To understand Mike Korcek, you really need to know about Jim Tillman.

Tillman played center for the Loyola basketball team in the mid-1960s. At 6-foot-5 — small for a center even by 1960s standards — he was a ferocious rebounder and once even blocked Lew Alcindor’s famed sky hook. Loyola’s radio play-by-play announcer nicknamed him “Ajax,” because of the way he “cleaned the boards.”

None of this was lost on a 6-1 basketball nut and Northern Star writer.

“To me, he was a hero,” Korcek says. In fact, when Korcek earned a regular column in the Star, he named it “Ajax Cleans the Boards.” Even today, friends from that Star era in the late ’60s still call him “Ajax” and remember the column … and the late-night, waste-can basketball games in the newsroom.

That passion for sports, from the monumental to the minutia, became a career. Korcek joined the NIU Sports Information office in 1973, after a stint in the U.S. Army at European Stars & Stripes. In 1984, he succeeded the legendary Bud Nangle as director, and built a legend of his own. In 1995-96, College Hoops Insider voted his office No. 1 in the nation for basketball service, and No. 2 the next year. In 1999, Korcek was inducted into the media wing of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, and in 2000 he received the “Scoop” Hudgins Lifetime Sports Information Directors Award.

Korcek hasn’t forgotten his Star roots. He’s on the alumni board, was the creative force behind the Hall of Fame and works closely with the Star’s sports staff.

“There are literally a thousand great stories about Mike Korcek, says Ray Gibson, longtime friend and Northern Star contemporary. “But the best one and the one that really counts is his loyal friendship. … It is also one of his chief character flaws. How else can one explain how a man works 80 hours a week, 52 weeks a year for an institution that may not understand his expertise and skills? It is loyalty to the Star and helping students. It is loyalty to the craft. I can’t tell you how many hours were spent at the Star at night as Mike reworked his pieces. He still does it at the Sports Information office. He strives for perfection.”

Nangle, now retired and living in California, agreed.

“He lives and dies with every victory, every defeat, every achievement, every disaster that befalls NIU,” he said. “His loyalty knows no bounds. He is, in my opinion, Mr. Northern Illinois University.”