Editor’s note – In 2003, the NIU football team entered its season with high expectations. This team and the results of its season unknowingly changed not just Huskie football, but aspects of the NIU and DeKalb community forever.

This is the beginning of a 12-part series set to run for the next few weeks, reviewing the season and the impacts this team had on NIU.

For some, like senior wide receiver P.J. Fleck, this was the end. For others, like freshman offensive tackle Doug Free, this was just the beginning.

But for the entire NIU football team, the 2003 season was going to be a statement.

“We were all in the same boat. We were all under-recruited, we were all too small, we were all too slow, we were all too this, too that – we were all the kings of the toos,” Fleck said. “We all had a chip on our shoulder and felt that we had something to prove everyday.”

High Expectations

NIU was coming off a 2002 season in which it went 8-4 overall and 7-1 in the MAC. After a 1-3 start the past season, the Huskies finished 2002 going 7-1.

Hopes were high that NIU had finally assembled a team that would clinch the MAC West outright. On July 22, 2003, the MAC News Media Association poll agreed as it projected the Huskies would finish first.

NIU finished the poll with 269 points and 24 first place votes. Behind the Huskies was Toledo, with 238 points and nine first place ballots. Also, in a not too-distant third, was Bowling Green with its 232 points and nine first place selections.

The Huskies also received the most votes to win the MAC championship, 15, in the poll.

The next highest total went to Marshall, which received seven such votes.

“Just like the ’83 team, you could tell the year before we were going to be good,” said Mike Korcek, NIU’s sports information director in 2003. “But nobody knew how good.”

A Summer of Bonding

The team wasn’t worried about polls that summer though. Instead, they spent the preseason like any other group of college kids – having fun.

With about 95 percent of the team in DeKalb before the start of the season, according to former quarterback Josh Haldi, the group played football on their own, took up speed ball and just hung out together.

These summer impromptu activities showed a distinctive character of the 2003 team that was unmatched in past seasons.

“The kids really cared and liked each other on the team,” said Greg Brower, former defensive interior line coach. “That team was unique, as they all seemed to get along and enjoyed each other.”

But even these players had more than football on their minds.

With camp approaching in a couple weeks, the players took a break.

They all knew that in just two weeks they would hit the grindstone that is college football, and would have few chances to visit with family and friends.

That’s when tragedy struck the Huskie family.

On June 29, 2003, an overcrowded porch collapsed at a party in Lincoln Park in Chicago. The disastrous accident left 13 people dead, with another 57 seriously injured. One of the deceased was NIU football player Shea Fitzgerald, a 6-foot-6, 300-pound offensive lineman. Known as the “gentle giant” by friends, Fitzgerald was taken away just 15 days before his 20th birthday and just two weeks before camp.

“He was a kid,” Korcek said. “He was a young man in the prime of his life.”

The team showed support for the Fitzgerald family by attending their teammate’s funeral.

Former NIU head coach Joe Novak was in Hawaii at the time of the accident. Upon hearing the news, the coach booked the soonest flight home to say his final goodbye with the rest of the team.

“It was such a shock,” Novak said. “Going in, it was really hard. It’s not a way you want to start a season.”

It was a crucial moment for the Huskies. NIU could either let the tragedy overtake its season and lose its focus, or it could entirely forget about it.

The team and the coaches decided that neither of these choices was sufficient. Instead, the Huskies decided they would play in memory of their fallen brother.

“That was an emotional part of the season,” said former offensive coordinator Matt Canada. “The kids came together through that.”

Training Camp

With Fitzgerald’s No. 76 hanging in his locker, which would remain there for four years, and a patch with his number on the rest of their jerseys, the Huskies started training camp.

The team soon found they had a strong balance between offense, defense and special teams.

The Huskies had offensive weapons in running back Michael Turner, quarterback Josh Haldi and wide receivers like Fleck, Dan Sheldon and Sam Hurd.

Defensively, NIU was led by senior linebacker Nick Duffy, who, according to Haldi, was the team’s emotional leader.

On special teams, the Huskies had kicker Steve Azar, who is still the No. 1 career scoring leader for the Huskies with 370 points.

But talent isn’t enough to win – that’s where the coaches come in.

Novak had built his program from the ground up. The coach decided to use one of his mentors’, Bill Mallory, systems of recruitment when coming to NIU. The key was to get hard-working players who were not renegades and then treat them all with respect.

“He knew exactly who he wanted on his team and who he wanted coaching his team,” said Sam Pittman, former offensive line coach. “The way coach Novak treated the team was unmatched. We had some super starters but he treated them all the same.”

Waiting to Explode

With talent, a fallen brother, players who could be coached, good coaches and the memory that this was a group of too small, too slow or too whatever, a fire began to burn in Huskie Stadium.

As the summer went on, the fire only grew, waiting to explode on Aug. 28, 2003 – the night NIU opened its season against Maryland at Huskie Stadium.

“We felt we had every piece of the puzzle,” Fleck said. “When you have a whole bunch of ‘nobodies’ that all set forth and have their eye on one goal, that can be dangerous. The most dangerous player is the one who is told they can’t. We had 22 can’ts.”