BIG TEN PLAYBOOK/Northwestern in championship game? Believe it.

Northwestern in the Big Ten championship game? Seriously?

Seriously!

The team that went winless in nonconference play punched a ticket to Lucas Oil Stadium, where it has never played, for a shot at playing in the Rose Bowl, where it has played twice—in 1948 and 1995. (Those were the first two bowl appearances in Northwestern history, by the way.)

The Wildcats clinched their berth in Big Ten championship game with a grinding 14-10 win at Iowa on Saturday, courtesy of a miraculous TD catch by Bennett Skowronek. Losses by Wisconsin (22-10 at Penn State, understandable) and Purdue (at Minnesota by a boggling 41-10) clinched the West for NU.

With two games left, those standings read: Northwestern (6-1), Wisconsin (4-3), Purdue (4-3), Iowa (3-4).

This is all pretty shocking stuff for football fans of a certain age. Right after I finished up as a grad student at NU’s Medill School of Journalism, NU went through a six-year stretch (1976-81) where it went 3-62-1.

Guys used to doctor the road signs around Chicago with spray paint so they would say: “Interstate 94. . . Northwestern 0.’’

And now, two of those road hogs, Ohio State and Michigan, will get together in the Horseshoe on Nov. 24 to decide who earns the right to play Pat Fitzgerald’s Wildcats.

Improbable? Try unprecedented: This is the first time in FBS history that a team has reached a conference championship game after going winless in its nonleague games.

Nobody will give NU a chance against the Buckeyes or the Wolverines. Nobody will remember that the Wildcats punched Michigan in the mouth on Sept. 29, jumping out to a 17-0 lead before losing 20-17 when Michigan scrambled to the game-winning touchdown with four minutes left, ending NU’s eight-game Big Ten winning streak.

That loss dropped Northwestern to 1-3. From there, the Cats would win their next five league games, interrupting that only for a competitive 31-21 loss to unbeaten Notre Dame.

Northwestern has won 13 of its last 14 Big Ten games, if you’re keeping score at home. That includes home-and-home wins over Michigan State, Iowa, Purdue and Nebraska.

How does Northwestern, a relative mom-and-pop operation when placed alongside the conglomerates that tend to rule the Big Ten, do things like this?

It starts with athletic director Jim Phillips, who might be the best AD in the country. On his watch, Northwestern has upgraded facilities to a dazzling level that includes a lakefront football practice facility and a gut rehab that has turned the basketball arena into a theater in a rectangle.

And then there’s Pat Fitzgerald, who became the nation’s youngest head coach when he was hired at 31 after a heart attack took Randy Walker, 52, in the summer of 2006.

Fitz, who will be 44 on Dec. 2, a day after that Big Ten championship game, is the perfect coach for NU.

I first met him when he was an All-America linebacker in 1995 who broke a leg in the next-to-the-last regular-season game. Did a story on the bittersweet feeling of helping Northwestern to the Rose Bowl but not being able to play in it.

Watch that angle resurface in a big way if Fitz is able to cajole the Cats into this year’s Rose Bowl—their first return to Pasadena after a 23-year quest.

We used to see Fitz at high-school honors banquets when he was a young assistant on Walker’s staff. We knew he had a bright future. We didn’t know how quickly that future would arrive. And how brightly it would shine.

He’s from Orland Park, in Chicago’s southwest suburbs, which is a different deal than leafy Evanston, on the North Shore, where Northwestern is located. Fittingly, he attended Sandburg High School, named for the poet who called Chicago “City of hte Big Shoulders.’’ Pat comes from a blue-collar world. He’s White Sox, not Cubs, although he has learned to bridge that gap diplomatically.

But most of all, he’s the perfect combination of old-school football coach and modern team CEO, which is what coaches are these days.

Asked if he heard the grumbles when NU was 1-3, Fitzgerald said, “I’ve been doing this a long time. I really don’t care what they say about me. My job is to develop the team.’’

Ironically, when Northwestern struggles, the grumbles often can be heard among the many sports-media alums of Northwestern. (Oh and by the way, I’m not in that group, I’m still processing the fact that my alma maters, Wisconsin and Northwestern, were seriously bad when I was on campus. And this sportswriting thing scrubs the fan out of you.)

The 21-7 loss to Duke was discouraging. The 39-34 loss to Akron sounded alarm bells. The Wildcats were outscored 36-13 in second half by the Zips. And in three of their first four games, they didn’t score at all in the second half, although they did manage to hold off Purdue. 31-27.

How does a team overcome that kind of start to reach a conference championship game?

“We did not have the consistency that we needed, and the depth was too young to make an impact right away,’’ Fitzgerald explained after the 31-17 win over Wisconsin that put the Wildcats in great position to win the West. “Now, the depth is starting to improve. If a guy makes a mistake now, we are able to take him out and use the best motivator in the world – the bench.

“It’s not that you’re trying to put fear in the guys. It’s the other way around. You have to earn the privilege and the right to be on the field, and when you don’t perform to the best of your ability, whether it’s schematics, fundamentals, or you’re not executing, they’ll be put on the bench. And when you have that type of ability, I think guys learn a little bit quicker. The most important thing is that we’re getting better, and that’s the hallmark of a good football team.”

And that’s a far cry from Interstate 94, Northwestern 0.