NFL News NFL News, Reports and Updates
The Brief
The 2024 college football season is over. A national champ got their crown. It’s time for the offseason.
This season was a banner year, for the new 23-team College Football Playoff as well as the monstrous upsets and steps forward teams took.
Here are some parting thoughts on Northern Illinois, Northwestern, Illinois and Notre Dame football.
Here are some parting thoughts as the 2024 college football season officially came to a close for the major programs around Illinois.
Northern Illinois: Thomas Hammock has NIU football in a picture-perfect place
It’s simple for NIU football: keep doing your thing.
Northern Illinois has been nothing but consistent since the start of the 2000s. The Huskies will need that consistency as they look to make waves when they eventually join the Mountain West in 2026. It’s a tougher conference with bigger challenges, but it puts NIU within striking distance of the College Football Playoff.
The Huskies have always slid under the radar, partially because none of the other Power 4 teams in Illinois will play them anymore. Look no further than the Huskies’ upset over Notre Dame as to why.
Give NIU an inch and they’ll take a mile. They did so under Rod Carey and Dave Doeren. The only thing Hammock hasn’t done in comparison to Carey and Doeren is winning 10 games in a season. He came close in 2021 with a nine-win season.
Four of NIU’s five losses in 2024 were by one possession. Hammock has three winning seasons in his last four as head coach. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported Hammock’s name is coming up among NFL circles as a running backs coach, although I have a hard time believing he’d take a job coaching running backs when that was the same job he left to take the NIU head coaching job.
Hammock can take NIU to places Doeren and Carey never could. It’s not the predecessor’s fault, it’s…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/final-thoughts-notre-dame-niu-031433125.html
Author : WFLD
Publish date : 2025-01-29 03:14:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
