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50 years ago today: NIU 85. Indiana (&Bobby Knight) 71
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jjj Offline
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Post: #21
RE: 50 years ago today: NIU 85. Indiana (&Bobby Knight) 71
Brigham was the AD at the time that NIU decided to leave the MAC, and MacDougal was not happy about it.
(This post was last modified: 01-06-2022 09:51 PM by jjj.)
01-06-2022 09:48 PM
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pvk75 Offline
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Post: #22
RE: 50 years ago today: NIU 85. Indiana (&Bobby Knight) 71
Some of the story ...

It took a couple years after the 1983 California Bowl win for then-AD Bob Brigham and then-president Clyde Wingfield to get stars in their eyes bright enough to leave the MAC and hope for the Big 12, which was the hope/rumor/dream/push among "big" fans that bowl win launched. (Amazing to me what happened when Wingfield was NIU president for only 10 months in '85-86.)

Anyway, around that time I was at a gathering at Fermilab and got into a Huskies alumnus-fan chat with John McDougal, there helping to promote NIU among the intellectuals. (I lived in and had connections to local Aurora; McDougal had been HC at West Aurora, so we had plenty to talk about). He was very open about opposing the "mistake" NIU was making leaving the MAC for independence in football. Said it would set everything else adrift (which it did) and cause damage to the whole athletic program (which it did). He found a kindred spirit on the subject, and while not loud, he was audible to those around us.

Wasn't the first time he made no secret of it, and that eventually got him fired for being the dark cloud in the Brigham-Wingfield (falsely) sunny sky. Kenny Battle's transfer to Illinois was a direct result; he was NIU's superstar/attention-getter and all-around anchor for recruiting and continuing to build McDougal's program. (McDougal was a mentor to Battle, who came to NIU from West Aurora). No reason why a player of Battle's caliber should be asked to carry the program forward in the impending Brigham-Wingfield fiasco. That Battle should look out for himself, and Lou Henson's Illini program was the place to go. (McDougal had been a top-flight HS coach, very well-respected, and had connections everywhere). So Battle did, and he and the "Flyin' Illini" were truly great.

There's more to all this but anyway ... history.
(This post was last modified: 01-07-2022 03:17 AM by pvk75.)
01-06-2022 11:59 PM
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Schaefer Beer Offline
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Post: #23
RE: 50 years ago today: NIU 85. Indiana (&Bobby Knight) 71
What always mystified me was the lack of a plan to achieve a possible Big 12( or back in '85, the Big 8)/Big 10 bid.

They rushed to get out of the MAC to go Independent and then nothing. It seemed like they realized how much money it would take to make NIU attractive to a P5 conference and abandoned the plan.

In the meantime they scheduled tons of payout games against top 25 teams only to get creamed every week. Then O'Dell's decision to join the Big West for football was just as bad as going Independent. O'Dell put the MBB team in the AMCU-8 conference and the WBB team in the North Star conference. I couldn't even tell you which conference the rest of the sport programs wound up in, but it was a mess. Thank God for Cary Groth.
01-07-2022 12:58 AM
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pvk75 Offline
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Post: #24
RE: 50 years ago today: NIU 85. Indiana (&Bobby Knight) 71
NIU is historically good at three things r.e. athletic plans: 1) loudly making plans with as much PR fanfare as possible; 2) quietly abandoning plans when they don't work out, and 3) planning plans to plan for more plans, a constant source of PR, which is about all that comes out of this.

R.e. independence ... NIU was hoping for something from the SWC/Big 8/Big 12 reformations, or a combo with some of the then-23 1A independents. Trouble was none of that panned out, few of the other indies scheduled NIU, NIU had no access to bowl games, and the brief Big West term was costly (travel and lack of interest in opponents). And by 1995, 19 of the other 23 were in or going to conferences (Conference USA took 6; ironically, a major architect was O'Dell, who took the Cincinnati AD job in '95. Note that NIU was not considered seriously).

Chick Evans was right in 1968 about the MAC. For fun, read what he had to say in this ...
https://125keymoments.niu.edu/niu-joins-the-mac-1973/
(This post was last modified: 01-07-2022 03:21 AM by pvk75.)
01-07-2022 03:09 AM
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Schaefer Beer Offline
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Post: #25
RE: 50 years ago today: NIU 85. Indiana (&Bobby Knight) 71
(01-07-2022 03:09 AM)pvk75 Wrote:  NIU is historically good at three things r.e. athletic plans: 1) loudly making plans with as much PR fanfare as possible; 2) quietly abandoning plans when they don't work out, and 3) planning plans to plan for more plans, a constant source of PR, which is about all that comes out of this.

R.e. independence ... NIU was hoping for something from the SWC/Big 8/Big 12 reformations, or a combo with some of the then-23 1A independents. Trouble was none of that panned out, few of the other indies scheduled NIU, NIU had no access to bowl games, and the brief Big West term was costly (travel and lack of interest in opponents). And by 1995, 19 of the other 23 were in or going to conferences (Conference USA took 6; ironically, a major architect was O'Dell, who took the Cincinnati AD job in '95. Note that NIU was not considered seriously).

Chick Evans was right in 1968 about the MAC. For fun, read what he had to say in this ...
https://125keymoments.niu.edu/niu-joins-the-mac-1973/

Chick Evans was very prophetic and spot on. Thanks PVK.
01-07-2022 06:12 AM
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NIU007 Offline
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Post: #26
RE: 50 years ago today: NIU 85. Indiana (&Bobby Knight) 71
(01-07-2022 03:09 AM)pvk75 Wrote:  NIU is historically good at three things r.e. athletic plans: 1) loudly making plans with as much PR fanfare as possible; 2) quietly abandoning plans when they don't work out, and 3) planning plans to plan for more plans, a constant source of PR, which is about all that comes out of this.

R.e. independence ... NIU was hoping for something from the SWC/Big 8/Big 12 reformations, or a combo with some of the then-23 1A independents. Trouble was none of that panned out, few of the other indies scheduled NIU, NIU had no access to bowl games, and the brief Big West term was costly (travel and lack of interest in opponents). And by 1995, 19 of the other 23 were in or going to conferences (Conference USA took 6; ironically, a major architect was O'Dell, who took the Cincinnati AD job in '95. Note that NIU was not considered seriously).

Chick Evans was right in 1968 about the MAC. For fun, read what he had to say in this ...
https://125keymoments.niu.edu/niu-joins-the-mac-1973/

Exactly. Oh, one more thing NIU is good at: covertly extending coaches' contracts.

I had almost forgotten about the years in the wilderness. Women's BB in the North Star Conference IIRC, and the men in the AMCU-8.
01-07-2022 11:48 AM
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chihuskie Offline
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Post: #27
RE: 50 years ago today: NIU 85. Indiana (&Bobby Knight) 71
(01-06-2022 07:49 PM)Schaefer Beer Wrote:  
(01-06-2022 12:14 PM)chihuskie Wrote:  
(01-06-2022 10:33 AM)Schaefer Beer Wrote:  
(01-06-2022 10:01 AM)chihuskie Wrote:  
(01-05-2022 02:34 PM)Dog Fan Wrote:  NIU was dominant in basketball back then. What the heck happened over the last 50 years to put us in the hole we are in now?

I'd say Gerald O'Dell happened.

Chihuskie, that is an interesting take, why do you feel O'Dell started us to basketball hell?

Attendance died on his tenure. He had no clue how to attract fans-- unbelievable given the past success we had had at that point in time.

And he was an idiot (proven point -- he hired Charlie Sadler, right?) and a very unpleasant little man. IMHO.

Hilarious thing is, if you look him up online today you will see he takes credit for "laying the foundation for sustained success at NIU" or something like that! Just shows you --- don't believe everything you read on the internet!

I'm no fan of O'Dell, but I think whoever stepped into that job in '88 was left with a big mess. The AD(I forget his name) that decided to pull NIU from the MAC because he thought the B10 was drooling to add NIU, was responsible for putting Huskies Athletics back 20 years.

Besides hiring Sadler, I think the other blunder was not giving Rosborough more time. The team was playing better in his third year and Molinari's tournament team was had Rosborough's recruits.

"Molinari's Team" was actually Rosborough's team. You are correct. Molinari acted as if he invented basketball at NIU (and then promptly left). Maybe it was Molinari that killed us.
01-07-2022 03:33 PM
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