About 300 students purchased tickets to the MAC championship football game in Detroit tonight.

The game will be shown on ESPN, with kickoff at 6:30 p.m. The game also will be shown in the Holmes Student Center’s Carl Sandburg Auditorium starting at 6 p.m. Free food and beverages will be provided.

If NIU wins, there will be a celebration party in the HSC’s Regency room at 10 p.m. after the game. Doors open at 9 p.m. and the first 300 people to arrive will receive a free T-shirt commemorating the NIU MAC West Championship. The celebration will feature a disc jockey, snacks and beverages, and is sponsored by various campus organizations.

A bus filled with enthusiastic fans was scheduled to leave at 8 a.m. today, said Eric Schultz, the Convocation Center’s assistant director of ticketing.

Whether students can make up work missed by attending the game is left up to individual professors.

“I would have made accommodations, but none of my students said they were going,” said associate English professor Doris MacDonald.

Dan Frobish, a statistics instructor, said he does not have any specific policies for students missing class for the game.

“I appreciate that people have extra curriculars, but there are complications outside of that … more work outside of class to make up,” Frobish said.

Dustin Gudenschwager, a sophomore pre-computer science major and marching band member, is excited to attend the game in light of the team’s performance this year.

Senior economics major Imran Mandani also is planning to attend the MAC Championship game with his friends.

“I’m just going to [go] … I’m taking all my books with me. We might just get face paint,” Mandani said.

His plans are to spend the night at a motel in Detroit, split the bill with his friends and return Friday morning since he does not have class on Friday.