DeKALB | Time has helped NIU football coach Joe Novak and his teams’ blood to cool.

Novak came into the press conference furious after a 28-25 win against Miami-Ohio. The NIU coach made it appear as if the Huskies had lost in the final seconds rather than winning on the road for the second week in a row.

Infuriated, he pounded the table in angst that Miami-Ohio had located its student section behind NIU’s bench, which is a no-no according to MAC regulations for football games.

“We just had a league policy that was changed,” Novak said. “As you know, we changed our sides here and it wasn’t what I liked, but we went to the other side because we wanted to keep our students there.”

It was 2005 when the MAC changed where visiting and home teams’ benches would be located at football games. The goal was to increase home-students’ sportsmanship in an attempt to lessen verbal abuse aimed toward visiting teams.

“When Miami came here last year they were not in front of our students,” said the 11th-year coach at Tuesday’s press conference. “But when we went there this year they just decided to flip it back, which I thought was wrong.”

Novak said the issue is being handled by the administrative staff, but was confident the incident didn’t and won’t have any effect on his players.

But fans watching the game couldn’t help but notice when NIU tailback Garrett Wolfe put his hand to his ear. It seemed as if Wolfe was telling the crowd they weren’t loud enough.

“At first I need to apologize for that, I shouldn’t have been paying attention to the crowd,” Wolfe said. “It was kind of funny. Half of the student section was chanting Wolfe for Heisman, but the other half was kind of jumping down our throats.”

But it wasn’t chants directed at Wolfe that caused him to react to the rowdy crowd. It was when spectators led chants against his teammates that the Chicago native went off.

“I really took it personal when they started coming after the offensive line and really just trying to get in their heads,” the senior said. “If someone has something they want to say about me that’s fine and dandy, but when people come after guys that I care about, it lights a fire inside of me.”

Ben Gross is a NIU football beat reporter for the Northern Star.