Remember The Good Ol’ Days, those times of yesteryear when the wine was young and the sun-kissed evenings lasted forever?
They’re not in the distant past for Northern Illinois football. They’re in the here and now, very much a part of the present tense.
USC under Pete Carroll. Ohio State under Jim Tressel. Virginia Tech under Frank Beamer through the 2010 season. Bob Stoops at Oklahoma through the 2010 season (just to name a few). A number of powerful programs in the 21st century recently witnessed eras rich in consistent annual achievement, taking an opponent’s best shot every year and almost always rising above that challenge.
The fact that Northern Illinois hasn’t resided in a power conference or become an annual fixture in New Year’s Six (formerly BCS) bowls should not mean that the Huskies ought to be ignored in conversations of immensely successful programs. More specifically, any attempt to appreciate any Group Of Five program should not immediately be diminished by the ever-ready “BUT WOULD THEY WIN IN THE SEC?” claim that’s become such a central part of every college football Twitter debate or message-board fight in modern times.
No one — no one — would ever suggest that Northern Illinois or any other G-5 program would easily be able to slide into a power conference and succeed at the same level it does in its current conference home. However, excellence should be applauded for its own sake, and that means Northern Illinois should be heralded for what it has been able to do — not just in the Mid-American Conference, but in the larger history of the program.
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Let’s start with the obvious but then work our way toward a broader appreciation of what Northern Illinois football has achieved in recent times.
The obvious? The first BCS bowl bid in the history of the MAC, the 2013 Orange Bowl against Florida State; five straight MAC West Division championships, and three conference championships in the last four seasons; a Heisman Trophy finalist, Jordan Lynch. The Huskies have become the face of the MAC and have put themselves in the hunt for big prizes over the past few seasons. No one needs to embellish the facts when they speak so highly of a program.
What stands out, though, about the work Northern Illinois has done is that it hasn’t been the product of one coach, one central figure who has stayed with this team for the long haul. The most remarkable aspect of the NIU ascendancy — yet to be stopped by another MAC West team — is that it has continued in the midst of transitions.
Consider how Larry Blakeney (now retired) built the Troy Trojans in the Sun Belt. Consider how Chris Petersen took Boise State to the next level, putting in place a foundation from which former colleague Bryan Harsin could mold a Fiesta Bowl champion. Consider how Gary Patterson took TCU from the WAC and Mountain West and the college football underclass and turned it into a formidable Big 12 force. Consider how George O’Leary — unethical though he is — turned UCF into a big winner.
It’s not an ironclad rule, but generally, programs that come from the underclass in college football are brought to prominence by a visionary coach who transforms the culture and remains on hand to oversee the sustainment of a winning identity. We can easily appreciate this.
Well, with Northern Illinois, that hasn’t been the case.
Joe Novak spent 12 seasons in DeKalb, Illinois, from 1996 through 1997. No coach has spent more time at NIU since the program took up Division I-A football in 1968. Novak certainly wasn’t a bad coach; when he stepped aside after the 2007 season, he had reached more bowl games (2) than the Huskies had made in their first 28 seasons (1). Yet, once Novak — the coach with relative longevity in the program — passed the baton to someone else, the Huskies took off. This represents an inversion of the normal pattern in college football as far as coaches are concerned.
Jerry Kill spent three seasons as the head coach at NIU. Dave Doeren spent two. Rod Carey has spent two seasons in charge of the Huskies, and is about to embark on his third season. With this revolving-door dynamic, fans and pundits are conditioned to think that results should — if not suffer — be subjected to some inconsistency. Yet, the five straight MAC West titles and the three conference crowns in four years reflect a level of achievement that’s better than ever before. To further reinforce the points being advanced here, Kill is the coach who really seemed to give the program its legs and put other people — his players and his assistant coaches — in position to carry the program forward. As true as that statement might be, however, it was still up to the players and future head coaches to finish what Kill started.
They’ve done that and more, precisely by achieving more than Kill ever did (and Kill accomplished a ton). Doeren lead the Huskies to their Orange Bowl berth. Carey might have flourished with a roster that was fully loaded in 2013, but he remained in charge of the MAC West in 2014 (and actually regained the conference crown) with new pieces at key positions.
Indeed, as much as the constant outflow of coaches has been in DeKalb over the past several seasons, the changes at quarterback have been just as conspicuous. To appreciate this reality is to appreciate the greatness of NIU in full.
When Chandler Harnish played out his NIU career in 2011, everyone in and around the program wondered how those immensely productive years were going to be topped. Harnish accumulated over 4,000 yards of total offense in 2011, averaging just over 335 yards of total offense per game. In his NIU career, Harnish produced a game with over 200 total passing yards and 200 total rushing yards, something rarely done in the previous 140-plus years of college football history. This was a very special player who left NIU’s doors. In 2011, Doeren — in his first full season as an FBS head coach — received the benefit of Harnish’s last season in DeKalb. In year two, Doeren had to cultivate a different signal caller.
He made the Orange Bowl with that replacement, Mr. Lynch, who was everything Harnish was in terms of production and leadership… only better. Harnish never received an invitation to the Downtown Athletic Club as a Heisman Trophy finalist, but Lynch did, in 2013. Lynch’s toughness as a runner gave him the component Harnish didn’t quite possess. That ability to bounce off tacklers after the first point of contact supplemented Lynch’s elusiveness and his passing prowess.
In 2010, Northern Illinois had already begun to ripen into the program it is today. Kill raised the bar at the program. He developed Harnish and handed him off to Doeren in 2011. Within the context of 2011 and 2012, Northern Illinois was set to do well. From that perspective, perhaps NIU’s successes aren’t that surprising.
However, the fact that NIU succeeded well enough to make history in 2012 and break the BCS barrier for the MAC represented a thunderbolt for the rest of the college football community. Similarly, the fact that NIU has kept chugging along under yet another head coach (Rod Carey) and Jordan Lynch’s successor at quarterback (Drew Hare) only makes the enormity of NIU’s sustained supremacy that much more remarkable.
