Today’s final home game for football will kick off with a costume contest for students, marking the first time this has been done to boost student engagement and game attendance.

The idea for a costume contest occurred to Morris White, assistant director of Marketing and Game Experience, on Halloween, while sitting at home thinking of how to better engage students. Only NIU students are eligible to win the grand prize, but everyone is encouraged to dress up.

Contest participants should wear their costume, take a selfie and tweet to @NIUAthletics using the hashtag, #ColdCostumes. The student with the best costume will win an “exclusive Huskie experience,” White said.

“Students don’t really need a purpose or a reason to wear a costume; they’ll wear a costume to anything,” White said. “So, I figured with our game being nationally televised … with the implications of the game itself being that we are facing an undefeated team in the [MAC] conference … we really wanted to engage our students and have them come out in full force.”

Sophomore acting majors Meghann Patten and Michael LaRocca said they would dress up for the game. Patten said she would be a lumberjack since she owns a lot of flannel, and LaRocca said he’d wear his Halloween costume: a Bubonic plague-treating doctor.

The first 2,000 or so students at the game will receive free hot chocolate upon entry, and there will be fireworks, for the first time this season, during the national anthem and after every touchdown scored by the Huskies.