Numbers don’t lie – at least that’s what the title of books, blogs and other sources say.

Looking at numbers from the past could be a good indicator of what to expect this Saturday at the NIU Homecoming football game against Toledo.

Here’s what the Northern Star found.

NIU is 62-29-10 overall in its Homecoming games.

In the last 10 Homecoming games, the Huskies are 9-1.

The last time the Huskies lost on Homecoming was last year against Western Michigan. NIU fell 17-13 to WMU. Before that loss, the Huskies had won all their Hhomecoming games since the 1997, when Vanderbilt beat NIU 17-7.

NIU has scored a total of 321 points on Homecoming in the last 10 years. That’s an average of 32.1 points for the Huskies on Homecoming during this time frame.

Since 1998, the Huskies have only allowed opponents to score a total of 121 points during Homecoming. The opposition is averaging 12.1 points per game during the past 10 years.

The most points scored by an NIU opponent on Homecoming in the last 10 years is 21 points. Those 21 points were allowed in 2006 when the Temple Owls visited the Huskies for Homecoming.

Of the last 10 Homecoming games, NIU has scored 40 or more points on four occasions. The most points scored on Homecoming by the Huskies was in 2002. That year, NIU beat Western Michigan 49-0.

NIU’s Homecoming opponents have combined for a record of 41-73 during the past decade.

The best record held by an opponent that NIU beat in its Homecoming over the past 10 years was Central Florida in 2000. Central Florida would finish that season at 7-4.

From 2001 to 2006, the average Homecoming attendance crowd was 15.1 percent larger than a normal home game. In 2007, the average home attendance at Huskie Stadium was 17,864 fans. The Homecoming game attracted a 30 percent increase, as 23,057 people came to Huskie Stadium that day.

In the last seven seasons, the Homecoming game has been the most attended game four times. Once the game was the second highest attended (2007) and the other two times the game was the third most-attended.

The 2003 Homecoming game had an attendance of 28,221 — the largest crowd Huskie Stadium has held.

The 2006 Homecoming game saw the greatest increase in attendance in the past five years, when compared to the season average attendance. That year, attendance at Homecoming was 30.1 percent higher than the average home game.

The 2002 Homecoming game actually saw a dip in attendance figures. The crowd was about 760 less than the average game that season.

Toledo, NIU’s opponent in the 2008 Homecoming game, is 2-4, and beat Michigan 13-10 this past weekend.

The last time NIU faced Toledo, in 2007, the Rockets beat the Huskies 70-21. That game marked the first time an opponent scored 70 or more points since Sept. 12, 1998, when No. 5 Kansas State beat NIU 73-7.

The last time the Huskies beat the Rockets was in 2005. That season quarterback Dan Nicholson, as a redshirt freshman, lead NIU to a 35-17 victory.

It’s been 18 seasons since NIU last beat Toledo in DeKalb. The last win over the Rockets in front of a home crowd came in 1989 when the Huskies pulled off a 39-27 victory.

The numbers don’t lie. In the last 10 years, Homecoming has produced a win 90 percent of the time. NIU usually outscores its opponent by 20 points, and the crowd is most likely the largest the Huskies will see in DeKalb for the season.

However, those are just the numbers. Any coach will tell you that the numbers don’t determine the outcome.

That’s why the game is played.