NIU Huskies might not stay in college football spotlight, but they'll be just fine

DEKALB — There’s us, and then there’s them.

“Us” being Northern Illinois’ football team.

“Them” being pretty much everybody else. That includes all opponents, of course. It also includes the media, especially those reporters who are taking the Huskies’ 16-14 win at No. 5 Notre Dame on Saturday and turning the biggest upset in school history into even more than it was, if that’s possible. Beatles invasion! Moon landing! NIU! You get the idea.

One such ninny sat across from Huskies coach Thomas Hammock in his office Tuesday and took this approach shamelessly far.

“You’re rock stars,” I said. “You’re America’s team.”

“Nah,” Hammock said, “we’re just us.”

A sign on Hammock’s wall lists the “Five Fights” that he believes face his team, any team. Along with “us vs. them” are entitlement, division from within, complacency and fatigue. Whatever the Huskies were fighting in South Bend, they were also taking on the mighty Fighting Irish. Winning the game was no fluke — the lopsided game stats confirmed that — but, still, there won’t be a more head-turning result in college football all season, and that’s just a fact.

That’s why Hammock, in his sixth season coaching his alma mater, has been besieged by interview requests since before the team buses arrived back on campus at 10:30 p.m. ESPN, USA Today, Dan Patrick’s show and others reached out, and Hammock said yes to them all because there’s no such thing as “no” at a time like this.

“You want to be in these moments,” he said, “and so you have to deal with the other side of it.”

The viral reaction to NIU’s win also had a lot to do with Hammock himself. He bawled on the field in front of TV cameras in a manner not often seen from slick, CEO-style college coaches, which is not to suggest for a second that Hammond, 43, fits that type. The former star running back — whose senior season was cut short due to a temporary heart problem — looks more like a pal or an affable neighbor with whom it would be delightful to knock back a burger and a cold one. His tears showed the strength of his heart, and a nation was decidedly charmed.

“I was overcome, to be honest with you,” he said, “but it was real and authentic and me. I can only be me. I can’t be anybody else.”

His players wouldn’t want him to be. Nobody loves the Huskies more than Hammock, as everyone under his charge intuits quickly. In 2020, Hammock’s team — with 77 freshmen, the youngest in the country — went 0-6 amid a pandemic. One year later, the Huskies won the MAC. There are players who were on both teams who are still around, such as Devonte O’Malley, who had two sacks and forced a fumble at Notre Dame and was named national defensive player of the week.

“Coach bleeds NIU and it shows,” O’Malley said.

Antario Brown, who had an 83-yard touchdown catch and 225 all-purpose yards, cried himself when he finally got a look at Hammock’s postgame emotions on social media.

“Those tears weren’t only his tears,” Brown said. “Those were everybody’s tears.”

NIU apparently led all college football teams over the weekend with 13.3 million impressions on X (the former Twitter), whatever that means. What does it mean?

“I don’t really know, either,” Hammock said with a laugh, “but I know it’s a big number. It’s a lot more interest than we’ve had in our program before.”

About that sudden surge of interest: What happens from here? The Huskies don’t have a game this week. By the time they take the field again, some other team will have pulled off the latest upset that has everybody talking. The short-attention-span news cycle is undefeated, after all.

It’s a bit sad to say, but Hammock and his team inevitably will recede to the fringes as college football at large revolves around the ever-evolving picture of an expanded, 12-team playoff. The only way they’ll be able to reintroduce themselves to a national audience might be to win all their games and snag the one playoff spot reserved for a Group of Five conference champion.

But the fact a Huskies team with zero four- and five-star recruits went on a bus trip to “the Mecca of college football,” as Hammock calls it, and beat a team with 58 of them (according to the recruiting outlet 247 Sports) can’t ever be erased.

So what if Notre Dame is ranked 18th this week, seven spots ahead of the Huskies? Makes a ton of sense, right? Or not. NIU can recount the $1.4 million it received to play the game if it helps ease the sting of that insult.

Back to the bus ride home. When the Huskies stepped into the DeKalb night, they were greeted by a couple hundred fans, all of them cheering and some bearing snacks and treats. Countless pictures were taken. It was a time for smiles, hugs and exhalations. Hammock stuck around and soaked it in, knowing this was the part that really mattered.

The national microphones will go away. It's the "us" that's forever.