DEKALB, Ill. — Northern Illinois football coach Thomas Hammock can’t forget the date — Sept. 7 — that the Huskies stunned College Football Playoff semifinalist Notre Dame in its home opener.
But Tuesday was an even better day for the university’s football program, Hammock said at a news conference after the school’s board of trustees unanimously approved a $2 million fee for the Huskies to compete in the Mountain West Conference beginning in the 2026 season.
College football has been in a state of flux in recent years. NIU athletic director Sean Frazier pointed to the 2022 announcement that USC and UCLA were joining the Big Ten as the “watershed moment” of this period of turmoil.
The College Football Playoff expanded from four teams to 12 this season. Next school year, the name, image and likeness (NIL) market for college athletes is projected to reach $1.67 billion. And more than 6,000 NCAA football players have entered the transfer portal since 2022, according to ESPN.
“There are those that can participate in that change, and then there are those that are on the sidelines and watch it,” NIU trustee Leland Strom reasoned during Tuesday’s special board meeting. “I’d rather be a participant in that change.”
The movement of the Huskies football program — which will continue to play in the Ohio-based Mid-American Conference until it officially joins the Mountain West in July 2026 — will affect the university’s 16 other athletic programs.
“As it’s currently written, the MAC bylaws suggest that MAC members need to have FBS football as a sport,” NIU President Lisa Freeman said at the news conference. “That suggests to us we need to be thinking differently and regionally to find an appropriate home for our other sports.”
The Mountain West needed to add schools to be recognized as a conference by the NCAA after five of its 12 current members — Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Utah State and San Diego State — announced this fall they will be joining the Pac-12 in 2026.
The Pac-12, the former home of USC and UCLA, had been reduced to two teams after all of the recent conference realignment.
Texas-El Paso also will join the Mountain West in July 2026 as a full member, joining current members Air Force, Hawaii (football only), Nevada, New Mexico, San Jose State, UNLV and Wyoming.
The Huskies’ consistent success on the football field — which includes five MAC titles and 15 appearances in bowl games since 2004 — made them an attractive option for the Mountain West. NIU went 8-5 this season and defeated Fresno State 28-20 in double overtime the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in addition to the 16-14 shocker at Notre Dame.
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During the meeting, trustee Eric Wasowicz underscored the board’s fiduciary responsibility to NIU students and the state. In response to a question from Wasowicz about whether the conference move is a “budget-positive action,” Freeman said she thinks it is.
“The university is committed to a balanced budget in fiscal year ’26, and this will not hinder the progress at all,” Freeman said. “In fact, it will probably help.”
According to the board’s agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, the university already had accepted a formal offer to join the Mountain West as a football-only member, but the “obligation” of financial resources exceeding $500,000 required board approval. The university asked the board to approve $2 million for the “required membership fee to join” the Mountain West.
The agenda also said the costs to support the transition to the Mountain West — such as travel, staffing, rebranding and exit fees — would be primarily offset by increased revenues from multimedia rights, revenue distributions, guarantees from the conference and anticipated revenue enhancements from ticket sales and donations.
Another point of concern during the board meeting was the distance NIU football players would have to travel to compete in the Mountain West. Most of the MAC schools are in Ohio or Michigan. NIU is the first Mountain West school in the Central time zone.
Freeman pointed out that NIU football players take long bus rides in order to play opponents in the region. She also said midweek games in the MAC — which is known for its Tuesday and Wednesday night “MACtion” games every November — make it difficult for students to attend class.
“This may not be immediately intuitive,” Freeman said, “but although the distance is further, the fact that the games are played on the weekends (in the Mountain West) and the travel is done by plane will actually be less stressful for our football student-athletes than the current schedule.”
NIU has an undergraduate enrollment of about 11,000 in a city of about 40,000. During the news conference, a Mountain West representative touted the university’s high research activity and said its college of education is the second-largest provider of educators in Illinois.
Freeman added the performance of the university’s student-athletes in the classroom is just as important to the school as their performance in sports.
“You see that manifest in the expectations of the coaches for students to go to class,” she said, “and their willingness to prevent students who are not performing academically from participating in competition.”
Hammock said he couldn’t speak to how the MAC and Mountain West compare in regard to football talent because the Huskies have played only two Mountain West teams during his tenure as head coach. But he said he looks forward to having a better understanding in the future.
“There will be some travel things that we have to work out from a football standpoint,” Hammock said. “But the exciting part is you get an opportunity to play some teams that you’re not familiar with.
“I think we match up extremely well. We play a different style of football, and also they have to come to DeKalb when the wind blows about 25 miles per hour.”
Associated Press contributed.