“SUCKERS WALK.”

“SUCKERS WALK.” Northwestern and Illinois played a football game in Wrigley Field last weekend. Although a lot of football games have been played in Wrigley, the park has been reconfigured, and the only way to fit a football field into the ballpark left the goalposts on one end almost right up against a brick wall. The day before the game it was decided that the team on offense would always go in the direction away from the brick wall. This meant that if a team scored, the other team would go to the other end of the field to receive the kickoff. There was controversy over this as not being authentic football, but Pat Fitzgerald, the Northwestern coach, said that it was just like the games that he played as a boy. He also remembered that after a score the team that had given up the score went to the other end of the field, with the team that had scored calling out: “Losers walk.” We did the same thing when I was a boy. Where we lived until I was ten, we always ran plays toward my mother’s peony bushes and not toward the street. However, what we called out after was a score was: “Suckers walk.”