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DEKALB, Ill. – Back in the summer 2022, NIU Director of Athletics Sean Frazier was in his car when the news struck.
USC and UCLA were going to spurn the Pac-12 and join the Big Ten. Frazier called a friend of his who works in the Big Ten about the bombshell report.
Frazier had to ask: What’s going on here?
“We’re not done,” Frazier recalled his friend saying.
The Big Ten was not. The conference added Oregon and Washington to form a super conference that rivaled the SEC, which armed itself with Oklahoma and Texas. That idea spurned an idea in Frazier’s head.
That idea was the inspiration behind NIU football’s move to the Mountain West Conference.
Get ahead of the curve while you still can.
“We need to make sure we’re in an environment where things are stable,” Frazier said during a half-hour press conference on Tuesday.
That line of thinking is what led to Tuesday. Northern Illinois football will play in the Mountain West Conference starting in 2026. It’s a sentence that seemed impossible in any other era. Welcome to college football in 2025
Frazier, NIU President Lisa Freeman and Huskies football coach Thomas Hammock were in attendance, while Mountain West Conference commissioner Gloria Nevarez joined virtually.
All four sang the praises of the move to the Mountain West. Hammock, speaking from the football side, mentioned the excitement of playing in a conference that had a team earn the No. 3 seed in the 2025 College Football Playoff bracket.
“As good as Sept. 7 was,” Hammock said, referencing NIU’s 16-14 win over No. 5 Notre Dame in 2024, “today is even better.”
Football-wise, the move makes sense. It’s a step-up in competition for NIU, which has earned the MAC wins over Alabama, Maryland and Notre Dame since 2003. The Mountain West also brings in a chance for more revenue with an impending media rights deal that’s coming…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/location-location-location-behind-inspirations-004210869.html
Author : WFLD
Publish date : 2025-01-08 00:42:00
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