After a decent dinner, I’ve put things in perspective. Any Super Bowl is the most important sporting event to 84.6% of sports fans. No local sports story matters when compared to a SB, even one with no local bearing.

Somehow, the local sports talkers still managed to squeeze in Bears thoughts the day after SB LVII ended. The local papers have droned on (in print) about everything Bears since the regular season ended. I get that SB LVII is big. However, there’s a huge local sports story that really has been relegated to the back pages.

Yesterday afternoon, unranked Northwestern University (men’s team) defeated the #1 Purdue Boilermakers 64-58 at Welsh-Ryan Arena. This was the first time the Wildcats defeated a top-seeded team in school history.

Forget the fact the game was at home. NU hadn’t defeated Purdue since forever. Furthermore, the Cats are 18-7 and seem a lock for their second tournament appearance.

Chicago’s proven that it’s not a world class sports city. College sports do matter-even if they don’t generate the same dollars. When the Loyola men’s basketball team made the Final Four back in 2018, the local media grudgingly jumped on the bandwagon, but a lot of that was due to Sister Jean. I bet most casual sports fans in Chicago, couldn’t tell you where Porter Moser is coaching these days (Oklahoma Sooners).

The AP’s Jay Cohen provided a thorough recap of the game-without too much color, and Steve Greenberg, a columnist for the Sun Times led off his column with a brief kudos. However, an on-campus story would have been good journalism.

What was the mood before the game started and what was going on campus after the biggest regular season victory in school history? The Cats entered the game 17-7 and Purdue was a powerful, almost flawless 23-2. Obviously, a segment of the student population chose hoops over 17 hours of SB pregame.

I can only reflect on my college days when the same thing happened (more than once). I do remember reading articles the next day and wondering why they never tracked me or my friends down. I’m not sure what the SB parties on campus were like last night, but I have to figure a few kids talked about that game earlier in the day.

I never thought I’d say this, but I hope the local sports talkers give the Wildcats and coach Chris Collins their due tomorrow. Step up and give the college teams some ink-it’s not as if any of the professional teams in town have performed well the past three seasons.