In the history of win-wins, Sean Frazier may have an all-timer.
Frazier, the Northern Illinois athletic director, would quite prefer for Notre Dame to emerge as champion of Monday night’s College Football Playoff championship between the Fighting Irish and Ohio State at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
It’s quite simple. If the Irish win, the 2024 season will end with his Huskies being the only team to defeat the national champions, having stunned Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana on Sept. 7.
“They’ve earned the opportunity to be there and I hope they take care of business, quite frankly,” Frazier told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday. In the event of a Notre Dame win, “We’ll have more to say because that one loss is to NIU. The football gods have smiled both on Notre Dame and NIU. How about that?”
How about that, indeed – the potential for the national champion’s only blemish to have been at the hands of a Mid-American Conference school. In a season in which the transfer portal and name, image and likeness payments have spread talent and increased parity, it would make Notre Dame a fitting champion for the 2024 season.
And it would be nothing but a boon for NIU.
If Notre Dame wins, Frazier said, “it’s not going to minimize anything else that Notre Dame will accomplish, but what it will do is pump up our fan base and our institution to know that we’ve committed to FBS football and we should be respected just like everybody else.”
A refresher: It was the second week of the season. Notre Dame was ranked No. 5 in the country and had just defeated then-No. 20 Texas A&M on the road. NIU was paid a reported $1.4 million to play at Notre Dame Stadium, in all likelihood to give the home team and its fans a profitable and victorious afternoon. Notre Dame was a 28-point favorite.
It did not play out as expected. Coach Thomas Hammock’s Huskies outplayed Notre Dame, outgaining the Irish 388-286, winning turnover margin 2-0 and holding the ball for 34:38. The Huskies took a 16-14 lead on a 35-yard field goal with 31 seconds left and then blocked a 62-yard try as time expired.
When Notre Dame’s kicking unit took the field, ‘I said, ‘My god, he’s going to do that,’ and obviously, we blocked it,” Frazier said. “And that’s when everything got kind of dark. Because it was so quiet in there.”
NIU has a history of pulling rank on college football’s upper echelon. Georgia Tech fans know it as well as anyone. Despite having failed to win a game the previous season, te Huskies stunned the Yellow Jackets in the 2021 season opener at Bobby Dodd Stadium. (Coincidentally, Tech had a 60-yard field-goal try to win that was also blocked.)
But this was different. Few programs, if any, can match Notre Dame’s luster. It was the first time a MAC school had defeated a team ranked in the top five of a major poll. Frazier said he has watched the game at least eight or nine times.
In the state of Illinois, in Big Ten country, NIU often takes a backseat to in-state neighbors Illinois and Northwestern. But this was a moment that no gargantuan conference payout, dismissive fan base or fancy football facility could take away.
“We’re one of those schools that, if you don’t know, you don’t know,” Frazier said. “But if you do know, you say, ‘Yeah.’ And to your point, everyone kind of knows. ‘Oh, that was the team that knocked off Notre Dame.’”
And Notre Dame’s 13-game winning streak since then has only added weight to the upset, including wins in the CFP quarterfinals over SEC champion Georgia and then Penn State in the semifinals.
“This is a big moment for NIU,” Frazier said. “We live vicariously through this process. We do know the season’s coming to an end with a win or a loss, but it’s a big deal and we really appreciate Notre Dame giving us an opportunity to play them, because that was a big deal.”
A funny thing has happened since the upset. Notre Dame fans have shown their respect to the Huskies. When NIU sought to capitalize on the win by selling commemorative bottles of whiskey, a few Irish fans came to an event.
“I was really happy about that,” Frazier said.
When he goes out in public wearing his NIU lapel pin, he said invariably Notre Dame fans stop him to thank him for giving their team a wake-up call.
“It’s been interesting to get that response,” Frazier said. “I guess you can (respond that way) if you’re playing for the national title, right?”
He laughed, as he seems to do a lot. NIU’s entire season didn’t turn out quite as magically as Notre Dame’s. After earning the No. 25 spot in the AP poll after the upset, the Huskies lost at home to Buffalo in their next game. NIU finished the season 8-5. And as is the way in college athletics, NIU announced on Jan. 7 that it will join the Mountain West Conference for football only starting in 2026.
All that’s left – for Northern Illinois and for all of college football – is Monday’s game. The Huskies may prove to be the most unlikely team to vanquish an eventual national champion, in part because before the 12-team playoff such a loss would have usually eliminated a team with such a defeat from consideration.
As things would have it, Frazier will be at MBS. A self-described football purist, Frazier has regularly attended the CFP championship game and the BCS title game before that. He won’t be decked out in green, but he will be wearing his NIU pin that he customarily wears on his jacket.
There are, as of yet, no plans for a rematch.
“No, but you can put down the fact that we would absolutely love to play them in the immediate future if they would like,” Frazier said.
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