EVANSTON — The six Northwestern students who actually watch Around the Horn rejoiced when the university named J. A. Adande to lead Northwestern’s 2012 Homecoming parade.

“This is an event all Northwestern students look forward to, and I could not be more honored to reveal our Homecoming Marshal as… shit, what’s his name?” announced President Morton Schapiro earlier this month.

The announcement culminated a long and often frustrating search for an important public figure. “Do you think we’d be coming off as desperate if we asked Seth to come again?” asked a flummoxed Morty during the search, as his thumb hovered an inch over Seth Meyers’s number on his iPhone.

Because Northwestern has a monopoly on the ESPN afternoon lineup, the Homecoming board decided to call the network to see who could come. Secretary Monica Lewis offered Mike Wilbon and Mike Greenberg, who were quickly dismissed as too fat and too Jewish, respectively.

Adande, however, was exactly what the university was looking for: a black guy.

“We got lucky this year, but we’re doomed for next year,” said ASG president Victor Shao. “The fact is we’re running out of notable alumni.”

“We need more students to graduate and go into the Entertainment business as opposed to Engineering and Economics,” Morty added. “I don’t know who we’re going to get next year. Heston’s dead. Blagojevich is incarcerated. And there is no way I’m inviting that bitch Julia Louis-Dreyfus.”