In honor of the MAC’s preseason No. 1 NIU football team, here are a few odds on what will happen throughout the season.

Joe Novak gets a lap dance in Alabama after the Huskies top the host Tide — a la Mike Price.

Star running back Michael Turner invited to New York’s Downtown Athletic Club for the Heisman Award. Five percent chance he’ll win the award.

The Huskies end the year as top 25 team. Double that (40 percent) that they make their way into the top 25 at some point throughout the season.

Both Maryland and Iowa State leave DeKalb with corn stalks rammed up their rears because they got it pounded to them so bad by NIU. The Huskies are the only MAC school to host two BCS schools this year and for them to get two W’s would prove monumental.

NIU goes undefeated, wins its bowl game and head coach Smokin’ Joe Novak shows where the nickname came from. He lights up a fat stoagie while body surfing through the hands of the Huskie faithful.

Turner petitions to the NCAA that former NIU offensive linemen Ryan Diem (Colts) and Tim Vincent (Bears) still have a remaining year of college eligibility left. Already expected to be a down year for the offensive line, it didn’t help when news got out that Mark Orszula will be out for the entire year, again (leg). And, of course, the tragic death of 6-foot-8, 283-pound OT Shea Fitzgerald in the Chicago Porch Collapse left a sore spot in everyone’s hearts.

Dan Sheldon leads the nation in punt returns again and shows why he has the nickname Seabiscut. Subsequently, the Burlington Central-native has a big screen movie made about him, just as his (nick)namesake.

NIU students take down the practice goal post following a Maryland win. After intense persistence from the higher-ups at NIU to not let any students on or near the field in ‘02 — for fear the goal posts may come down on them — the students revolt against the system and take the practice goal post to the East Lagoon circa 1999.

Fifth-year NIU receiver PJ Fleck and his roommate and Huskie starting quarterback Josh Haldi will get along. If Fleck wants to improve on his team-high 59 receptions in 2001, expect Haldi to — courtesy of Fleck — get a few breakfast-in-beds and to have his clothes ironed and picked out for him when he wakes.

The nickname Turner the Burner will grow on everyone, including The Burner himself, who doesn’t exactly take a special kinship with it now.

All-MAC cornerback Randee Drew pulls a RuPaul and goes both ways. The speedster originally from Wisconsin could add an extra boost to Haldi’s receiving core.

Everyone, and this especially includes the Chicago media, realize who has the best DI-A football team in Illinois. Who could it be? Certainly not the Wildcats or Illini.