Short of a post before the opener this year, I really haven't read this board too much since the 2nd half of the CMU game last year. Naturally the latest post is in a thread created by VegasHuskie about apathy. I see nothing has changed.

Lets rewind to September 22nd, 2012. It is a picture perfect day in Huskie Stadium. Northern Illinois University, the defending MAC Champions, posted a thrilling victory at Army the week before. The Huskies, lead by future Heisman trophy finalist Jordan Lynch, coached by future North Carolina State head coach Dave Doeren would avenge a defeat from the year prior against the Kansas Jayhawks. Just over 3 months later, they would play in the Discover Orange Bowl.

The attendance that day? A season high 18,374.

The biggest problem in the world of Huskie football those days was home scheduling. The overriding excuse by this board was that Jeff Compher's inability to get quality opponents to DeKalb combined with playing the defacto MAC West Championship game (which 17,183 to DeKalb that year) was the reason for the lack of attendance to DeKalb.

Lets fast forward to August 1st, 2014 as now NIU Athletic Director Sean Frazier concludes "Schedulepalooza" by announcing both Utah and Maryland will travel to Huskie Stadium in the future. Other games included in "Schedulepalooza" were home and homes with the University of South Florida , Vanderbilt, and San Diego State University. NIU fans were asking for an upgraded schedule for years, and Sean Frazier delivered.

NIU has now played 3 of those matchups in Huskie Stadium, two on beautiful Saturday afternoons/evenings and one Friday night game. The reported attendance figures for those games:

2016 San Diego State: 14,513
2017 Boston College: 16,421
2018 Utah: 16,762

Average attendance: 15,899

So what's the excuse now?

NIU currently sits at 1-3 having lost to three P5 opponents, which has somehow sent NIU fans into a panic and have people calling for Rod Carey's job again. That seems to completely ignore that NIU, as a program, is 13-63-1 against P5 schools all-time and more specifically is 9-48-1 all-time against the Big Ten, PAC-12, and ACC, the 3 conferences they've played this year. For those of you scoring at home, 4 of those 9 wins have come with Rod Carey at the helm. Oh boy, better fire the coach!

Lets rewind to November 30th, 2012. Dave Doeren has just capped off easily the most successful run as head coach in the history of NIU, and in only two years two boot. Their win over Kent State has given the program it's second of back to back MAC Championships and under 48 hours later would earn a trip to the Orange Bowl. Doeren finishes his career at NIU 23-4 with 2 MAC Championships, and this poster's favorite football coach ever.

A common theory I hear on twitter is that Rod Carey can't beat halfway decent teams, particularly out of conference. Let's take a quick look at the greatest coach in NIU's history (Doreen's) out of conference results, more specifically against FBS oppoents.

2011
W 49-26 over Army in Huskie Stadium
Army's record in 2011: 2-9
L 45-42 @ Kansas(!!!!!!)
Kansas's 2011 record: 2-10, with NIU being their only FBS victory
L 49-7 against Wisconsin at Soldier Field. Holy hell, thank god this didn't happen in a bowl game!

2012
L 18-17 to Iowa at Soldier Field
Iowa's 2012 record: 4-8
W 41-40 @ Army
Army's 2012 record: 2-10
W 30-23 over Kansas in Huskie Stadium
Kansas's 2011 record: 1-11 (0 FBS wins that year)

Of his 6 OOC FBS games, he got rolled by an awesome Wisconsin team, lost to a bad Iowa team, lost to an AWFUL Kansas team, crushed an awful Army team in DeKalb, beat an awful Army team by 1, and be an equally awful Kansas team in DeKalb by 7. Maybe, just maybe, beating P5 teams is pretty difficult. Wonder how those OOC records would have looked if he had to play @ Iowa, @ Florida State, and Utah at home in the same season.

It's almost as if not all schedules are created equal.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, it's not just about the record it's about him making awful in game decisions!

Let's rewind to September 2nd, 2010. It's a warm Thursday evening in Ames, Iowa and the Northern Illinois Huskies led by Jerry Kill are taking on an Iowa State Cyclones team. Coach Kill decides to bench 2 year starter Chandler Harnish in favor of DeMarcus Grady. Grady process to go 14-29 for 93 yards, 3 INTs, and eventual 5-7 Iowa State beats NIU 27-10. NIU would go back to Harnish the following week who is now considered one of the 5-10 best players in NIU history.

But that's just one mistake Kill made! Let's flashback to December 28th, 2008. In Kill's first year, the Huskies are facing off in the Independence Bowl against the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs. With just over 45 seconds left and no timeouts, NIU has the ball needing to drive the length of the field for a touchdown. What's the play call? A QB draw! Harnish gets tackled in bounds, effectively ending the game. Worth noting, of course, that Jerry Kill didn't call plays, but that would never stop somebody from blaming the coach now, would it?

Jerry Kill would finish his career at NIU 23-16 and 18-6 in the MAC (for those of you bad at math, that means he went 5-10 out of conference). Not bad! He also lost every bowl game he coached in his career at NIU and Minnesota (0-5).

Joe Novak took over one of the worst FBS programs in all of the land. I won't do Joe the disservice of including his first handful of years which clearly would drag down his record. Let's talk about post 2003 NIU.

In his final 4 years as head coach, NIU posts a 25-23 overall record. Hey, won a bowl game, though! Overall, Novak 63-76 and 47-38 in the MAC. Math is hard, so for those of you scoring at home, that means Coach Joe posted a whopping 16-38 record in non-conference play.

Yes, both Joe Novak and Jerry Kill lost at least twice as many non conference games as they won, and I didn't even take out the FCS wins.

That brings us to now.
Since the start of 2016, Rod Carey is 14-15 as head coach, which admittedly is not great. However, over that same stretch of time NIU is 12-5 in MAC play which is still really solid. What, oh what could have possibly changed?

Record of FBS OOC opponents 2010-2012
38-73

Record of FBS OOC opponents 2016-2018(BYU not included)
58-32

I'll do you one better. The only two non-conference teams NIU played in 2010-2012 to finish above .500 were Illinois in 2010 and Wisconsin in 2011 (they lost both of those games, for the record). The only OOC team NIU has played in the last 3 years to finish below .500 or currently be below .500 is Nebraska last year.

The Florida State game last week was a late replacement for an FCS home game because NIU desperately needs the money in part because nobody goes to the games. If NIU isn't desperate for money because of a fan base which didn't care even in the height of the program's success, in all likelihood NIU is sitting at 2-2 (1-0) right now and all is right in the world. Maybe, just maybe, when you're thinking of reasons why the football program has "regressed," point the finger at a fan base who thought they "deserved" a better home schedule and cared more about seeing "marquee" opponents in Huskie Stadium rather than seeing their team win.

Any number you can point to, Rod Carey is a perfectly fine coach. He's 45-27 and 33-8 in the MAC. Yes, that means 12-19 OOC, which gives him a much better winning percentage out of conference than either Jerry Kill, Joe Novak, or likely any coach in history not named Dave Doeren.

But he can't win big games! In the program's history, Carey has won:
25% of NIU's MAC Championships
Been the coach in 3 of the 7 MAC Championship appearances
Won 4 of their 7 all-time victories against the Big Ten

Instead of blaming Carey for not living up to your unrealistic expectations, perhaps, the issue you.

LMAO

Lots of football left. A magical MAC championship is still in play and hopefully our Huskie Red will travel to Ypsilanti, Muncie, the Zoo, & Akron. We’ve got the defense to do it.

Great to have an alternative point and one well-researched. But a friendly reminder: that exact sentence would also apply to Vegas’ threads years back - when you called him an idiot among other things - yet the program took the exact trajectory he predicted while you went dark.

Rod Carey’s current senior class is 22-21. They currently have zero bowl wins and zero conference championships with a losing season sprinkled in the middle. When all is said and done it’s possible they have two losing seasons.

When these kids committed to NIU the senior class was 46-10 with three MAC Championships, a bowl win and an Orange Bowl appearance.

It’s not sustainable, we get it. It’s not that the program regressed, it’s how big it has regressed.

Carey got handed the keys to a Ferrari and totaled it before leaving the parking lot.

FIRE ROD CAREY!!!

(09-25-2018 07:32 PM)7 Wrote:  Short of a post before the opener this year, I really haven't read this board too much since the 2nd half of the CMU game last year. Naturally the latest post is in a thread created by VegasHuskie about apathy. I see nothing has changed.

Lets rewind to September 22nd, 2012. It is a picture perfect day in Huskie Stadium. Northern Illinois University, the defending MAC Champions, posted a thrilling victory at Army the week before. The Huskies, lead by future Heisman trophy finalist Jordan Lynch, coached by future North Carolina State head coach Dave Doeren would avenge a defeat from the year prior against the Kansas Jayhawks. Just over 3 months later, they would play in the Discover Orange Bowl.

The attendance that day? A season high 18,374.

The biggest problem in the world of Huskie football those days was home scheduling. The overriding excuse by this board was that Jeff Compher's inability to get quality opponents to DeKalb combined with playing the defacto MAC West Championship game (which 17,183 to DeKalb that year) was the reason for the lack of attendance to DeKalb.

Lets fast forward to August 1st, 2014 as now NIU Athletic Director Sean Frazier concludes "Schedulepalooza" by announcing both Utah and Maryland will travel to Huskie Stadium in the future. Other games included in "Schedulepalooza" were home and homes with the University of South Florida , Vanderbilt, and San Diego State University. NIU fans were asking for an upgraded schedule for years, and Sean Frazier delivered.

NIU has now played 3 of those matchups in Huskie Stadium, two on beautiful Saturday afternoons/evenings and one Friday night game. The reported attendance figures for those games:

2016 San Diego State: 14,513
2017 Boston College: 16,421
2018 Utah: 16,762

Average attendance: 15,899

So what's the excuse now?

NIU currently sits at 1-3 having lost to three P5 opponents, which has somehow sent NIU fans into a panic and have people calling for Rod Carey's job again. That seems to completely ignore that NIU, as a program, is 13-63-1 against P5 schools all-time and more specifically is 9-48-1 all-time against the Big Ten, PAC-12, and ACC, the 3 conferences they've played this year. For those of you scoring at home, 4 of those 9 wins have come with Rod Carey at the helm. Oh boy, better fire the coach!

Lets rewind to November 30th, 2012. Dave Doeren has just capped off easily the most successful run as head coach in the history of NIU, and in only two years two boot. Their win over Kent State has given the program it's second of back to back MAC Championships and under 48 hours later would earn a trip to the Orange Bowl. Doeren finishes his career at NIU 23-4 with 2 MAC Championships, and this poster's favorite football coach ever.

A common theory I hear on twitter is that Rod Carey can't beat halfway decent teams, particularly out of conference. Let's take a quick look at the greatest coach in NIU's history (Doreen's) out of conference results, more specifically against FBS oppoents.

2011
W 49-26 over Army in Huskie Stadium
Army's record in 2011: 2-9
L 45-42 @ Kansas(!!!!!!)
Kansas's 2011 record: 2-10, with NIU being their only FBS victory
L 49-7 against Wisconsin at Soldier Field. Holy hell, thank god this didn't happen in a bowl game!

2012
L 18-17 to Iowa at Soldier Field
Iowa's 2012 record: 4-8
W 41-40 @ Army
Army's 2012 record: 2-10
W 30-23 over Kansas in Huskie Stadium
Kansas's 2011 record: 1-11 (0 FBS wins that year)

Of his 6 OOC FBS games, he got rolled by an awesome Wisconsin team, lost to a bad Iowa team, lost to an AWFUL Kansas team, crushed an awful Army team in DeKalb, beat an awful Army team by 1, and be an equally awful Kansas team in DeKalb by 7. Maybe, just maybe, beating P5 teams is pretty difficult. Wonder how those OOC records would have looked if he had to play @ Iowa, @ Florida State, and Utah at home in the same season.

It's almost as if not all schedules are created equal.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, it's not just about the record it's about him making awful in game decisions!

Let's rewind to September 2nd, 2010. It's a warm Thursday evening in Ames, Iowa and the Northern Illinois Huskies led by Jerry Kill are taking on an Iowa State Cyclones team. Coach Kill decides to bench 2 year starter Chandler Harnish in favor of DeMarcus Grady. Grady process to go 14-29 for 93 yards, 3 INTs, and eventual 5-7 Iowa State beats NIU 27-10. NIU would go back to Harnish the following week who is now considered one of the 5-10 best players in NIU history.

But that's just one mistake Kill made! Let's flashback to December 28th, 2008. In Kill's first year, the Huskies are facing off in the Independence Bowl against the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs. With just over 45 seconds left and no timeouts, NIU has the ball needing to drive the length of the field for a touchdown. What's the play call? A QB draw! Harnish gets tackled in bounds, effectively ending the game. Worth noting, of course, that Jerry Kill didn't call plays, but that would never stop somebody from blaming the coach now, would it?

Jerry Kill would finish his career at NIU 23-16 and 18-6 in the MAC (for those of you bad at math, that means he went 5-10 out of conference). Not bad! He also lost every bowl game he coached in his career at NIU and Minnesota (0-5).

Joe Novak took over one of the worst FBS programs in all of the land. I won't do Joe the disservice of including his first handful of years which clearly would drag down his record. Let's talk about post 2003 NIU.

In his final 4 years as head coach, NIU posts a 25-23 overall record. Hey, won a bowl game, though! Overall, Novak 63-76 and 47-38 in the MAC. Math is hard, so for those of you scoring at home, that means Coach Joe posted a whopping 16-38 record in non-conference play.

Yes, both Joe Novak and Jerry Kill lost at least twice as many non conference games as they won, and I didn't even take out the FCS wins.

That brings us to now.
Since the start of 2016, Rod Carey is 14-15 as head coach, which admittedly is not great. However, over that same stretch of time NIU is 12-5 in MAC play which is still really solid. What, oh what could have possibly changed?

Record of FBS OOC opponents 2010-2012
38-73

Record of FBS OOC opponents 2016-2018(BYU not included)
58-32

I'll do you one better. The only two non-conference teams NIU played in 2010-2012 to finish above .500 were Illinois in 2010 and Wisconsin in 2011 (they lost both of those games, for the record). The only OOC team NIU has played in the last 3 years to finish below .500 or currently be below .500 is Nebraska last year.

The Florida State game last week was a late replacement for an FCS home game because NIU desperately needs the money in part because nobody goes to the games. If NIU isn't desperate for money because of a fan base which didn't care even in the height of the program's success, in all likelihood NIU is sitting at 2-2 (1-0) right now and all is right in the world. Maybe, just maybe, when you're thinking of reasons why the football program has "regressed," point the finger at a fan base who thought they "deserved" a better home schedule and cared more about seeing "marquee" opponents in Huskie Stadium rather than seeing their team win.

Any number you can point to, Rod Carey is a perfectly fine coach. He's 45-27 and 33-8 in the MAC. Yes, that means 12-19 OOC, which gives him a much better winning percentage out of conference than either Jerry Kill, Joe Novak, or likely any coach in history not named Dave Doeren.

But he can't win big games! In the program's history, Carey has won:
25% of NIU's MAC Championships
Been the coach in 3 of the 7 MAC Championship appearances
Won 4 of their 7 all-time victories against the Big Ten

Instead of blaming Carey for not living up to your unrealistic expectations, perhaps, the issue you.

Well researched and presented.

Blah blah blah...

Guess which coach between Kill, Doeren, and Carey lost to a 1-AA team?

Guess which one is 14-18 in his last 32 games?

Guess which one is leading the 130th ranked offense in the country?

Guess which one did not get hired by a P5 program?

(09-25-2018 08:24 PM)epasnoopy Wrote:  Blah blah blah...

Guess which coach between Kill, Doeren, and Carey lost to a 1-AA team?

Guess which one is 14-18 in his last 32 games?

Guess which one is leading the 130th ranked offense in the country?

Guess which one did not get hired by a P5 program?

The problem with people like him is that he’s the “Rah! Rah! Go Huskie!!!” type that drinks the Carey Kool-Aid every year and talks about how tough NIU is and he actually has the Huskie winning some of those “oh so hard P5 games”. Yet after the game is over it turns into “I mean we’re a MAC team, what do you expect? We aren’t Ohio St!!!” We saw it time and time again after every bowl debacle.

Thanks for posting this 7, it is fact based and a legitimate point of view.

After reading it I still do not like Carey, our current offensive coordinator or QB coach very much. My point of view is largely because of his/his staff's complete inability to recruit, develop or evaluate talent at the all important QB position. He did do pretty well early in his tenure with players that he inherited. One additional knock on him is his lack of football judgement, I just cannot respect a coach who runs a fake punt out of his own end zone on fourth and a country mile.

Rod seems like a likable guy who has a good character and runs a clean program. I respect him for that but I doubt that NIU will ever win another MACC with him as our HC.

Nice to hear from you again 7.

Geez. The worst offense in the country and the problem is my unrealistic expectation???? Too funny...

Well said 7 and great statistics to support your claim. But "the rod" needs to go.

(09-25-2018 08:19 PM)MiamiHuskie Wrote:  

(09-25-2018 07:32 PM)7 Wrote:  Short of a post before the opener this year, I really haven't read this board too much since the 2nd half of the CMU game last year. Naturally the latest post is in a thread created by VegasHuskie about apathy. I see nothing has changed.

Lets rewind to September 22nd, 2012. It is a picture perfect day in Huskie Stadium. Northern Illinois University, the defending MAC Champions, posted a thrilling victory at Army the week before. The Huskies, lead by future Heisman trophy finalist Jordan Lynch, coached by future North Carolina State head coach Dave Doeren would avenge a defeat from the year prior against the Kansas Jayhawks. Just over 3 months later, they would play in the Discover Orange Bowl.

The attendance that day? A season high 18,374.

The biggest problem in the world of Huskie football those days was home scheduling. The overriding excuse by this board was that Jeff Compher's inability to get quality opponents to DeKalb combined with playing the defacto MAC West Championship game (which 17,183 to DeKalb that year) was the reason for the lack of attendance to DeKalb.

Lets fast forward to August 1st, 2014 as now NIU Athletic Director Sean Frazier concludes "Schedulepalooza" by announcing both Utah and Maryland will travel to Huskie Stadium in the future. Other games included in "Schedulepalooza" were home and homes with the University of South Florida , Vanderbilt, and San Diego State University. NIU fans were asking for an upgraded schedule for years, and Sean Frazier delivered.

NIU has now played 3 of those matchups in Huskie Stadium, two on beautiful Saturday afternoons/evenings and one Friday night game. The reported attendance figures for those games:

2016 San Diego State: 14,513
2017 Boston College: 16,421
2018 Utah: 16,762

Average attendance: 15,899

So what's the excuse now?

NIU currently sits at 1-3 having lost to three P5 opponents, which has somehow sent NIU fans into a panic and have people calling for Rod Carey's job again. That seems to completely ignore that NIU, as a program, is 13-63-1 against P5 schools all-time and more specifically is 9-48-1 all-time against the Big Ten, PAC-12, and ACC, the 3 conferences they've played this year. For those of you scoring at home, 4 of those 9 wins have come with Rod Carey at the helm. Oh boy, better fire the coach!

Lets rewind to November 30th, 2012. Dave Doeren has just capped off easily the most successful run as head coach in the history of NIU, and in only two years two boot. Their win over Kent State has given the program it's second of back to back MAC Championships and under 48 hours later would earn a trip to the Orange Bowl. Doeren finishes his career at NIU 23-4 with 2 MAC Championships, and this poster's favorite football coach ever.

A common theory I hear on twitter is that Rod Carey can't beat halfway decent teams, particularly out of conference. Let's take a quick look at the greatest coach in NIU's history (Doreen's) out of conference results, more specifically against FBS oppoents.

2011
W 49-26 over Army in Huskie Stadium
Army's record in 2011: 2-9
L 45-42 @ Kansas(!!!!!!)
Kansas's 2011 record: 2-10, with NIU being their only FBS victory
L 49-7 against Wisconsin at Soldier Field. Holy hell, thank god this didn't happen in a bowl game!

2012
L 18-17 to Iowa at Soldier Field
Iowa's 2012 record: 4-8
W 41-40 @ Army
Army's 2012 record: 2-10
W 30-23 over Kansas in Huskie Stadium
Kansas's 2011 record: 1-11 (0 FBS wins that year)

Of his 6 OOC FBS games, he got rolled by an awesome Wisconsin team, lost to a bad Iowa team, lost to an AWFUL Kansas team, crushed an awful Army team in DeKalb, beat an awful Army team by 1, and be an equally awful Kansas team in DeKalb by 7. Maybe, just maybe, beating P5 teams is pretty difficult. Wonder how those OOC records would have looked if he had to play @ Iowa, @ Florida State, and Utah at home in the same season.

It's almost as if not all schedules are created equal.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, it's not just about the record it's about him making awful in game decisions!

Let's rewind to September 2nd, 2010. It's a warm Thursday evening in Ames, Iowa and the Northern Illinois Huskies led by Jerry Kill are taking on an Iowa State Cyclones team. Coach Kill decides to bench 2 year starter Chandler Harnish in favor of DeMarcus Grady. Grady process to go 14-29 for 93 yards, 3 INTs, and eventual 5-7 Iowa State beats NIU 27-10. NIU would go back to Harnish the following week who is now considered one of the 5-10 best players in NIU history.

But that's just one mistake Kill made! Let's flashback to December 28th, 2008. In Kill's first year, the Huskies are facing off in the Independence Bowl against the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs. With just over 45 seconds left and no timeouts, NIU has the ball needing to drive the length of the field for a touchdown. What's the play call? A QB draw! Harnish gets tackled in bounds, effectively ending the game. Worth noting, of course, that Jerry Kill didn't call plays, but that would never stop somebody from blaming the coach now, would it?

Jerry Kill would finish his career at NIU 23-16 and 18-6 in the MAC (for those of you bad at math, that means he went 5-10 out of conference). Not bad! He also lost every bowl game he coached in his career at NIU and Minnesota (0-5).

Joe Novak took over one of the worst FBS programs in all of the land. I won't do Joe the disservice of including his first handful of years which clearly would drag down his record. Let's talk about post 2003 NIU.

In his final 4 years as head coach, NIU posts a 25-23 overall record. Hey, won a bowl game, though! Overall, Novak 63-76 and 47-38 in the MAC. Math is hard, so for those of you scoring at home, that means Coach Joe posted a whopping 16-38 record in non-conference play.

Yes, both Joe Novak and Jerry Kill lost at least twice as many non conference games as they won, and I didn't even take out the FCS wins.

That brings us to now.
Since the start of 2016, Rod Carey is 14-15 as head coach, which admittedly is not great. However, over that same stretch of time NIU is 12-5 in MAC play which is still really solid. What, oh what could have possibly changed?

Record of FBS OOC opponents 2010-2012
38-73

Record of FBS OOC opponents 2016-2018(BYU not included)
58-32

I'll do you one better. The only two non-conference teams NIU played in 2010-2012 to finish above .500 were Illinois in 2010 and Wisconsin in 2011 (they lost both of those games, for the record). The only OOC team NIU has played in the last 3 years to finish below .500 or currently be below .500 is Nebraska last year.

The Florida State game last week was a late replacement for an FCS home game because NIU desperately needs the money in part because nobody goes to the games. If NIU isn't desperate for money because of a fan base which didn't care even in the height of the program's success, in all likelihood NIU is sitting at 2-2 (1-0) right now and all is right in the world. Maybe, just maybe, when you're thinking of reasons why the football program has "regressed," point the finger at a fan base who thought they "deserved" a better home schedule and cared more about seeing "marquee" opponents in Huskie Stadium rather than seeing their team win.

Any number you can point to, Rod Carey is a perfectly fine coach. He's 45-27 and 33-8 in the MAC. Yes, that means 12-19 OOC, which gives him a much better winning percentage out of conference than either Jerry Kill, Joe Novak, or likely any coach in history not named Dave Doeren.

But he can't win big games! In the program's history, Carey has won:
25% of NIU's MAC Championships
Been the coach in 3 of the 7 MAC Championship appearances
Won 4 of their 7 all-time victories against the Big Ten

Instead of blaming Carey for not living up to your unrealistic expectations, perhaps, the issue you.

Well researched and presented.

All good points, but I noticed you didn’t mention our bottom 10 offense. How much longer do we have to wait to figure out how to develop a competent QB? We have talent rotting on the bench and our best running back is underused. If we can’t score, we will not be bowling this year. That would be twice under Coach Carey. Which in my opinion, is unacceptable for the program that NIU has become . We play in the MAC.......

Since the start of 2016, Rod Carey is 14-15 as head coach, which admittedly is not great. However, over that same stretch of time NIU is 12-5 in MAC play which is still really solid.

I enjoyed reading this post until I got to the above.... 12-5 in MAC play is not really solid. The MAC stinks. We should be only playing two questionable win games in the MAC each year and to have five losses in that span shows how far we have fallen, let alone the under .500 overall record.

Definitely thought provoking, though.

And...."Schedulepalooza" did not work!! Nice teams, but other than Vanderbilt not a single team is within a weekend driving distance from DeKalb. I'm sure he tried and couldn't get Big Ten teams like Minnesota, Indiana, Purdue or teams like Missouri, Kentucky etc. San Diego St, BC, Utah all nice teams--but they aren't going to bring a whole lot of butts to the seats. (and I don't know, but what did it cost us to bring them here?)

(09-25-2018 09:21 PM)Milwaukee Pilot Wrote:  And...."Schedulepalooza" did not work!! Nice teams, but other than Vanderbilt not a single team is within a weekend driving distance from DeKalb. I'm sure he tried and couldn't get Big Ten teams like Minnesota, Indiana, Purdue or teams like Missouri, Kentucky etc. San Diego St, BC, Utah all nice teams--but they aren't going to bring a whole lot of butts to the seats. (and I don't know, but what did it cost us to bring them here?)

Utah had a very large presence, getting road fans to come from the Chicago are not a problem. Student attendance is in steady decline and not coming back.

Doesn’t cost us a nickel for all of the one and ones. They get their gate, we get ours. Next year when we travel to Utah, we don’t get a nickel.

This ranks up there with Phil Jackson blaming a Bulls loss on the fans.
If I would have known bringing a few more fans to the game would have given us a W then I apologies to Doreen for not being 25-2.

I agree with 7 that the schedule is much tougher than it used to be. I also agree with BDB5yp that our offense has been atrocious so far this year. Both are true. The EMU game will tell us a lot about this team. I still think they have enough talent to win the MAC (sorry, MAC Conference), but they have to figure it out on offense starting right now.

My son and I were talking about how the struggle against FSU was probably better for this team's development than housing a bad FCS team at home. Childers was forced to make a lot of throws under duress and he did some good things. Veloz was pushed right into his lap on his perfect TD throw to Wesley, and his TD throw to Brown had zero margin for error. Let's hope he and the team can use that experience as a springboard to better things.

For the record, I like scheduling P5 teams and wouldn't mind four each year. Get big checks, excite the recruits, test the team prior to conference play.

The ESPN deal is the single biggest destroyer of NIU fanbase, by far far far and away.

i think the stat posted by iwokeuplikethis tells it all.

Carey won 1 game vs a team with a winning record of his last 32 attempts. This tells it all. He cannot compete with good teams whether its another conference in ooc, good mac teams, or bowl games.

We have been destroyed the last 3 bowl games - i.e. Duke / Boise / Utah State

He has an inflated record early on due to other coaches recruits.

This is one of the best all around posts I’ve read on here. Great facts. I think the major issue with fans is that we haven’t taken the next step as a program. That has turned a lot of our fans. However, we do have a pretty apathetic fan base. Pretty sad in many ways when compared to many other programs. Not the reason we lose a game ultimately but better attendance does boost the team moral. Student drop off is bad but can really be contributed to enrollment drop. Check with big programs and see what percentage of their students attend games. 10-20 % of the students is great when you have 40,000 kids but not when we have 16k.

I am waiting to pass judgement. This game will tell a lot. I hate that we are wasting a great defense. I’m tired of moral victories. My expectations are grounded and realistic but I want to win games that we should win. Find a way to win is what I want to see with these close games. Utah and FSU were winnable. Bad breaks and bad luck hurt (officials too).

Can’t complain about the schedule. I remember when people complained about Idaho trips and Presbyterian coming here. Playing FSU was great and I’m sure most would take that anytime over Idaho. We just need to win some more of these. Play calling is conservative but I am not in practices or film rooms to know what they know. I’d like to see more urgency with the offense and hopefully we open things up. Plenty of season left but this will be a huge let down season if things continue this way. We are dropping out of bowl projections and the mac is solid this year. Won’t hurt as bad as failing to win the mac and getting to fiesta bowl but will still hurt. Worst offense statistically is also embarrassing but that can be fixed.

(09-25-2018 10:49 PM)NIUSox10 Wrote:  i think the stat posted by iwokeuplikethis tells it all.

Carey won 1 game vs a team with a winning record of his last 32 attempts. This tells it all. He cannot compete with good teams whether its another conference in ooc, good mac teams, or bowl games.

We have been destroyed the last 3 bowl games - i.e. Duke / Boise / Utah State

He has an inflated record early on due to other coaches recruits.

No excuse for Utah state but those other teams were good and we weren’t favored. Add in Marshall to that and I know the games should have been closer. I can’t completely agree with you on this though because Boise and Marshall were real good. Duke was good as well. They’ve jada great year this year with most of those players returning.