Long story short, the litany:

• An automatic 'W'.
• No muss, no fuss, everybody stays healthy.
• A chance to recharge for next week's REAL opponent.

Maybe most weather-beaten N.U. fans didn't take seriously the Wildcats' 22-21 upset of a Tom Coughlin-coached Boston College team that would later ruin Notre Dame's national championship hopes.

But within two years of then-coach Gary Barnett's arrival, the entire Big Ten did a dramatic flip-flop. Team Roadkill became Team Robokill, knocking off the entire Big Ten establishment en route to the league championship, after a demoralizing opening game loss to Miami of Ohio.

In a script that would have been dumped in the round file of any self-respecting movie producer, the 'Cats rumbled through the Big Ten power elite — Wisconsin, Iowa (yes, the Hawkeyes — remember when Hayden Fry teams could turn opponents into ashpiles?), Michigan, Penn State.

Mark it down one final time. Northwestern '95 was the most unlikely Big Ten football titlist ever.

The Wildcats had been listed in Steve Harvey's satiric "Bottom 10" so many times they had seemingly become part of the annual greeting committee.

They had found their way to the Top 10 for the first time since an energetic guy named Parseghian, who would find the bulk of his fame 100 miles to the east, roamed the Dyche Stadium sidelines.

But Northwestern being Northwestern, Barnett's "Wild- cat for Life" declaration fell generations short. He left for greener pa$ture$ in Boulder, Colo. Athletic Director Rick Taylor, who was on the verge of building a flourishing overall program, wore the look of the oxygen-deprived.

"Adjustments," he'd told an equally-baffled media. "Life is a series of adjustments."

The new N.U. adjustor would be a down-home Ohioan named Randy Walker, an aw-shucks ruralite from the Buckeye State's southeast who hid a gunslinger's competitiveness behind that country-boy personality.

Coming from a Miami program that had spawned, among others, Weeb Ewbank, Paul Brown, Don Shula and Parseghian, Walker let little grass grow underneath as he went about the uphill task of mending the Wildcats.

As with Barnett, within two years of his 1998 arrival, the 'Cats found themselves atop one of the nation's cornerstone football conferences and a flock of dropped jaws from Chaska to Chillicothe.

His militarily-precise, no-nonsense training programs were the talk of the conference. When the "Voluntary" pre-season workouts approached, to a player, every Wildcat knew the Walkerese definition of "Voluntary."

Be there. Period. End of story.

But to know Northwestern football is to know how to tighten one's seatbelt for a deep-angle roller-coaster ride. In the late 1990's, several prominent Wildcats were implicated in a gambling scandal that rattled the chandeliers at N.C.A.A. headquarters, coming as it did on the tail end of the Boston College mess.

If it could happen at Ivy-quality private universities...

This summer, though, the serendipity that blew through the lakefront campus seemed to have erased any such memories.

The pre-season football magazines had hit the newsstands and if the front cover wasn't graced with an action shot of Damien Anderson, the 'Cats Heisman hopeful running back, N.U. was being touted as Big Ten title favorite.

Here was Northwestern University, the Big Ten's answer to the University of Pennsylvania or Stanford, being exalted as not only big time, but Big Ten champion. And naturally, Walker had already delivered several "Don't get too full of yourselves" speeches. The players were focused, ready, eager for September's big challenges.

Then, in one horrifying afternoon in the stale heat and humidity of Aug. 3, that dizzying ride to the top took a shocking dip into the cruelest of realities.

Within a couple of days of the death of Minnesota Vikings tackle Kory Stringer, a former Ohio State All-American, N.U.'s superbly-talented cornerback Rashidi Wheeler collapsed on the field during a conditioning test.

One of 10 asthmatics on Northwestern's team, Wheeler succumbed to an accute attack during a workout that was a staple of Walker's demanding pre-season regimen. He died shortly thereafter.

Initially, members of Wheeler's family appeared to share the grief of the Northwestern family, but when the Rev. Jesse Jackson and attorney Johnnie Cochran offered their, uh, services, the atmosphere became politically charged instantly.

Sports talk shows' topics ranged from place to race.

It was against this backdrop, a glaring national spotlight usually reserved for places like South Bend, Lincoln, Norman or Gainesville, that the Wildcats squad held a players-only meeting Wednesday.

Adversity had been N.U.'s soulmate for a generation. Northwestern fans, like their Chicago Cubs counterparts, were born pessimists. All that camaraderie and feel-good atmosphere had vanished in one fateful two-hour sequence.

The replacement: fears of a fractious, moody, dysfunctional fall of shattered dreams, mourning and on-field sluggishness loomed over what is now Ryan Field like a purple haze.

"This," Sporting News Radio personality and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti assessed, "is likely going to come down on the coach's head."

Somehow, inside the locker room walls, though, yet another Operation Bootstrap was underway. Somehow, the players had managed to regain perspective, speak with one voice and refocus on what still would be a very promising fall.

Rallying behind Walker, they countered the Wheeler family's contentions. Pre-season workouts were a staple of football programs from Boston to Berkeley.

Anderson, whose leadership should be a major key to N.U.'s on-field success, may have summed up his team's mood best.

"I think what coach Walker does works," he told Skip Myslenski of the Chicago Tribune. "You can't make everyone happy. I think that's what he understands.

"As long as he continues to do what he's going to do, we'll be successful. I think (Wheeler's) case has been totally blown out of proportion.

"Coach Walker is just a coach. I don't think he's any different than Steve Spurrier [Florida State's coach] or [Oklahoma coach Bob] Stoops, or anyone..."

With a slick season-ticket promotion campaign and a record response, the Wildcats' athletic department officials allow themselves to envision what is now Ryan Field as a true Big Ten home field, not a repository for other schools' huge Chicago alumni contingents.

With a powerful offensive line anchored by tackles Leon Brockmeier and Mike Souza and guard Lance McClelland, plus senior quarterback Zak Kustok, whose 2,251 passing yards and 18 touchdown passes was lost in the Drew Brees hysteria last fall, along with a solid receiving corps, the 'Cats have the makings of yet another scoreboard-testing offense.

The defense, which gave up far too many big plays last year, features what may be the Big Ten's best linebacking corps -- Napoleon Harris (6-3, 243), a virtual first-round certainty, Billy Silva (6-3, 248 and Kevin Bentley (6-1, 233).

The chance-taking aspects will still surface, but the senior experience and increased talent-level should be the perfect counterpart for N.U.'s explosive offense.

Throw in the fact that Michigan loses QB Drew Henson to Yankee dollars (ironically, he plays third base for New York's Class AAA affiliate in...Columbus!), plus most of its skill players and Wisconsin will miss N.F.L. first-round RB Michael Bennett dearly, not to mention Purdue without the pass-catch combo of Brees and Vinnie Sutherland. Ohio State is in the transition mode of adjusting to new coach Jim Tressel.

The tragedy of Aug. 3 seems to have pulled the Wildcats together. Couple that with some of the above factors and it should surprise no one if Northwestern makes another serious run at the Big Ten title.