Stunned.

In the car this morning, I flipped from the CD player over the radio at about 7:42, just in time to catch the morning show on ESPN 1000 coming back from break. Usually it's the national show, but today, I believe in anticipation of the weekend Cubs/Sox series, it was local.

Coming back from break, the guys introduced Barry Alvarez, on the phone from Madison. This seemed like something of a strange interview choice; it's not exactly college football season at this point, and anyway Alvarez, while a coaching legend, is no longer the coach at Wisconsin. The reason soon became clear, however, as the hosts mentioned "the loss of a member of the Big Ten coaching fraternity."

My mind considered the possibilities. Did Paterno die? He's pretty old. That would certainly have been big news. But I was entirely unprepared for the impending answer, four syllables that flew out of the speakers like a punch to the gut.

Randy Walker.

I didn't have the same level of experience with him that others did, particularly some of my former WNUR cohorts. Rudnik's post brought me to the verge of tears, and I'm not a big crier when it comes to this sort of thing. He says it better than I could, certainly, thanks to his personal experience. And I'm sure it helps that a lot of said experience came during what will remain as Walker's banner year with the Cats, 2000, the year Tim Long and Damien Anderson had us dancing and hugging and yelling in the studio during the Wisconsin game (my first ever work for WNUR), the year of Pearl's quote (after Wisconsin) and Mittelstadt's yelp (after "Victory Right" against Minnesota) and the Michigan game and everything else. Nemo's post is a lot shorter, but it's good as well.

As for me... I just have a hard time believing it. Because of the nature of the job, Walker seemed to coach under the constant threat of the axe, or at least various calls for it; never mind that, while he never made a Rose Bowl, Walker was the most consistently successful Northwestern coach in at least 50 years. At any rate, I don't think any of us thought he'd leave us this way - in the summer, two months before the new season, not long after signing a four-year extension, felled by an apparent heart attack at 52.

After a wild year last season, featuring outstanding offense and equally weak defense, there was no question that Walker should stay, not like after a 3-9 year in 2002 (his only really bad one after his first year, when it was still Barnett's guys). Even with player losses, Walker made you feel like you had a puncher's chance; even in 2000, Northwestern was never the most talented team in the conference under his leadership, but they were nearly always competitive and sometimes quite dangerous indeed. It's sad to think that, come August 31, someone else will don the headset - probably Jerry Brown or someone else from within the current staff - and it's one of life's truly twisted coincidences that Northwestern's first game this season is a game at Miami-Ohio, which would have been Walker's first game there since leaving to join Northwestern after the 1998 season.

As Rudnik says, the best tribute to Coach Walker would be a winning season, or at least a very competitive one, despite the departure of Brett Basanez and a lot of untested talent at the quarterback position. I hope they can do it. Randy Walker may not have brought a national title to Evanston, but he brought everything else a football coach possibly can - and it would mean so much for the most recent group of his players to win for him. Even if they don't, though, it won't be a disappointment as long as they play how he would have wanted - if they play hard, and they play right, they'll have done their jobs. The only disappointment is that Randy Walker didn't get more time to keep doing his.