It’s that time of the year when the sun pokes its rays through the curtain, waking you up.

You know those days where you know it’s going to be a good day. You can feel it as you get out of bed; today, the mercury is going to get beyond the 70-degree mark. It’s those days where you pull out the shorts, only for it to be 28 and snowy by the afternoon.

Ah, it must be springtime in northern Illinois.

Even though the ever-changing weather forecast keeps me on my toes, it’s not the most exciting part of spring, at least for sports fans.

No, instead, for this group, the most exciting thing can usually be boiled down into two words — spring football.

I’m a baseball fan, so I’m focused on another two words: Opening Day. I, however, understand America’s love affair with football and will tolerate it until they come to their senses and return to baseball. But I’ll only do so on one condition: that we add another two words back to football – Thunderstix.

OK, I lied, it’s really one word, but it has three syllables and is the combination of two words, so let’s call that more a grammatical error than a lie.

Yes, the return of football means, hopefully, the return of Thunderstix.

When I was a freshman (cough, cough back in the first part of the 2000s), Thunderstix were a normal part of the game day experience at NIU. But due to the cost of these inflatable pieces of plastic, the Athletic Department has not been able to purchase them for every student or for every game during the past two seasons.

Last year, NIU had Thunderstix for a couple games in large part due the actions of the Red Riot. The result, an instant success: fans loved, and used, their Thunderstix. Even better, the love affair off the field created a hostile environment on the field.

NIU head coach Jerry Kill praised these mostly-made-of-air devices at one of his weekly press conferences.

“Shoot, I’ll buy the Thunderstix, and you can quote me on that,” Kill said. “Get them out.”

P.J. Fleck, Huskie wide receivers coach, shared a similar love of these noise makers with me last fall. When researching the 2003 season, Fleck told me how visiting coaches from the ACC, Big 12 and MAC said NIU was one of the most hostile environments to play in.

Yet, with under 30,000 fans in the stadium, how could this be? I mean as hostile as “The Swamp” was what Fleck said. Was he referring to the swamp outside of Louisiana Tech?

OK, maybe that’s a bit too soon, but you get my point. Nope, according to Fleck, NIU was a hostile environment on the level of major programs. It was all due to the rowdiness and noise the fans, who were extremely close to the field compared to many other stadiums, created.

A large part of this noise, according to Fleck, was, as you guessed it, the result of Thunderstix.

So football, I’ll let you steal some of the thunder from the opening day of America’s pastime, but only if you add that thunder back into the game during the fall, capiche?