Friday night’s Duke-Northwestern game featured a lot of strangeness. That clash, in Northwestern’s temporary stadium on the shores of Lake Michigan, eventually saw Duke prevail 26-20 in double overtime, but with significant wackiness on several fronts before that point. One of those fronts was a field invasion from a rabbit who was subsequently chased away by Northwestern mascot Willie the Wildcat. And that sparked a notable FS1 call from Mark Helfrich and Connor Onion:
“We have some sort of animal. Is that a rabbit? It’s a rabbit!” “We have a rabbit in the end zone!” “We’re hunting wabbits.” “Zach Lujan brought a jackrabbit with him from South Dakota State!” “Oh, wow, that’s big, that’s impressive.” “The new offensive coordinator for the Wildcats brought his old mascot with him.” …”Oklahoma drill, let’s go!”
This is far from the first appearance of a wild animal invading a sports playing surface, something seen everywhere from Winnipeg to Lubbock to Queens to New Jersey to Kenya. Specifically with a rabbit, a wild one has shown up in the CFL, and a tame (and giant) therapy bunny has shown up in the Bay Area. And this saw great camera work from the FS1 crew, including the close up up top, and a solid call from Onion and Helfrich. Having the Lujan/South Dakota State Jackrabbits reference ready to go was impressive, and the Oklahoma drill bit was a good line.
This made for one memorable moment of many in what wound up being quite the game. In the end, though, the Wildcats were less successful than their mascot, proving unable to vanquish the Blue Devils.
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About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.