The football team will look to find the right balance of fun and hard work as it gets set to play in the inaugural Huskie Bowl at 1 p.m. on Saturday.

The concept was spearheaded by the coaching staff, which is led by head coach Rod Carey. The team has split into two squads and will face off against one another, which is not too different from a standard scrimmage of offense versus defense. The real difference lies in the fact that the teams were drafted by NIU’s own coaching staff, as linebacker/special teams coach Kevin Kane drafted and will lead team Cardinal against offensive line coach Joe Tripodi and his Team Black squad.

Team Cardinal has standouts like senior quarterback Jordan Lynch, junior receiver Tommylee Lewis and senior safety Jimmie Ward.

Team Black has last year’s backup quarterback, redshirt sophomore Matt McIntosh, and a potential backup candidate in redshirt freshman Drew Hare. Black also has defensive standouts like seniors Joe Windsor and Jamaal Bass.

The game will be interesting based on these types of matchups alone, as Black has many of the wide receivers on their team, aside from Lewis, and Cardinal has many of last year’s starting offensive linemen.

Lynch knows the game will provide the needed practice that is par for the course at this point in spring, but also noted the decidedly fun side of the whole affair.

“It should be fun, I’m on team Kane versus Team Tripodi,” Lynch said. “We’ve got a nice draft. It should be interesting to see who wins. The winner gets a steak and losers get beans and weenies. I think guys will definitely be excited about it.”

Despite the changing of last Saturday’s spring game into a controlled scrimmage, Lynch believes the competition level was present, and also believes there will be a high level of competition for the Huskie Bowl, especially from the offensive end.

The planning of the event was the result of multiple coaches on the squad having been part of former teams that had games like the Huskie Bowl.

Carey believes this kind of event adds an extra element of competition that can enable that fun aspect as well as bring out drive and enthusiasm for practice. He believes the draft in and of itself is one of the biggest motivating factors.

“The team got to draft itself, so you know there’s going to be some spirit and excitement to that,” Carey said. “They were hooting and hollering and getting after it a little bit. You’re banging against each other for 15 practices out here and this can get monotonous. You want to inject some life into it.”