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The partnership between the Chicago Cubs and Northwestern was so logical, so low-stress, that Cubs exec Crane Kenney said it was completed “with a handshake and a thank-you.”
And yet the deal is the first of its kind, a union between a school and professional franchise that will benefit multiple NU teams while enriching the Cubs and its employees who seek graduate-level education.
While executives on both sides imagine the marketing and signage possibilities, Chicago-area football fans who enjoyed the 2010 Wrigley Field football game will get to witness five more, starting in 2014.
Those dates are all to be determined, given that Big Ten schedules need to be reworked because of the additions of Rutgers and Maryland. They could be played every year from 2014-2018 or it could be five games played over 7-8 seasons.
But NU fans won’t have to wait that long to see some purple at Wrigley Field. The Wildcats baseball team will host Michigan on the North Side on April 20.
NU baseball coach Paul Stevens said that after he told his players, “they were just elated. The energy, the attitude and the enthusiasm have never been like that in any single practice.”
Kelly Amonte Hiller will bring her women’s lacrosse team – winners of seven NCAA championships over the last eight seasons – to Wrigley for a 2014 spring game against Notre Dame.
Football games, though, will get the most attention.
“It’s really a cool deal,” coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “Once we got off the bus (in 2010) and came out of left field, it was ridiculous … I don’t think anyone has ever had a bad day at Wrigley Field.”
NU Athletic Director Jim Phillips called it “a marriage of brands … in the greatest sports city in the country.”
Phillips is tight with Cubs brass, including owner Tom Ricketts and Kenney.
But this was a complicated deal that took months to iron out.
“We do have something more,” Phillips said, “than a handshake.”
tgreenstein@tribune.com
Twitter @TeddyGreenstein
Northwestern-Cubs deal: 5 Wrigley football games
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