Most current NIU students weren’t even born when the decision happened.

What am I talking about?

One of the worst decisions in NIU athletics history.

In 1975, NIU joined the Mid-American Conference, mainly thanks to three different people­­ — former Sports Information Director Bud Nangle, former NIU football and basketball coach George “Chick” Evans, and former athletic director Bob Brigham.

In the late 1960s, one of NIU’s goals was to join the MAC. The conference was Division I at the time, and geographically it made sense for NIU.

“A lot of people would tell you that NIU getting admittance into the MAC was the single greatest athletic accomplishment in the school’s history,” said former NIU Sports Information Director Mike Korcek, now the Sports Information Director Emeritus. “And I would tend to agree.”

NIU men’s sports teams joined the MAC in 1975, and the women followed in 1982.

In the early 1980s, Huskie sports were doing well. The football team won the MAC in 1983 and was victorious in the California Bowl. In 1982, the men’s basketball team made the NCAA Tournament and in 1984 future NBA first-round pick Kenny Battle arrived in DeKalb. The 1986 season included wins over Marquette, Northwestern and Miami-Ohio, who at the time had future Chicago Bull Ron Harper, the 8th overall pick in the 1986 NBA Draft.

But NIU would make a controversial decision, a decision that Korcek calls “delusional.”

NIU decided to leave the MAC after the 1985-1986 school year.

NIU didn’t leave the conference for greener pastures, like the Big 10. NIU left the MAC and became independent.

NIU had no other conference to go to, it was an independent like Notre Dame. But of course NIU doesn’t exactly carry the same prestige that Notre Dame does.

Clyde Wingfield, who was NIU’s president at the time, saw bigger and better things for NIU. All of a sudden, NIU was too good for the MAC.

“It was a decision that shocked all of us,” Korcek said. “It was a very uniformed decision, very regrettable. We regressed in a lot of our sports cause we weren’t in the MAC.”

NIU would spend four years as a Division I independent. There were no automatic NCAA Tournament berths, no bowl game tie-ins. In 1989, the football team went 9-2. Because they had no conference and don’t have the prestige of Notre Dame, the team stayed at home for bowl season.

Head basketball coach John McDougal was fired after the 1986 season, partly for criticizing the decision to leave the conference. After McDougal got the ax, Battle transferred to Illinois and would help lead the Fighting Illini to a Final Four in 1989.

NIU would join the Mid-Continent Conference (now the Summit League) in 1990 and joined the Horizon League in 1994. None of those leagues sponsor football, so the football team went to the Big West in 1993.

In what Korcek describes as “Rand McNally gone amuck,” NIU was in the same conference as teams like Louisiana Tech, Boise State and San Jose State: not exactly short bus trips. NIU stayed in the Big West until 1995.

Luckily for Huskie athletics, they were able to re-join the MAC in 1997. The NIU wrestling program actually joined the conference a year earlier, for the 1996-97 season ­— current NIU head coach Dave Grant’s first year. Between 1987 and 1996, NIU would compete independently in wrestling and would go to the west regional championships to qualify for the national tournament.

“I think wrestling the same schools builds a sense of unity,” Grant said. “We’re all trying to win the same conference; you have those rivalries.”

NIU athletics have obviously been better off since joining the conference. Hopefully the school doesn’t make another mistake like the one it made in the mid-1980s.

“It was a mistake,” Korcek said. “Be careful what you wish for.”