Let’s consider the pressure the Huskies have put on themselves.

After struggling against a I-AA team and trading players for dollars against an elite I-A force, the football Huskies are untested against the middle group of college football. Is NIU a legitimate bowl contender?

The team will be butted around by fans because of its insistence that it is a bowl-worthy team, a Top 25 team. Yes, they beat Eastern Illinois, but not easily. EIU was led by a freshman quarterback who, fortunately for NIU, fumbled like one. NIU wasn’t expected to beat Nebraska, but if this team is better than last year’s, why were they beaten worse than the 1989 group?

If 9-2 didn’t fill NIU’s post-season mailbox, logic says the Huskies must not lose anymore if they would like to balance their study of game tapes with the study of finals notes. There will be many stories written about the Huskie defense if they are still playing come December.

Stories of how, with an inexperienced interior line and damaged defensive ends, it stopped giving up 477 yards per game. How NIU coaching plugged holes and made adjustments, always learning about its team’s character. There will be characters—players who stepped up, took up the slack and made the big plays.

The our-guys-will-get-better claim is reassuring—for teams with 7-4 goals. For bowl-minded teams, there are no warm-up games.

Despite a few bobbles in the Eastern game, the Stacey Robinson offense seems to be intact. If he repeats his 1989 running numbers and continues to throw like he did against EIU, Robinson may well deserve the Heisman Trophy consideration NIU has said he warrants.

Robinson seems unaffected by the Heisman hype and that is good. On the other end of the spectrum, he should also ignore his coaching staff’s generous preseason statements that NIU would be guided just as well by the second and third-string quarterbacks. Without Robinson, all the wishing for a post-season game is just that.

In 1988, the Huskies beat the Big Ten’s Wisconsin representative and Coach Jerry Pettibone used the victory as an example of NIU football progress. It had come far and has come further under Pettibone; the team’s record has improved each year since 1986. With a team Pettibone has called “the most experienced since I’ve been here”, this is not the year to step back.

The upcoming games against Toledo, Kansas State and Northwestern should serve as confidence builders, the Toledo game being the toughest. Yes, K-State and Northwestern are bigger names, but if you’re a football fan, you know they’re caught in the vicious poor-record-no-recruits circles.

In Manhattan last year, NIU led Kansas State 23-0 before the Wildcats scored. A loss to KSU would be a retreat and a loss to Northwestern on national TV would be bowl-icide.

With the necessity of a 9-0 record before them, NIU has already gotten what it wants: Now every game is a bowl game.