The year was 1983; most current NIU students weren’t even born yet.

It was also the year when the NIU football team earned a trip to its first major bowl game; the 1983 California Bowl in Fresno in which NIU won 20-13 over Cal State Fullerton.

This Saturday at halftime of NIU’s contest against Bowling Green, the team will celebrate its 25th anniversary at Huskie Stadium.

In addition to being the first team to earn a trip to a major bowl game, Bill Mallory’s team achieved more milestones. The 1983 Huskies were the first Huskie team to win the MAC Championship, as well as the first team to defeat a Big Eight school (which is now the Big 12), when they defeated Kansas 37-34 in Week One.

Nobody expected the 1983 squad to compete in the MAC, let alone win a bowl game. The 1983 Huskies were picked sixth in the preseason poll. After they went to Lawrence and beat the Jayhawks, they knew it was significant.

“Our first game of the year, we really knew we had something special,” said the team’s quarterback Tim Tyrrell. “It was such an unbelievable time back then.”

After the win at Kansas, NIU scored first at Wisconsin before falling 37-9. The Huskies would go on to win their next six games, all MAC contests, including a game at Bowling Green when the Huskies were down 20-0 at the half before prevailing 24-23.

“We came out and kicked their butt in the second half,” Tyrrell said. “We really were a Cinderella story.”

Tyrrell won the MAC MVP award in 1983 and was inducted into the NIU Hall of Fame in 1992 (the 1983 team was inducted in 1995).

After his time at NIU, Tyrrell spent six seasons in the NFL with the Falcons, Rams and Steelers. NIU only lost once more the entire season, and clinched the school’s only MAC title against Ohio at Huskie Stadium, and the Huskie Stadium goalposts were torn down for the fifth time.

It was on to the California Bowl, the first ever major bowl berth for NIU and one of three all-time.

The Huskies faced Cal State Fullerton (which would drop its football program in 1992) at Bulldog Stadium in Fresno.

Huskie fullback Lou Wicks rushed for a team-high 119 yards in a 20-13 Huskie victory, giving NIU its first bowl win.

“We went with a focus of wanting to win it,” Mallory said. “When we practiced and prepared that was all business. We played pretty much our typical type of game.”

Unfortunately for NIU, it was never able to repeat its 1983 success, and didn’t make another bowl game until 2004.

Mallory left for Indiana after the 1983 season, and the team hired current ESPN College GameDay analyst Lee Corso, who only coached one season in DeKalb.

The Huskies would go only 15-27-2 from 1984-1987, and left the MAC and became an independent after the 1985 season.

“[We] should have never got out of the Mid-American Conference,” Tyrrell said.

No matter what it did before or after 1983, that team will go down as one of NIU’s best, if not the best, team of all-time.

“The thing about them was that they were a team,” Mallory said. “They were a group that was well bonded. We didn’t have any egos.”