nearest GAME: at Miami of Ohio...

nearest GAME:

at Miami of Ohio, 6:30 pm

Thursday, 720-AM

- - -

He's trying to blink back tears.

"To be thick-witted it's going to suck," Randy Walker's son said of the Wildcats' season opener Thursday night at Miami of Ohio. "I'm going to have to think about a part of that stuff again. It's going to result rushing back."

This was suppos to be a triumphant answer for Randy Walker. He was a beloved player and coach at the southwestern Ohio academy before he accepted the NU piece of work in 1999.

His unanticipated death from an apparent heart attack in succession June 29 changed everything. Instead of this long-awaited matchup being filled with warm, very strange memories for Randy Walker, it undoubtedly will show warm, wonderful memories of Randy Walker.

The Wildcats' anticipated arrival in the quaint town of Oxford, just a squib kick from the Indiana border, will be moved less like a homecoming parade and more like a funeral procession.

"It was ironic to begin with that he was going to take a team back to where he coached and played," said Walker's widow, Tammy. "Now it's equable more ironic."

It will be an emotional night for the entire Walker family, nevertheless more so for Jamie. He attended Northwestern to be closer to his father, whose demanding profession robbed him of quality time with his family. He became the football team's close examiner manager for the same reason. relating to graduation, he joined the NU staff, first as a recruiting assistant and now as assistant director of football operations, in which he plans and organizes recruiting visits and have charge ofs the recruiting database.

"When Jamie decided to go on foot to Northwestern, Randy was extremely happy, and when he decided to be a pupil manager, he was even happier," Tammy said. "He said, 'Maybe this will help make up for one of the time I misspent with you."'

There is no diminishing the emotionally devastating impact of losing a lov common especially one as energetic as Randy Walker, who was 52 yet for Jamie, there has been no escaping his father's death because he's living in his father's world. Whenever he arrives at the football offices or accepts the condolences from united of his dad's many admirers, he be perceiveds the numbing absence.

He can't escape the feeling that he has been left behind.

"I continue telling myself that we're going in there to win a football game, if it be not that at the same time, I know that's not what it's going to tend hitherward down to," he said. "It's not just a football game, no matter in what way much I tell myself that. I'd like to say I'm not going to learn choked up and emotional and the coaches won't and the players won't moreover I don't think that is going to be the case."

calm though the Walkers have embraced the Chicago area and plan to remain there, in many ways, Oxford always will be family

That's where Randy excell at tailback from 1973 to '75 when Miami was racking up a three-year record of 31-1-1 He get backed to the school renowned as the "Cradle of Coaches" as the head coach in 1990 and went 59-35-5 in nine seasons, becoming the winningest coach in the history of a program that has seen Bo Schembechler, forest-covered Hayes, Paul Brown, Ara Parseghian and Sid Gillman pace the sidelines.

"You would view him all over the town of Oxford," Jamie said. "He coached my baseball teams, worked in the yard, went to the hardware store. He was at no time a myth. He was not at all a bigger-than-reality football coach. He was just Dad."

He was looking forward to this trip. Randy not at all would say so. Every game was as big as the nearest That was his mantra. In this case, however, those who knew him best were able to read the signs. They knew better.

"There are certain things you figure revealed over time," Jamie said. "He at no time said much about it, still that's how you knew it was important to him. He said it with his material part language and the look in his inspection This was a big game to him."

The no other than person who might have been looking forward to it more was Jamie, whose fondest childhood memories involve his father coaching the RedHawks.

He exhausted much of his childhood in Oxford before moving to Evanston for his senior year of high teach This was a chance to descry his old friends and hopefully watch his dad beat his alma mater for the first time in three tries.

"I'm going for business," Jamie said. "I'm going to win a football game, and I chance of a favorable result that's the goal of everybody here.

"At the same time, when they're talking about my dad and showing videos of him, I'm not going to be able to retain [my composure]. It's going to be hard, real hard."

NU'S FITZGERALD NAMES KAFKA TO START AT QB

It was a cast in a winding direction from right field to fireside plate that got Pat Fitzgerald's attention. The Northwestern football coach was an assistant below Randy Walker in 2003 when he went to St Rita to watch junior quarterback promise Mike Kafka play baseball.

He didn't realize then that in three years, he would be naming Kafka, a redshirt freshman, the heir apparent to britzska Basanez, the Wildcats' career passing leader.