Sunday’s print edition of the Chicago Tribune embarrassingly reported that Northwestern lost on Saturday to Minnesota.
The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel tweeted out a picture of Sunday’s Tribune, which stated that “Northwestern’s furious rally falls just short in a 31-24 loss to Minnesota in Evanston.”
Northwestern beat Minnesota 37-34 in overtime, tying the game at 31 with two seconds left.
Can someone inform the Chicago Tribune how the Northwestern-Minnesota game ended? pic.twitter.com/D1G8umDeRa
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) September 24, 2023
It’s nowhere near as significant, but this certainly brought up memories of the Tribune’s infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline in 1948.
I woke up this morning to read a line in the Chicago Tribune stating “Northwestern’s furious rally falls just short in a 31-24 loss to Minnesota in Evanston “.
Guess we were at different games. pic.twitter.com/ld51SZ4gds— Tony Powers (@tpowers60) September 24, 2023
I’m curious about how the Tribune got this so wrong. The Wildcats scored to make it 31-24 with 9:46 left in the game, and three short drives by both teams ended in punts. The game-tying drive was a 14-play, 2:05 affair at the end of the quarter, so was the copy written during one of those punt drives, or did someone give the Wildcats no chance when driving into Minnesota territory? There wasn’t even any controversy about the game-tying touchdown that would have required a lengthy review.
To add insult to injury, the Tribune’s story about the game on their website comes from the Associated Press rather than the paper itself.
Anyway, it’s an embarrassing gaffe, especially given Northwestern’s insistence on branding itself as “Chicago’s Big Ten Team.” I guess the entire newsroom was focused on the dramatic ending to the Ohio State-Notre Dame game instead, which was correctly described by the Tribune in the lines before the mistake about Northwestern’s game.
