It’s 8 p.m., and a graduate assistant for the Penn State football team named Mike Sabock is killing time, waiting for his wife to get off her job at the local dentist’s office.

On a whim, he picks up the phone and dials the NIU football office in hopes of leaving a message about a job for newly appointed coach and now ESPN analyst Lee Corso. To his surprise, someone picked up.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, hi. Is Lee Corso in?” Sabock said.

“You got him,” Corso replied.

After some initial panic, Sabock started talking about a job opportunity, and when Sabock said he was from Penn State, Corso immediately took interest in the “Paterno boy,” Sabock said.

The next day, Sabock went up to the Penn State Hall of Fame coach Joe Paterno and told him of his situation.

“Paterno just looked at me and said: ‘I’ll take care of you,’” Sabock recalls. “Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of you.”

Paterno was good to his word, and 21 years later, Sabock is still doing the job Corso hired him to do: head recruiting coordinator.

In the world of coaching college football, staying with one team for as long as Sabock has is almost unheard of; it’s just the nature of the business, said NIU coach Joe Novak.

Yet the coach’s son from Ohio knows that he is one of the luckiest guys in the sport for his longevity at NIU.

“I’m lucky as heck, especially from a family aspect,” said Sabock, who is also the NIU defensive ends coach. “Before I got married, I told my wife that to be a coach’s wife requires understanding of the hours put in and the fact that coaches tend to move around a lot.”

After Corso left NIU after nine games, Sabock figured he and his wife’s time had run out at the DeKalb university.

But the only moving Sabock has done over his tenure is to different houses in Sycamore. He has seen four different coaches and most of the highs and lows of NIU football. Through it all, Sabock cherishes most that he and his family have been able to become members of a community instead of just passersby.

It’s the community, NIU’s and Sycamore’s, that keeps Sabock dressed in cardinal and black.

His two sons Dan and Kevin both play football at Sycamore High School, and as for the coaches, Sabock figures they are some of the best he has been around.

“In many programs around the country, the coaching staff doesn’t work together and there is a lot of dishonesty behind closed doors,” Sabock said. “But not here. Everyone knows their purpose here, and that’s the right way to do things. That’s why I’m still here.”

It’s that single drive and purpose that is translating into Sabock’s favorite things: winning football games and seeing his players succeed on the field.

He knows it’s his players’ success that packs Huskie Stadium. But at every home game, there is a section in the west bleachers that is not cheering for his players but Sabock himself. It’s a cheering section that Sabock knows is there only because of his time spent at NIU. Time that most coaches don’t get.

“That’s what it’s all about for me,” Sabock said. “To turn around and see all of them. It’s indescribable. As hard as coaches work, the reward we get is winning, and after a win, there is nothing like when I get to look at my friends and family and pump my fists in the air.”