause), and say "Hey, you know what? Northwestern sports aren't that bad right now." And the scary thing is, it's true. 

Loss to Syracuse aside, we're in the good era of Northwestern sports. Pat Fitzgerald is pretty much the most excitable human being on the face of the planet earth. The basketball team won the first seven games I attended as a Northwestern student. (SEVEN!) And like a fine beverage, we have to sit back, relax, and enjoy it.

This could last forever, this could end next week. We could go to the NCAA tournament this year and every year until the end of time, and, on the other hand, the Cloverfield monster could take the field during halftime of the Miami (OH) game and just start laying waste to all human civilization, starting with Ryan Field. You never know.

So, folks, if we're gonna drink purple-tinted Kool-Aid, we're gonna sip it. Hence the site name. Even if it's presented to us in the shot glasses pictured in my shiny new logo in the top left, yes, folks, we're gonna sip. We're going to enjoy it. Today, right now, in 2009, Northwestern sports are tolerable. And that's why we're here.

So come on, folks, sip with me. Yes, this SBNation thing is sick - the new home page is ridiculous, and man, they made me a logo! -  but the really cool part about it is how y'all can chip in. You guys can post Fanposts - which are like regular posts, just you wrote them - and Fanshots - which are basically links - and I can promote them to the front page.

Also, comments appear immediately after you write them without having to reload, which should make game threads really cool. So people, please, sign up for a commenting account, and just sip with me, from here on out.

Or at least until our football team starts regularly going 3-9 again. Whichever comes first. 

(OH, and, by the way, to whoever out there took the username "Rodger".... I'm coming for you. Punk. You think I wanted to put my full government name next to every post I write?)