Picture the Homecoming football game as being against NIU alumni.

Football captain James Frederick began the Northern Illinois – the predecessor of the Northern Star – October 1903 sports column as follows: “To the Alumni. On Saturday, October 10, occurs a football game between the alumni and the present team of the Northern Illinois State Normal School. No doubt you have heard about it, but have you heard of it in such a way as to make you have a longing desire to be there? We hope you have. If you don’t come, you’ll miss half your life and lose the other half wishing you had come.”

Homecoming rituals did not always involve a week’s worth of celebratory games or an intense fight for the winning touchdown. The term “Homecoming” was not officially used in reference to the weekend at NIU until 1911. Intercollegiate games did not start until a game against Wheaton College in 1914.

NIU’s Homecoming tradition dates back to 1903, the longest in Illinois. After games against graduated “Cubs” – then NIU’s mascot – from 1903-1905, the 1906 constitution was fixed to include an annual business meeting, football game and banquet. The yellow-and-white clad players of Northern Illinois State Normal School faced alumni on Glidden Field in the 1903 football team’s second game. The NISNS team won with a final score of 6-0.

History was made during the 1907 alumni weekend. In witnessing the communal “Cubs” pride among students and alumni alike, the constitution officially recognized the new tradition.

“There shall be a social meeting of the alumni and quests, annually following the annual football game, on the evening of the second Saturday of October,” read the 1907 constitution.

The first pep rally took place that Friday afternoon. The student population and alumni were explained the meaning of the newly adopted Alumni Day. The football coach urged the students to come and see the game so the alumni would feel remembered and welcomed back from the first moment of their brief visit. Representatives from all of the school’s clubs gathered at the train station Friday evening and Saturday morning to greet the returning graduates.

At 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 12, the annual business meeting elected officers for the coming year. At 2:30 p.m., the pre-game rally began with each class marching under their respective banners. Directly after the rally, the football game commenced. All of the rally’s participants were in attendance. The score was 6-5, in favor of the alumni.

Despite the loss, NISNS students were as enthusiastic for the alumni as they would have been for their own team had they won.

“There is no other team we would rather lose to than that of the Alumni for they, too, are Normalites and ‘foes worthy of our steel,’” wrote the Northern Star’s 1907 athletics editor, Zoe Melville.

The crowds cheered, a sea of yellow and white fans for both sides.

“Never has there been such an enthusiastic crowd of rooters and if cheers would have won the game there would have been no doubt as to the outcome, but the fates decreed otherwise,” Melville wrote.

At 7:15 p.m., the banquet ensued in the West Society Hall. The dinner and toasts were prepared by the domestic science classes. The proceedings ended shortly before midnight, but the evening has left its historical stamp on NIU. Graduates joined the choir director in closing the evening with a lyrically-appropriate song.

“In affection, in service we’ll be ever true, Alma Mater, to thee,” read the last lines of the song.