Drenched by the torrential downpour and riding the high of a late ‘90s victory, a boisterous crowd of NIU football’s faithful marched the goalposts from Huskie Stadium through the heart of NIU’s campus.
For a fanbase well-versed in the art of goalpost removal, this time was different. This win had more meaning to it.
Because the streak was over.
Tuesday will mark 25 years since the fabled “Streak Buster” game during the 91st Homecoming on Oct. 17, 1998. NIU defeated Central Michigan University, 16-6, through the wind and rain at Huskie Stadium to break its 23-game losing skid – the longest active losing streak in the nation at the time.
The home crowd reacted like any mild-mannered football fan might: by tearing down the north end zone’s goalposts, marching them a mile down Lucinda Avenue and tossing them into the East Lagoon.
“I think everybody on campus was tired of hearing about the football losing streak,” Joe Novak, NIU’s head coach from 1996 to 2007, said Friday from his home in North Carolina. “It was just a fun day and a relief time for everybody – and a turning point for our program.
Kevin Wendt, the Northern Star’s then-editor in chief, watched the game from the stands as a fan. Wendt recalled the fan’s learned indifference to the team’s performance.
“I don’t think anybody really cared too much whether it was going to be a win or a loss,” Wendt said. “It was more ‘hey, it’s college, and we’re here to have a good time at a football game.’ As a sports person, you figured they were due, but there wasn’t any expectation that this would be the week.”
NIU football head coach Thomas Hammock attended the game as a prospective recruit. Hammock went on to play running back for the Huskies from 1999 to 2002. He returned to NIU in 2019 to take the reins of the football program.
“I was coming to NIU on a visit,” Hammock said. “They were recruiting me, and so me and my dad came up to the game. Didn’t know what to expect – it was my first time on campus – and came to the game, and what a tremendous game it was.”
A HOMECOMING TO REMEMBER
The contest itself was a low-scoring affair, bogged down by the poor weather conditions that forced the game into a 45-minute delay.
“Nobody could do anything that day,” Wendt said. “It was a slog of a football game in the rain.”
NIU struggled to move the ball through the air as freshman quarterback Craig Harmon completed just three of his 15 passes for 71 yards. Harmon was making his third college start as a walk-on after starting the season as the team’s sixth-string passer.
Junior tailback Mike Johnson led the game with 85 rushing yards on 23 carries. Johnson earned NIU’s lone touchdown of the contest with a 24-yard scoring run early in the second quarter.
Senior placekicker Brian Clark accounted for the rest of NIU’s points after making field goals from 32, 22 and 39 yards out. Upon Clark’s 39-yarder early in the fourth quarter, NIU led 16-0.
Though the Huskies led by two scores in the final quarter, the fans maintained a level of cautious skepticism.
“There were no counting chickens with NIU football,” Wendt said.
The Chippewas found the scoreboard with 3:27 left when junior tailback Eric Flowers charged through the trenches and into the end zone for a one-yard touchdown. NIU shut down CMU’s ensuing two-point attempt after stuffing junior quarterback Pete Shepherd near the line of scrimmage to keep the Huskies at a two-score advantage.
The critical stop was part of a shutdown effort by the NIU defense. The Huskies sacked Shepherd once, intercepted him another, and blocked a field goal on CMU’s first drive.
DEFENSE CALLS GAME
The defense came up with the game-clinching takeaway with nearly two minutes left. Senior nose tackle Dan Stankowski beat Shepherd in the race to recover the football after the latter bobbled a low snap.
With 1:58 remaining and no timeouts left for CMU, NIU entered the victory formation. Harmon kneeled three times to close out the game.
Harmon’s final kneel-down came with two absolute certainties.
One, that damned streak was over at last. For the first time in 756 days, the Huskies could finally call themselves winners of a football game.
Two, those pesky little goalposts weren’t going to stay standing much longer.
BEDLAM IN DEKALB
As the final few seconds fell off the game clock, the excitement of the home crowd finally boiled over, and chaos ensued.
The rowdy fans plowed over the 3-foot fence and laid siege upon the uprights as the Huskie Fight Song played in full swing.
While the hysteria transpired on the field, prospective recruits in attendance were invited into NIU’s locker room to watch the team’s post-game celebration. Hammock said the sheer emotion he witnessed helped sell him on the program.
“The look on the coaches’ faces, how the players looked like they truly was a family, like they loved each other, like they’d been through a lot of adversity together and they overcame,” Hammock said. “I wanted to … help turn this program around.”
Back on the green, the goalposts had succumbed to the crowd in just under two minutes. Fans hoisted the 1,300-pound goalpost and began their eastward advance toward the lagoon. The mob left a trail of destruction in its wake, taking down street signs and tipping over park benches.
When the crowd finally reached its destination and sent its Y-shaped bounty into its watery resting place, the fans that waded into the lagoon along with it were hit with a nauseating realization.
“I went in with the goalpost, and immediately, you’re in 2 feet of 150 years of goose crap,” Wendt said. “You step in, and you go ‘I don’t know that I want to go any deeper into this.’”
The collection of fans that dared to trek farther were those with the most profound attachment to NIU.
“Only the diehards went deep into the lagoon because it was pretty disgusting,” Wendt said.
The effects of the game’s aftermath were remedied in a matter of days. Grounds crews recovered the goalpost from the lagoon on the following Monday.
The game itself, however, sparked a turnaround that produced one of, if not the greatest, periods in NIU football history.
THE START OF SOMETHING GREATER
NIU went on to win the following week’s game at Eastern Michigan University – the team’s only other victory of the 1998 season.
In each of the following five seasons, NIU was able to improve upon or match its record from the season before.
The Huskies earned three headline wins during the 2002 campaign that began with an overtime takedown of Wake Forest University in the season-opener.
NIU later played the spoiler twice in MAC play that year. The team withstood a record-setting passing performance by Ben Roethlisberger during a 48-41 triumph over Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The Huskies then upended No. 20 Bowling Green State University – led by college coaching legend Urban Meyer – to ruin the Falcons’ dreams of a perfect season and knock them off the national rankings.
The following year, the Huskies notably toppled three Bowl College Subdivision opponents – the University of Maryland, the University of Alabama and Iowa State University – during non-conference play.
In the 25 years since the “Streak Buster,” NIU has made nine MAC Championship Game appearances and won five, tied for the most championships since the game’s inception in 1997.
“You feel like you were at the foundation of something, which is a little bit of falling for the line that Novak was selling, but it was true,” Wendt said. “They were bad, and they became really good, and the rest is history.”
