THE HARD WAY.

The end of November is time for the Mid-American Conference football championship game, in Detroit's Ford Field.  Once again, Northern Illinois represent the West Division.

The opponent was Buffalo, and the smart money had Buffalo as a prohibitive favorite.

For fifty-eight minutes and thirty seconds, the smart money looked right.

The game lasts sixty minutes.

The Bulls (10-3) squandered a 19-point lead in the final 15 minutes, 17 seconds, as the Huskies cut the deficit to five early in the fourth quarter, on a 28-yard touchdown reception by D.J. Brown with 17 seconds left in the third quarter and a 32-yard TD reception by Spencer Tears, 2:09 into the fourth. Then, Brown’s 35-yard catch lifted the Huskies to a one-point lead with 1:09 left, and the Bulls had to scramble to create anything that resembled a comeback drive.

The Huskies had possession for only 11:23 of the second half, but kept the ball out of UB’s hands at the most opportune time – the final drive of the game.

Northern Illinois defensive end Josh Corcoran had to sit out the first half account a targeting penalty in the final regular season game. His return in the second half undoubtedly made blocking assignments more difficult for Buffalo.  Buffalo's defense, which entered the game highly regarded, "collapsed" as viewed from New York, but it was just another day at the office for Northern Illinois.  "NIU’s offensive onslaught in the second half was a surprise to everyone but the Huskies. An offense that entered the game averaging only 19.9 points per game torched the Bulls' defense for 137 passing yards after halftime by quarterback Marcus Childers (21-for-33 passing, 300 yards, four touchdowns)."

Medium's Justin Coffin asserts, "Northern Illinois is Impossible."

The MAC is a chaotic place for most programs. That chaos is fueled by the coaching turnover that is painful for the schools that endure departure and cute to the folks who call this place “The Cradle of Coaches.” The biggest indicator of upcoming disappointment in this league is, largely, any success at all. The big, rich schools will come and steal dream coaches using their lucrative TV deal money at the first sign of progress, and that’s just the way things are.

NIU thrives in the chaos. The Huskies win consistently when the environment is better designed for them to fail, so of course they won another MAC title on Friday night when all signs deep into the game pointed to an imminent Buffalo victory. Of course they stepped up on defense. Of course Childers, a quarterback averaging barely over five yards per attempt on the season, completed 21 of 33 passes for 300 yards and four touchdowns against the MAC’s third best scoring defense. Of course they came back from 19 down to win. Of course they did it “the hard way.”

In the last decade the Huskies have lost two coaches to bigger jobs and had to regroup after losing a Jordan Lynch, a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, to graduation. Where so many others failed, the Huskies continued winning. Central Michigan, Kent State and Bowling Green have all played for or won a MAC championship in the last 10 years. All three of those programs are in the midst of their worst stretches of football in school history. NIU hasn’t stopped winning.

Let's just enjoy it while it lasts.

Next up: the Boca Raton Bowl, December 18, facing the University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers.

Rod Carey enters bowl season with an 0-5 record in bowl games as head coach – the Jan. 1, 2013, Orange Bowl game, was as an interim head coach. A win would mean NIU’s ninth of the season, which would mark NIU’s highest win total since 2014.

“In the past, we have not been successful in bowl games. And that’s the fact of it,” coach Rod Carey said. “You can’t change that. But that’s not about me. It’s not about past records. It’s about this group of guys having the opportunity which we feel great about to play a 14th game and compete together.”

Yes, the opponent is that University of Alabama at Birmingham.  "UAB (10-3) returns to its second consecutive bowl after having its program reinstated six months after its December 2014 disbanding and just completed a conference title-winning season as it defeated Middle Tennessee, 27-25, in the Conference USA Championship Game."

Buffalo will play Troy State, or is it simply Troy these days?  I'm not sure what it says about the state of college football that what used to be the Go Daddy Bowl in Mobile, Alabama has since become the GMAC Bowl (would you buy a used car?) and is currently the Dollar General Bowl, and it's just before Christmas, rather than part of Mobile's Mardi Gras opening ceremonies.

I still wonder, though, if the football program is good value for money?

THE INCREMENTAL COST OF VISIBILITY. The Northern Star follows up its report on nepotism with an analysis of a $154K overdraft on the Independence Bowl. That's right, overdraft. You read it here first.

Late Friday afternoon email? Those faculty who are checking e-mail then are probably corresponding with co-authors, dealing with editors (as referee or as writer) or otherwise working on their research. That's a population not particularly likely to be impressed with a bowl opportunity (which is likely to cost the university money once the travel and entertainment expenses for senior administrators and boosters is figured in) as the outcome of a game on a school night.

I was right about the travel and entertainment expenses, as we will see. What I did not anticipate is the bonus-trading that goes on to get a conference an additional bid. For supposedly amateur sports, that have nothing to do with money, the potential for side payments is great.

The 2008-2009 college football postseason produced a record 34 bowl games. When the regular season came to an end 72 teams were left as bowl eligible. This meant four bowl eligible teams would not enter the postseason.

Of these 72 teams, 13 teams had a 6-6 record, the minimum record to reach the postseason. One of these 13 teams was NIU.

The Huskies had hoped to win their final game against Navy, as this would have given them a 7-5 record. A 7-5 record would have improved NIU’s chances at a bowl game, as the NCAA restructured the manner in which at-large bids are selected a few years ago. Bowl games are forced to take a team with a winning record for an at-large slot, before inviting a 6-6 team. This meant teams like Western Michigan, with a 9-3 record, had to be selected for an at-large bid before a 6-6 team like Notre Dame.

And it was Western Michigan that proved to be the crucial piece of the puzzle to get NIU into a bowl game.

The Broncos ultimately accepted an invitation to the Texas Bowl in Houston. At first, however, WMU wanted to accept an invitation to the Independence Bowl. The motivation, it seemed, was money.

“The net payout in Shreveport was $330,000. In Houston it was $270,000,” said MAC commissioner Rick Chryst. “Prior to any bowl invitations we wanted to take the money part off the table. I think we felt Shreveport was the best opportunity for Northern.”

NIU agreed with Chryst, feeling that if it was going to make it to the postseason, it would be in Shreveport.

“Rick [Chryst], and his staff, we relied on them to be really the kind of conference voice for us as the negotiations occurred,” said NIU Athletic Director Jeff Compher. “We feel like the more teams from our conference that go the better. We didn’t want to be the one sitting out, but we didn’t want anyone else sitting out.”

In order to convince WMU to accept the invitation to Houston, NIU agreed to give some of its revenue from the Independence Bowl to WMU. This amount was finalized at $29,380.

The university achieved some economies in lodging and transportation. (Heck, compared to Our President asking his cabinet to find one-ten-thousandth of his annual deficit in their budgets, our athletic department overachieves.) In part, the economies reflect demand for the tickets.

The athletic department originally estimated $13,109.25 for lodging for students at the game. This was reduced to $6,435.72, but only because the department originally expected to bring two busses of students to the game, yet was only able to fill one bus.

A trip to Shreveport, at Christmas. Wonder why. No private jet charters.

The Northern Star also discovers that the Athletic Department is more generous to friends of the program than Our President is to the Queen of England. (Maybe not. Boosters didn't get autographed copies of Bill Baker's -- the professor, not the announcer -- work on Wilkie Collins.)

When participating in the Poinsettia Bowl, NIU went over this limit [on the value of presents], as it gave players, coaches, donors and friends team gifts. In 2006 these gifts were an iPod Nano, an iPod Nano case, men’s/women’s watches, sweatshirt and ski cap. These gifts cost $12,000.

At the Independence Bowl, all members of the NIU football team received a Timely Watch Co. watch, New Era cap and Trek mountain bike.

Meanwhile, some colleagues and I went recruiting at the job meetings and nobody in authority has thanked us for making the effort in a search that was later suspended, let alone given us an I-pod. They did reimburse us for our rapid transit rides to the airport.

The interview elicits an infelicitous comment from athletic director Jeff Compher that concedes a positional arms race is in progress.

When examining a bowl game, Compher said the financial matters cannot illuminate the entire situation.

“You can’t explain it with the bottom line,” Compher said. “It’s an investment. If you want to compete at this level you have to be willing to invest.”

According to Compher, a bowl game helps add spirit to the campus, create the college experience, helps in recruiting future players and coaches, and adds to the student-athlete experience.

That means it ultimately pays off on the bottom line. The problem, however, is that the rent-seeking inherent in recruiting, enhancing the experience, competing at that level, and the likely strategic complementarity of Northern Illinois's new weight room with Ohio's implies the investments will never be cost-effective. The sponsors of bowl games, who do face hard budget constraints, are likely to recognize this before the athletic departments do.

[Deputy athletic director Glen] Krupica said the main change that needs to be made for the future is the athletic department needs to be more prepared from a marketing standpoint. In order to achieve this, however, he said NIU needs to know that it will be participating in the postseason earlier than it did this year.

“Hopefully we’re in a little bit better position that we’ll know we’re playing a bowl game,” Krupica said. “Our fans will then be conditioned to going to a game and to be able to float out there are some pre-sale opportunities where people can lock into tickets regardless where we go. And then in early November we lay out five options.”

Krupica and Compher see this as one of the key ways of selling more of the required allotted tickets when accepting an invitation to a bowl game. By achieving this, the pair hopes the university will no longer have to use a majority of the payout to purchase the allotted tickets.

We owe the overdraft to ourselves. Chortle.

“Maybe someday you’re not worried about defraying, but maximizing your payout,” Krupica said. “I think that’s when you start getting at the point bringing five, six, 7,000 people to a game.”

In order do to this, however, Compher said a mind set has to be created at NIU where fans expect the Huskies to go to a bowl game. This may only be the case, however, if NIU can produce better regular season records in the future. [Vice President of Finance and Facilities Eddie] Williams [USNR] said he believes there will be a reduction in bowl games in the future, as games are now struggling to find sponsors.

“I am concerned about bowls in general. There may be too many of them. There may not be enough sponsors,” Williams said. “When you are in that situation the payouts may be smaller for the non-large bowls.”

You think? Chick-fil-A's ability to finance a bowl depends on the willingness of people to buy sandwiches. (That ability apparently exceeded the ability of the peach cartel). Athletic departments can increase student fees. (It might be fun to require universities to disclose all the fees the same way a settlement statement for a real estate closing does. The difference is that those closing fees bear some relation to problems that arise in the course of a transaction. Many of our students treat the athletic fee as a sunk cost, a point that sports columnists for the Northern Star never seem to grasp when they exhort their classmates to attend the games they're paying for.)

THE COFFEE FUND IS DEPLETED.

A DeKalb sports pundit suggests the little tin box has been unlocked a few too many times.

The problem: five years of underachieving football, where achieving means winning bowl games.

After a terrible fake punt call and another postseason blowout, this time a 36-14 loss to Duke on Tuesday in the Quick Lane Bowl, new leadership would help. If this were the Bears, I’d urge George McCaskey to immediately fire the head coach – the way Hub Arkush has been doing.

But the Huskies play for a public university that already has spent its buyout budget this year. Even if NIU has the cash to make a coaching change, it lacks the political capital.

Earlier this year, the board of trustees had to vote – twice – to pay former Mismanager-in-Chief Doug Baker a severance worth $600,000. They took heat for that golden parachute from politicians, the public and the news media.

Baker’s $450,000 salary was nowhere near the $623,000 Carey will earn in 2017. It would cost the school about $950,000 to buy out Carey’s contract, according to USA Today.

If NIU spends more than $1.5 million on buyouts in a year, it’ll be clobbered with that fact any time financial issues arise – and rightly so.

Maybe NIU officials should just do what they’re doing with the president’s job – say they’re not going to hire or sign anyone until 2019, when Carey’s contract will expire.

Then, if Carey leads the Huskies through the gauntlet of nonconference foes scheduled for 2018 – at Iowa, Florida State and BYU, plus a home date with Utah – and comes out with even two wins, maybe he stays.

That's right, Northern Illinois continue to schedule highly regarded teams, and they have enough of a history winning such games, including at least one at Iowa in the past few years, and they earn bowl games with opponents you might have heard of, when it comes to the bowl games themselves, it's not so pretty.

TITLETOWN, ILLINOIS.

The print edition of the Northern Star attempted to claim the Titletown, U.S.A. moniker for DeKalb, in the wake of a far-too-intense Northern Illinois win in the Mid-American title game.

NIU looked in prime position in the third quarter to run away with the game, as it came out and tacked on another 10 points to Kent State’s three. Kent State’s kicker Freddy Cortez opened the scoring with a field goal early, but the Huskies scored 10 unanswered points behind a 1-yard touchdown run by Lynch on a drive that included a 44-yard breakaway run by Lynch. Sims added a 29-yard field goal with 2:38 left, to make the score 27-13, NIU.

The fourth quarter is when Kent State showed its will to fight and why it made it to this point of the season.

The Golden Flashes started their first drive of the quarter at their own 4-yard line with more than seven minutes left and put together a 96-yard drive to score, mostly behind a 60-yard pass play from quarterback Spencer Keith to Archer. Keith finished the drive with back-to-back 5-yard rushes, the second going across the goal-line for the score.

Kent State struck again a mere 15 seconds later after, forcing a fumble from Lynch on the Huskies’ first play after Keith scored. The fumble was caused and recovered by freshman linebacker Zack Hitchens, who proceeded to run untouched to the end zone to even the score at 27 with 4:38 remaining in the game.

Each team scored one more touchdown in regulation, and it took a Northern Illinois interception in the end zone in the second overtime (echoes of the Maryland game in DeKalb, years ago?) to secure the win.

IS THE NEXT LEVEL WORTH IT?

By Mid-American Conference standards, Northern Illinois University have a strong football program.  The current crop of seniors have played in 56 games over four seasons, meaning appearances in the conference championship game each year (2-2) and four straight bowl bids (although getting enough teams to fill the bowl schedule requires diluted standards.)

The aspiration around the athletic department has been to become the "next Boise State" (meaning a college football program not affiliated with the Southeastern or Pacific or Big Ten that is capable of giving teams from those conferences a competitive game, and winning more often than not).

Boise State was the opponent in the recently completed Poinsettia Bowl, and the original didn't have much respect for the next.

Boise State jumped out to a big lead in the first two quarters and cruised to a 55-7 win over Northern Illinois in the Poinsettia Bowl on Wednesday at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego for the Huskies' worst loss since 2007.

The Broncos (9-5 overall) led 31-7 at halftime and scored touchdowns on their first three possessions. Boise State, which now has 64 wins since 2010 compared to 65 by Northern Illinois, outgained the Huskies 654-33 and set a Poinsettia Bowl record for most points in a game.

Four bowl appearances, four losses (Florida State, Utah State, Marshall, Boise State).  Do you want to believe?

The catchphrase of the X-Files must resonate with Northern Illinois football fans after the team’s 55-7 loss to Boise State in the Poinsettia Bowl, capping an 8-6 season with a blowout bowl loss for the second straight year.

Right now, most fans are more than likely channelling their inner Scully, their inner skeptic. After all, there really wasn’t anything redeemable about this game.

Nowhere for the students to redeem the several hundred dollars they're shelling out in athletics activity fees, either.  Is the football visibility worth it? Jesse Severson of the DeKalb Daily Chronicle combines interview and analysis.

I asked Boise State coach Bryan Harsin if the buildup to the game – being billed a battle of Group of 5 powers – made the lopsided victory a little sweeter. Instead of taking the moment to bask in the glow of showing the world who the top dog is in the Group of 5, Harsin took the high road.

“I think the teams going into the game were comparable, if you were looking at statistically over the last four or five years,” he said. “And we obviously looked at those things, but I think tonight we were different. I thought our guys were different and it’s not about (being compared to NIU), it’s not about that. It’s about performing and doing our best and making sure that what we’ve prepared to do, we go out there and we get that done, because we spend a lot of time working on it for three and a half hours.”

There will be ramifications for this game for Northern Illinois and the questions will be asked – perhaps unfairly – of whether the coaching staff needs a shakeup. Would that be an overreaction – considering many of the Huskies’ major playmakers return next season and that Hare was out the second half of the season – or the proper reaction? Time will tell.

Inasmuch as headquarters continues to starve the academic departments of resources, whilst devoting resources to whatever it is that administrators do, while Boise State is a paradigm of Excellence Without Money, perhaps The Hard Way is making Too Hard A Way for the other functions of the university.  I wonder if there's a rubric for that in the program prioritization rigamarole.

WE'RE REALLY STUCK WITH WEEKNIGHT FOOTBALL.

I've never been enthusiastic about it.  And even in the middle of the Orange Bowl hoopla of a few years ago, its effectiveness to the university was dubious.  Forbes's Kevin Trahan suggests, to the contrary, that #MACtion works.

What is #MACtion? Well simply put, it’s a high-scoring, action-packed, nationally-televised mid-week game played in November between two Mid-American Conference (MAC) teams that don’t much care for defense. But in the past few years, as Twitter has become more prevalent, it’s created a cult following among college football fans who are always looking to watch more football.

That's the kind of argument I had to talk capstone paper students out of. Look how many of my friends go to sporting events. Stadium subsidies must be a great policy.  Ad popularum is not welfare-maximization.

“There’s no doubt our conference’s divisional races the past three or four years have clearly played out on national TV in November,” MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said.

That’s certainly true against this year. MAC West favorites Northern Illinois and Toledo will face off on November 11, while Northern Illinois and Western Michigan — currently tied for second in the division — will play on November 28. In the MAC East, division leader Bowling Green will play at second place Akron on November 4. If history is any indicator, the games will be exciting.

The 2012 MAC race is the one that created that perception. Northern Illinois and Toledo captivated the nation with a thrilling 31-24 NIU win in late November that put the Huskies in position to go to a major bowl game and essentially ended up being the MAC title game. Two weeks later, 19th-ranked NIU took down 18th-ranked Kent State 44-37 in double overtime to win the MAC Championships. That win vaulted Northern Illinois into the top 14 of the BCS ratings and earned the Huskies a berth in the Orange Bowl. Without their run being so highly publicized, Steinbrecher said he isn’t sure the Huskies would have gotten high enough in the rankings to earn an Orange Bowl berth.

“We were the first non-AQ (non-automatic qualifying) conference to determine who gets to go to a BCS bowl game,” Steinbrecher said of the MAC Championship that year. “Both of them (Northern Illinois and Kent State) had largely played through the month of November on national TV.”

Perhaps, to the entertainment of people watching at distant sports-bars or from their homes. Whenever the camera panned around the stands, the viewer saw mainly empty seats.  And the Orange Bowl run only meant the conference universities lost less money on football that year.

The cult following grew thanks to that year, and according to MAC spokesman Ken Mather, last year’s MAC Championship took home higher ratings than the Pac-12 Championship Game that same year. The payoff has been obvious in recruiting, as more recruits are attracted to the conference because they get to watch it, and eventually play, on national TV.

There are limits to how well these conference tournaments bring in positive net revenues ... these also apply to the basketball tournament, come March.

That kind of money and exposure has opened the eyes of big and small conferences, alike. According to Steinbrecher, nine of the 10 conferences in the Football Bowl Subdivision play weekday games, and Thursday’s Florida State-Louisville game was the latest example of a conference moving a high profile game to the middle of the week.

For other small conferences, it’s provided exposure they never thought they’d get. The Sun Belt Conference now plays two Tuesday games per year on ESPN and has branded the games — usually between two of the conference’s better teams — as #FunBelt. It’s not organically grown like #MACtion (which the MAC has now trademarked), but it’s still captivated college football fans better than a weekend Sun Belt game ever would.

“(Fun Belt) fits with the atmosphere that we’re trying to create,” Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson said.

“ESPN has very few windows left. There’s ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU exposure. “As football has saturated, the opportunity (arose) to carve out a time that the Sun Belt could grab national exposure.”

And thus, Mr Trahan's hopes to the contrary, the Southeastern or the Big Ten will crowd out the mid-majors.

For this year, though, Northern Illinois defeated Ball State in Muncie, before lots of empty seats, and then held on against Toledo in DeKalb, in front of a majority of empty seats.  And next week's tilt with Ohio in Athens has been relegated to ESPN3, title and bowl implications not-withstanding.

HOW QUICKLY FORTUNE TURNS.Four years ago, the Northern Illinois football team rated some recognition in the Bowl Championship Series rankings. Now it's the Bottom Ten.

"Remember": The Huskies went to bowl games in 2004 and 2006. After Saturday's loss to Temple, that must feel like a long time ago in DeKalb.

That was last week's rankings. The editorial board at the Northern Star apparently has short memories.

With the Huskies settling comfortably into the MAC cellar with a 1-6 record following Saturday’s loss to Western Michigan, it seems hard to fathom that NIU played in a bowl game against a nationally respected Texas Christian team just 10 months ago. Thankfully for the Huskies, in this day and age of “everybody-gets-a-trophy” sports philosophy, they may still get an invite to “Bill’s Barber Shop Bowl.”

There appears to be some illogic, however, when the editors lay out their case.

Of the six games NIU has lost this season, the Huskies led at halftime in three of them – not to mention the 31-14 third quarter advantage the Huskies squandered in the home opener against SIU, a team that literally isn’t even in NIU’s league. And in their only win of the season, a 42-35 “triumph” over perpetual laughing stock Idaho, the Huskies still nearly managed to blow a three-touchdown lead.

On top of that, coaches are jumping ship from NIU like there’s an iceberg on the horizon. Repeated instances of young coaches leaving Novak’s staff for supposedly greener pastures seem to suggest that they knew tomorrow was not looking up for NIU. And now that they’re gone, there is no tomorrow.

That final sentence illustrates the reality of life in the mid-majors. Coaches who demonstrate some sort of potential for building programs in power conferences get hired away. Tenure does not lock promising professors into positions either. The illness the editors are diagnosing might be mental (we're never going to be Illinois so why bother?) or fiscal (we do on the cheap what any highly regarded university throws many more resources at.) People who get better offers (whether the dimension is money or working conditions or visibility) take them.

AND YET ANOTHER TRAIN WRECK IN PROGRESS? Seven wins could get Huskies bowl bid.

All Northern Illinois needs to do is win out and finish the regular season with a 7-5 record. [Mid-American Commissioner] Chryst said Garrett Wolfe and the Huskies' performance in the last four years would be attractive for a bowl consideration.“They would definitely have to get to seven wins,” said Chryst. “There is such great energy here. Being in the bowl mix the last several years, Northern Illinois' name is definitely out there.The MAC is guaranteed three bowl games - the Motor City, GMAC and International. Chryst said the likelihood of the conference receiving a fourth has intensified, with a fifth tie-in a possibility.

“It's still very early, but it looks like right now the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego will have an open slot,” said Chryst. “It's tough to say (for a fifth bowl game). We are really going to be aggressive because we would definitely love to tell a story for some of our teams. There is a potential fourth game out there, but there could be more that may open up.”

It has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with money.

THE MID-MAJOR TITLE GAME.

Northern Illinois's football team gets it done the hard way.  The title belt even says so.

Northern Illinois University photograph, Day 3: Practice album.

Spot the other team thirteen points, have the starting quarterback hop off the field: all in a day's work.

After falling behind 13-0 quickly in the first quarter, the Huskies roared back, scoring 31 unanswered points and never looking back en route to the team’s ninth straight victory.

Harnish hit Perez Ashford on a 9-yard touchdown pass two plays after a disputed spot on fourth down kept the drive alive, pulling the Huskies to 13-7 just before the end of the first quarter.

The Huskies briefly lost Harnish to an injured left ankle early in the second quarter, but backup Jordan Lynch engineered a seven-play, 78-yard drive that ended on his 3-yard touchdown run to give NIU a 14-13 lead with 4:49 left in the first half.

The Huskies added another touchdown just before the half when Doeren gambled on the final play of the drive, going for the touchdown with 2 seconds remaining instead of opting for a field goal.

Jamal Womble plowed forward for a 1-yard touchdown to give Northern Illinois a 21-13 halftime lead.

In the second half: a touchdown pass immediately after the interception, and an interception return for a touchdown. Something Packer-like about all that.

The official clock and the referee's field radio didn't work very well, and the replay officials are becoming an irritation.  On the other hand, with Alabama's victory in the Confederacy Bowl, er, BCS Title Game, the longest collegiate football winning streak in the land belongs to Northern Illinois.

It's also fitting that the university that introduced Homecoming to the United States participate in the opening of Mardi Gras in the city that introduced Mardi Gras in the United States.  (Yes, New Orleans gets more publicity for its Carnival, but it's ahead of Mobile in being sacked by David Farragut, not in holding Carnival.)

Northern Illinois University photograph, Day 4: Mardi Gras Parade and Fireworks album.

The mascots also made the trip.  The university adopts shelter dogs (Siberian Huskies being very high maintenance dogs) and keeps them on the traveling squad as long as they are able.

Northern Illinois University photograph, Victory album.

One popular activity at televised sporting events is to reverse-acronym ESPN.

Northern Illinois University photograph, Victory album.

There is some truth to their claim, and the university's latest strategic plan proposes to increase enrollments and raise the academic profile.  There's one pitfall.  Both Arkansas State and Northern Illinois are on record among the sports pundits as aspiring to be the next Boise State (a phenomenon we've seen in these pages before.)  That's troubling, as one entry in a Historiann roundup of Excellence Without Money comes from Boise State.

My sense is that our students, and particularly our undergrads, are predominantly working class. Last I checked, our four-year graduation rate is 8 percent, and the six-year is 26 percent, but of course that doesn’t say much about reality, as many of our students are transfers from elsewhere, and they don’t figure into graduation rates.* (Cross-reference.) Many of my students are my age (36) or older.  This semester, I have students born between 1957 and 1993, which, as you can imagine, makes for interesting discussions.  Many are veterans.  Many have fought with addiction in various forms.  About one-third are Mormon.  The overwhelming majority are white.  Many are single parents. At least three of my students have initiated divorces this semester; I can’t remember having any married undergrads at Davis.

Commuter universities are like that. Those tales would not be strange to anyone with experience at Wayne State or Illinois-Chicago or Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  The problem, though, is in attempting to raise enrollments and the university's academic profile on the cheap.

I’m not sure why our administration wants to bring in more students, as we’re having a hard enough time graduating the students we already have.  Perhaps it’s because if we’re investing heavily in the sciences, we’re going to need to recoup the costs somewhere–and where better than by making arts and humanities faculty teach more classes, each with a significantly greater number of students?

There's a lot more in that post, and it will reward careful study.  It's corroborated by a Cold Spring Shops source who notes that the existing Boise State library is inadequate for some areas of research.  The good news is that Northern Illinois's administration is, publicly at least, making clear that a larger enrollment will require a larger faculty.

Meanwhile, the former sports information director advises Mid-American fans generally to savor the moment.

Big Ten and BCS envy? Who needs it? With a Northern Illinois victory over Arkansas State in Sunday’s GoDaddy.com Bowl, not only would the MAC wind up an unprecedented 4-1 in this postseason, the league’s four bowl triumphs would double the previous best (2-0 MAC bowl record in 2001 and 2003, 2-3 in 2004, and 2-2 in 2010) and equal this year’s Big Ten bowl win total (4-6). Eat your heart out, WAC (0-3), Pac-12 (2-5) and ACC (2-6) fans.

There's some campaigning (appropriate on Primary Night) to get Northern Illinois out of the "others receiving votes" category.

It’s time for the Huskies 0-and-forever drought of Top 25 finishes to end as well.

I never thought I would write those words this season. Not after NIU’s defense looked unfit for college football – let alone the country’s upper echelon – in the season’s early weeks.

As they say, Developing.

A MID-MAJOR TITLE GAME.

Tonight, Northern Illinois and Alabama-Birmingham will kick off in the Boca Raton Bowl.

There are several pregame evaluations of the bowl game in the scheme of things.  This watchability ranking places it 22d in the lineup of 39 or 40, with a backhanded endorsement.

A couple conference champs going at it. This will be low scoring but I could see this being a competitive game that’s worth some Tuesday night viewing with no other football to compete with. Also what a sponsor for a bowl game.

First time I ever heard of Cheribundi Tart Cherry, which is some sort of energy drink.

Another ranking has it as high as thirteenth, based on the gone-to-restored status of Alabama-Birmingham football.

The full list of bowls pitting conference champions: The Orange (Alabama-Oklahoma), the Rose (Ohio State-Washington) and the Boca Raton. Not bad company. The Huskies (8-5) are a perennial Mid-American Conference power, while the work coach Bill Clark (pictured) at UAB (10-3) remains one of the more remarkable developments in the sport this decade.

Then come the skeptics.  Slag the Mid-American:  Western Michigan 37, Northern Illinois 38, Ohio 39.

Northern Illinois is miserable in bowl games under head coach Rod Carey. UAB was miserable in its 41-6 loss to Ohio in last year’s Bahama’s Bowl. Something has to give between one of only three bowls with conference champs going at it – the Rose and Orange the two others. It’s a Tuesday night, what else are going to do, be miserable?

Speaking of the Orange Bowl: first, that bowl losing streak began for then interim coach Rod Carey at the Orange Bowl, and Florida State is this year not in any bowl, after last year becoming bowl-eligible on the strength of a mid-season bought win; meanwhile, last year's disappointed participants, Donna Shalala North and Donna Shalala South, meet again in the New Era Pinstripe Bowl.

This wasn’t an easy matchup to get excited about last year, when they played in the Orange Bowl after both losing conference title games. The Hurricanes and Badgers both stumbled into disappointing 7-5 seasons this fall. At least Wisconsin tailback Jonathan Taylor (pictured, FBS-best 1,989 yards) wraps up his sophomore year in an environment (New York) almost as conducive to a raw late December day as Camp Randall Stadium.

That's familiar territory for Wisconsin, which at the beginning of this century came off two straight Rose Bowl wins with national title aspirations, as did their opponent UCLA.  They got a participation trophy, and Wisconsin won that game.

THE PARTICIPATION TROPHIES HAVE NOW BEEN AWARDED.

Apart from the national championship game, featuring original Ten Michigan and soon to be in the Expanded Big Ten Washington, the college bowl schedule has been fulfilled.  In some ways that's unfortunate, that Mobile, Alabama event that kicked off their Mardi Gras on or near January 6 looked like a fun undercard bout for the title game.

Recall, dear reader, that not enough Division I teams racked up the six wins to qualify for the expanded field, and only Minnesota made grades.  Thus some teams with candidate membership in Division I also got bowl bids.  Let's take stock, first of the candidates.

Jacksonville State will be among the Opening Saturday, December 16, games, facing Louisiana in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. Some participation trophy, your opponent effectively has a home match. James Madison will face the Air Force on December 23 in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl. Again, some participation trophy, a university named after a guy who had his Executive Mansion burned faces a service academy in a bowl sponsored by an aircraft builder.

Jacksonville State got the win, while Air Force brought the incendiaries a week later.  Neither Army nor Navy got a bowl bid this year.  The weekend the pairings were released, Army sang second.  Dementia Joe was not there to hear it.

Sometimes, snark for the sake of spite backfires.

Minnesota get to continue their tradition of losing to Mid-American teams, facing Bowling Green on the Feast of Stephen, December 26, in the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit. Do I see a pattern? The Mid-American title game takes place at that field, and Bowling Green is not that far south of the Ohio state line.

Minnesota got the win.  But then, if you hire Jerry Kill followed by P. J. Fleck, your team ought to be capable of beating Mid-American opponents.  The Axe has mostly remained in Madison.

I'M SATISFIED. Three weeks ago:

I won't be satisfied unless Badgers and Huskies both get bids.

Badgers got theirs.

University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema, with a 28-10 record in three seasons, and Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, with a 381-123-4 record in 43 seasons, are at opposite ends of the coaching spectrum.

It's no surprise they have different views of their upcoming meeting in the 2008 Champs Sports Bowl.

"This is how it has changed," Bowden, in his 33rd season at Florida State, said during a teleconference Sunday night. "If you're not playing for the national championship . . . who cares?

Given the expectations in Tallahassee and in Madison at the beginning of the season, that's logical. (In 2000, Wisconsin was returning much of its team after two straight Rose Bowl wins, but after a season that included a shoe scandal, they earned a rematch with a similarly chastened UCLA (motto: On! Wisconsin!) in one of the late-December games.)

Huskies got theirs.

It was announced Sunday night that the Huskies would play in the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La. Dec. 28 at 7 p.m. The game can be seen on ESPN.

“We felt like we had a chance [of going to a bowl game], we really did,” [first-year coach Jerry] Kill said. “It’s certainly exciting to know we’re going now, there’s no question about that.”

The Huskies will take on Louisiana Tech (7-5) of the Western Athletic Conference. Louisiana Tech’s campus in Ruston, La. is roughly an hour from Shreveport, giving the Bulldogs a virtual home game.

The weather here is not conducive to outdoor practice. On the other hand, the strange patterns that sometimes arise in late December or early January can make DeKalb positively balmy. That Silicon Valley Classic had worse playing conditions than would have prevailed in DeKalb.

Northern Illinois was once a member of the same conference as Louisiana Tech for football. I forget the name of that conference, although it wouldn't be far off to call it the Harriman Lines Conference, with teams in Illinois and Louisiana and Nevada and California.

SATURDAY IS FOR COLLEGE FOOTBALL.

Former Northern Illinois sports information director Mike Korcek strengthens his case.

Only the [Mid-American Conference] hierarchy and league administrators can explain this continued nine-year TV experiment with ESPN - trading the traditional college football Saturday for midweek games in November and the exposure. Seeing some of the sparse crowds in Mid-Am stadiums live or on TV, I don’t know if the price is right.

No disrespect, but maybe some of the league presidents should sit outside with the loyal, but shivering fans on these nights. It’s cold, dark, and clammy in Huskie Stadium at 8 p.m. in mid-November. This is not Honolulu.

The aluminum bleachers are for the little people. The REMFs have skyboxes, or perhaps those north-end rec rooms behind the balcony of the locker room.

(Go here for the previous version of Mr Korcek's case.)

Toledo Blade columnist Dave Hackenberg concurs.

There was some guy sitting in his recliner in Little Rock who heard UT had a top-25 team, flipped on his TV, saw large swaths of empty seats on the screen, and figures we’re a lousy sports town. And after halftime, when a lady in Golden, Colo., put her feet up with a Coors Light and her knitting, those swaths had turned into entire sections.

This is not a lousy sports town. It is a lousy time to play a college football game.

It was nonetheless entertaining. Gracious, the teams combined for 577 yards of offense in the first half alone.

In order to get Toledo, the pre-season favorite, additional prime-time exposure, the Wednesday night game sent the Rockets to DeKalb.

[Northern Illinois quarterback Jordan] Lynch threw for 296 yards and two touchdowns in the third quarter, completing 13 of 15 attempts. Amazingly, the Huskies gained 347 yards in the quarter without facing a third down.

It ended as a hard-fought game, with Northern Illinois defending the West Division title.

The Blade also explained to its readers how things have changed, football-wise, at Northern Illinois.

After a 1-10 debut season, the Huskies celebrated their return to the MAC in 1997 by going 0-11.

“That had to be the worst team in major college football,” [retired coach Joe] Novak recalled. “We had to do some weeding out.

“It wasn’t pretty.”

But NIU insiders could see baby steps.

I leave readers to work out for themselves what might have been, had headquarters encouraged its faculty to make some baby steps and stay the course, rather than constantly burdening the academic endeavor with pet projects and fads.  Football progress somehow proceeds without revisiting the mission statement or drafting new strategic plans.

It was gradual, but early in the 2002 season the Huskies were ready to make a major move. They started 1-3, but followed with seven straight wins before a 33-30 loss to Toledo cost them an outright MAC West title and a trip to the league championship game.

In 2003, the Huskies beat No. 14 Maryland on national TV, then Alabama and Iowa State en route to a 7-0 start and a No. 10 slot in the BCS standings. But before it was over NIU dropped a 49-30 decision at Toledo and, in a great injustice, was not even selected for a bowl game.

Northern Illinois ended a two-decade bowl drought the following year and Novak got his only win against [Toledo] in 2005, a 35-17 decision at the Glass Bowl that paved the way to a MAC title game berth.

Since that 1-3 start in ’02, the Huskies are 86-47 overall and 63-22 in MAC play under Novak and his successors, Jerry Kill and Dave Doeren.

In the late 1990s Huskie Stadium was a ghost town — moms, dads, and girlfriends — even on game days; now it is a tough ticket and one of the MAC’s more hostile stages for opponents. Every NIU player and coach who walks into the Yordon Center, the team facility at one end of the stadium, should thank Novak.

Arguably, that 2002 season should have begun 2-2 (not the first time or the last time questionable officiating affected the outcome of a game), and it's probably more fun to have the play value of a good football program rather than a questionable one, or a corrupt one.  Also, arguably, capital investments in improved locker rooms and indoor practice facilities are not capital investments in classroom buildings with leaking roofs.  Those apparently get repaired when the building inspector condemns them.

BOWL CRUSHING HUSKIES.

Bowling Green.  Again.

Bowling Green simply possessed the formula to beat NIU. They caught the Huskies on an off night and executed almost to perfection when the previous 12 NIU opponents before them had so often folded in pressure situations with chances to win.

The upset bug finally bit NIU after the Huskies had avoided it time and time again with comeback victories and consistent second-half dominance.

Like chess, the mistakes are there, waiting to be made.  And the better player finds them.

With busted coverage after busted coverage, they showed why [Northern Illinois] came into the game ranked 108th in the nation (out of 123) in pass defense. It was because of this that NIU coach Rod Carey didn’t look at the performance as a particularly poor one.

“We’ve had busted coverages before this year, and the quarterback doesn’t see them, so he doesn’t throw it to them,” Carey said. “Give [Bowling Green] a lot of credit. The quarterback found it when we did have a bust here and there.”

So while Carey and his team certainly weren’t proud of the defense, it was more about what Johnson did well than what the Huskies did poorly. They were exposed for mistakes they’ve made all year, mistakes that may have caused them to give up 274 passing yards a game.

It’s an area of concern as the Huskies head into bowl season.

A bowl season that might be more expensive to the Mid-American Conference. "[A] win for Bowling Green would also lose millions for the school, the [conference] and all of the non-Automatically Qualifying Conferences."  The author concludes that the operating profit of Bowling Green's athletics program would vanish without its cut of the BCS jackpot.

I thought it was amateur athletics and it had nothing to do with money.  Good game, Bowling Green, and let's see what pairings come out on Sunday.

LEARNING CURVES.

Barry Rozner of the Daily Herald offers his perspective on the Orange Bowl.

So it was with much difficulty that 35,000 Huskies fans trudged out of Sun Life Stadium Wednesday morning — at least I think it was Wednesday morning here by the time it finally ended.

It was rather sad, actually. This was a game NIU could have won had their offense done anything at all, had their offense been anything resembling their regular-season offense.

The defense did its part against Florida State, but NIU QB Jordan Lynch had a rough night, and when he's not right, there's nothing much right about the NIU offense.

Yes, FSU has a terrific defense, but there were plays to be made and NIU simply missed them.

Lynch was impatient in the run game and forced throws when he had time. On this night, and unlike the entire season, Lynch didn't look like one of the top offensive players in college football.

Being chased to the sideline late in the third quarter, his interception deep in FSU territory with NIU down a touchdown — not long after recovering an onside kick — was the pivotal moment in the game.

It was still a two-score game with 11 minutes left and again on FSU's side of the 50 when a turnover turned it into a 21-point rout.

So it was a bit of a tease, seeing NIU march down the field in the third quarter with a chance to tie it, but even Kirk Herbstreit would have to admit that the Huskies made a game of it.

That characterization seems about right, on offense the team looked to be too tightly wound, perhaps understandable for a debut appearance on a big stage.

LOSING THE POSITIONAL ARMS RACE.

The longer the wait from the end of the season, the more expensive it gets to keep the football team in camp.

In 2010, Northern Illinois had to wait two weeks between its loss in the Mid-American Conference Championship game and its victory against Fresno State in the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho.

This past season, the Huskies had more than a month from their MAC title win in Detroit on Dec. 2 to the GoDaddy.com Bowl victory over Arkansas State on Jan. 8 in Mobile, Ala. That also meant players had to spend more time on campus and more money on meals. 

Helping kick off Mardi Gras in the cradle of Mardi Gras might have been fun, but the bowl revenues weren't that great.  Selling wins to Big Ten teams with large alumni bases in Chicago isn't always lucrative enough.

NIU received $431,680 in total revenue from the GoDaddy.com Bowl. Total expenses were $593,238, which resulted in the loss.

The internal athletic funds used to cover the loss include revenue from the Huskies’ game against Wisconsin at Soldier Field on Sept. 17, 2011.

NIU received about $850,000 in revenue from the Solider Field contest, NIU spokeswoman Donna Turner told the Daily Chronicle on Wednesday. That number falls short of expectations of $1 million. Wisconsin was paid the first $1 million in revenue, with NIU keeping whatever revenue was left, according to the game contract.

Included in the revenue figure from the GoDaddy.com Bowl was the $400,000 payout the school received from the MAC, as well as $31,680 in ticket revenue. NIU sold 738 tickets. The school distributed 1,708 tickets, which included free tickets for students and player comps.

Headquarters is of the view that the football visibility is worth it.

Just under three months to the next season, which will begin in Chicago, with Iowa playing the role of the visiting team.

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN.

The first college football game I ever attended was Northern Illinois at Wisconsin, September 1971, freshman year.  Wisconsin won, and the fans leaving Camp Randall were yelling "Rose Bowl!"  Just a little college sarcasm, as those football teams weren't good, and by early October, they'd be yelling "Hurry Up, November!", because the hockey team was that good.

Had anyone told me that 41 years later my employer would be Northern Illinois, and Wisconsin would be playing in the Rose Bowl as a prelude to Northern Illinois playing in the Orange Bowl, I'm not sure what my reaction would be.

Now that it has happened, I am pleased to enjoy the moment.

Northern Illinois University photograph.

The bowl selection didn't please everybody.  I'll refer readers to Red and Black Attack for doing the comprehensive linking to initial Orange Bowl coverage and subsequent commentary.  There's a lot.  I'll give USA Today's Mike LoPresti the Trenchant Observation for Today.

The Huskies' BCS-busting saga reminds us how tunes can change in college football, and not just when the band segues from the fight song to the alma mater.

Before: Critics threaten to go to court, to Congress, to the Vatican, to demand action against the closed-minded BCS, for not including outsiders such as Boise State and Utah. Unfair.

Now: How in the name of Bud Wilkinson did Northern Illinois get picked over Oklahoma? Unfair.

Of course, and even Der Führer is displeased.

Meanwhile, the academic life of the campus goes on.  The basketball team drew a larger-than-average crowd for the Orange Bowl pep rally, and I've overheard a number of conversations about winter break travel plans being hastily created or changed.  The basketball game was competing with the Avalon Quartet's culmination of the Beethoven cycle, in which they scheduled all three Rasumovsky Quartets for one night.  That's the chamber music equivalent of double overtime in the title game, and a splendid time was had by all, despite the regular audience becoming fewer in number and higher in median age.

BUYING AND SELLING WINS.

The Northern Star obtains the non-conference guarantees for the 2015 Northern Illinois football program.  On net, football stands to trim its operating deficit by $555,000.  Nevada - Las Vegas gets $300K to cover this year's travel expenses, a reciprocal transaction to 2014 when Northern Illinois traveled.  Murray State gets $395K.

The Huskies aren’t scheduled to make a future trip to Murray State, hence a larger payout than the one given to the Rebels, which was a home-and-home series. The away schools tend to get a higher monetary payment when the home teams don’t make a return trip because there’s the loss of a chance for the original road team to make money and get exposure off of a home game, [athletic director Sean] Frazier said.

Murray State would like to get additional visibility for its program.

Arguably, Northern Illinois also does, and Ohio State provides visibility and $900K.

The Buckeyes boast a trio of quarterbacks in Braxton Miller, J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones who could start for nearly any team in the country, but none has been named the starter yet. When the five-time defending MAC West champion Huskies play their first road game of the season they’ll look to take Ohio State’s money and a victory.

“Northern Illinois [is] a great program, very strong,” said Martin Jarmond, Ohio State executive associate athletic director in charge of football scheduling. “How many other schools in the country can say that they played in their conference championship game five years in a row? I think Northern Illinois, they’re right up there. They’re as tough as anybody on our non-conference schedule. They’re a quality program that’s used to winning.”

Give Ohio State credit: strong mid-major teams have trouble scheduling these early games because the hosting team can't be sure their guarantee buys them a big win to embellish those poll rankings.

Last up, the beginning of a home-and-home with Boston College.

The Huskies will collect a $350,000 check from Boston College for their trip to Chestnut Hill, Mass., for their final non-conference game on Sept. 26.

The Golden Eagles are scheduled to make a return trip to DeKalb on Sept. 23, 2016, or Sept. 2, 2017. They’ll get $300,000 from the Huskies, which is $50,000 less than their check to NIU because the Huskies incurred added costs to move a previously scheduled game to fit Boston College into their schedule. The Huskies were scheduled to host Wyoming on Sept. 26, 2015, but they moved that game to Sept. 11, 2021.

There may still be people in headquarters hoping to get a midwestern version of the Flutie Effect, in which a spectacular Boston College win boosted future enrollments.  There was a bit of an Orange Bowl effect, but the applicants were marginal.

But the Star buried the lede.

“We feel that our brand and our brand of football is respected nationally,” Frazier said. “And we should be respected with a compensation number that’s worthy of who we are as an institution as well as a football program.”

You mean it has something to do with money, protestations of amateur sports notwithstanding?

KUDOS.

Good going, guys.

For the first time in modern history, Northern Illinois University’s football team has four candidates on the national College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America ballot.

The quartet of Huskie student-athletes---senior quarterback Josh Haldi, senior cornerback Rob Lee, senior wide receiver Dan Sheldon, and senior offensive tackle Jake VerStraete---were named to the 2004 CoSIDA University Division District Five All-Academic football squad, regional coordinator Tom Lamonica of Illinois State University announced Thursday (November 11).

In other good news, some of the BCS conferences that had commitments in principle for their lower-division teams that somehow scraped together six wins have failed to deliver those teams.

The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC did not produce enough qualified teams to fill out their preseason bowl tie-ins, freeing up those games for other eligible teams.

NIU (8-3) is one of six bowl-eligible MAC teams.

All four ESPN.com experts predict NIU will play in its first bowl since 1983. Ivan Maisel and Rece Davis both have the Huskies playing in the Silicon Valley Football Classic against Fresno St., while Pat Forde and Dave Revsine predict the Huskies will play Minnesota in the Motor City Bowl.

Road trip?

I WISH IT COULD BE THAT EASY.

At Phi Beta Cons, Jane Shaw lauds Hofstra and Northeastern discontinuing their football programs.

At first, I was pleased with the news. Major sports — football, especially — are costly to universities and often threaten the educational mission. To drop football, given its strong proponents, is a courageous step, one that wouldn’t be taken without good reason.

After further review, she sees a threat to the continued existence of the private universities.

Is dropping football another sign that state universities are “crowding out” private universities? Private schools, which depend heavily on tuition, must weigh their priorities carefully, while state universities can more easily tap into taxpayer resources. Could dropping football, while eminently sensible in some cases, push more students to the public schools with their well-funded athletic programs and ample state revenues?

Let's take this proposition seriously. If she is suggesting that many potential collegians are not serious, more interested in beer 'n circus and the rabbit culture than in cultivating habits of mind, and that the private universities dwindling market share reflects that revelation of preference, by all means, let's develop that argument.