Beyond the playing field

Sports moves into the so-called “real world” of journalism.

The news pages of The Northern Star have been flooded with sports-related stories lately, and I’m not talking about athletes showing up on the police blotter.

In the past week, there have been three stories on the news pages of this newspaper that involve the world of Huskie sports.

The football tailgating situation is under surveillance. The Huskie Club is having financial troubles. The Athletic Board is being reorganized.

The tailgating situation is of particular interest to me. You see, as a sports writer my two years at NIU, I haven’t been able to participate in tailgating (or at least the drinking aspect of it) because I had to cover the football games. So I have missed out on that aspect of college life. However, I plan to come back after graduating and I would like something to do before kickoff.

I saw the infamous corn cob fight through binoculars from the press box Sept. 12. It was difficult to tell what was actually happening as evidenced by Kent “WKDI-FM” Coffland who told his listeners, “It seems they’re throwing some sort of projectiles.”

After that, the security tightened, the weather turned colder and the football team’s record stayed near the .500 mark. Add all those factors together and you can see why the numbers on the student-tailgating side dwindled to just one row of cars at season’s end.

Now a committee has been formed to look into how tailgating should be handled in the future. One of the proposals—and a good one at that—is to combine the student and alumni sections. There still can be reserved spaces on the west side of the stadium for those who wish to separate themselves from the kids, but the east side should be expanded to include everyone that wants to return to college life. I know I don’t want to come back next year and have to party with the older set. Why would I want to forsake the college atmosphere for the Huskie Club?

Speaking of NIU’s inept booster organization, that leads us to Subject No. 2.

The Huskie Club is notorious for bungled fund-raising ideas. How about the Shop-and-Share drive with Jewel in November 1986 to get a percentage of the receipts? That brought in a whopping $96.29, probably paying for two footballs. And how about the raffle held last fall for a cabin up in Wisconsin? Sorry folks, the $27,000 collected had to be returned because the raffle was disorganized.

The words “fund raising” lead me to believe a profit should be made. So why is the Huskie Club $4,655 in the hole? A theory that has been knocked around is many Huskie Clubbers are ready to open their checkbooks once Robert Brigham and Susie Pembroke-Jones are out of here, but they still occupy offices in the fieldhouse. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t quite hear the cash register ringing.

We now proceed to Subject No. 3.

The Athletic Board is usually just a formality that passes everything that comes before it. Well, if the average board size at NCAA institutions is 13 to 14 members, then so be it. SA President Jim Fischer has a legitimate worry about student representation being cut.

In fact, one of the main problems in the athletic department is too many moves are made without considering the students. A member of the athletic department once said to me: “Too many people around here think they’re so high-and-mighty. They think they’re big-time, but they’re not. Everything they do should be for the students. Without the students, they wouldn’t be working here.”

That’s the attitude more of the administration should have. The students here now will be the ones asked to contribute to the athletic department soon. If NIU (this applies to more than just sports) doesn’t start doing things with the students in mind, the soon-to-be alumni will turn up their noses when asked for money.

They can start with combined tailgating so students can look forward to returning for football games, not wasting student fees and listening to students’ input.

And a winner couldn’t hurt.