Among the NIU Huskies football community, ESPN Analyst Kirk Herbstreit might be as much of an arch-villain as it gets. When Northern Illinois was selected for the 2013 Orange Bowl after the 2012 college football season, Herbstreit blasted the Huskies, saying they had no business being in a BCS bowl game.
NIU Huskies fans have reviled him ever since. However, Herbstreit had some praise for Northern Illinois, when I sat down with him at The Drake Hotel Tuesday afternoon. The ESPN Analyst was in town to reveal the latest edition of the College Football Playoff rankings from the Champions Classic at the United Center.
“I think there is something to be said about being a dominant program in the MAC,” said Herbstreit in response to my question about the NIU Huskies potentially moving to a bigger conference.
“It’s not like your Marshall who’s leaving FCS and going to FBS, or where North Dakota State, where there trying to phase their next move. The MAC has such a tradition. I don’t know why being a great MAC team, is that not enough? Is that not good?”
“If you’re a great MAC team and you go 12-0 and you really put it on people like Northern Illinois did you’ll probably get a chance to be in the Group of Five,” he continued.
The next evening I covered the Huskies very exciting 27-19 victory over Western Michigan, meaning I visited the NIU Huskies rebel base just hours after an exclusive meeting with NIU fans’ Darth Vader.
Indeed the NIU Huskies have solidified their position as that great MAC program, with five straight league championship game appearances and seven consecutive bowl trips. The eight straight bowl berth is coming this holiday season. By defeating P.J. Fleck and WMU last night, in what was a MAC West Division Title elimination game, Northern Illinois will go their sixth straight league title game with a victory over Ohio on Tuesday night.
(Yes, Tuesday night and Wednesday night football still seems strange to me too, but let’s just go with it, ok?)
NIU won its 22nd consecutive November game, dating back to Nov. 27, 2009, last night. The streak includes the 2012 MAC Championship game played on Nov. 30. The November winning streak is the longest in FBS. The NIU Huskies have now won 35 of their last 36 at home.
“Their defense bent but they didn’t break,” Fleck said, making a very on fleek statement.
“They know how to be a champion; they’ve been champion for a while.”
“To get over the hump you got to do it, there’s a difference between knowing and doing,” the Broncos Coach and NIU alum continued.
“You got to do it, that’s the hardest part of football. It’s still in the doing that matters.”
For the NIU Huskies, the doing/getting over the hump began with a 10-2 campaign during Fleck’s fifth year in 2003, when the Huskies were ranked as high as 12th in the nation.
Prior to that season, NIU Huskies football went 6-38 with a 23-game losing streak between 1995-98. By 2012 they had a BCS berth, and by 2013, the greatest player in school history, Jordan Lynch, was a Heisman finalist.
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