NIU’s president and athletic director said an item in Monday’s Chicago Tribune, stating that the school is looking into joining the Big Eight Conference, was exaggerated.

Mike Conklin, a sports columnist for the paper, wrote that at Friday’s NIU Hall of Fame banquet, “NIU President John La Tourette unloaded this bombshell: The Huskies want to become members of the Big Eight Conference.

“Northern AD Gerald O’Dell confirmed that entrance into the high-profile Big Eight—pending the league’s expected loss of several school’s to other conferences—is a definite plan being explored by Northern.”

“(The story’s) gotten a lot of attention,” La Tourette said. “What I said was if you look at the academic quality of NIU, we really belong in the Big Eight.

“This was just some offhand remark I made. The (athletic) program has grown a great deal. I was trying to make people feel good.

“My comment was, basically, here’s where we belong, here’s some things to think about. I didn’t imply that we have been plotting to do this.”

O’Dell said he hasn’t talked to Big Eight officials.

“Not about conference affiliation,” O’Dell said. “Any comments I made were apparently taken out of context.

“Those are things way down the road. We’re pleased to be in the Mid-Continent Conference.”

Conklin stands by what he wrote.

“If you heard the speech that Mr. La Tourette gave … all the people I talked to afterward (including O’Dell), said Northern was studying the possibility of getting into the Big Eight Conference,”