The Northern Star proudly presents some mid-summer column stuffers for your reading pleasure. Enjoy. Former Huskie standout Ted "The Mad Stork" Hennings made the news recently while participating in the Chicago Bears training camp in Platteville, Wis....

The fastballs will not pop as loudly, or be clobbered so easily. The 6-4-3 might be just the 6-4. The uniforms baggier, the tempers hotter. New NIU head baseball Coach Spanky McFarland has no scholarships to offer the young men who will fill the new program's...

University of South Florida assistant coach Joe "Spanky" McFarland has been picked to lead the revival of the NIU baseball program which was cut at the end of the 1982 season. The decision is subject to Board of Regents approval. In his 13 coaching years,...

The final chapter in the saga of NIU's mens' gymnastic team was written on Saturday. And the closing line can be summed up in one word: ironic. Genaro Severino, the last Huskie gymnast still competing for NIU in the final year of the program, pulled his...

I was sitting in my favorite DeKalb watering hole (I was in a watering hole because I hate bars), the other day when my friend Willie McGruff walked in. Yes, McGruff is related to the crime dog but refuses to discuss it, something about a pending paternity...

If Huskie Athletic Director Gerald O'Dell were a comedian, his sense of timing wouldn't get him a ticket out of First City, let alone a gig at Second City. There are no good times to announce the impending elimination of a sport, but on the scale of better...

As expected, Huskie Athletic Director Gerald O'Dell recommended to the Athletic Board Wednesday that men's gymnastics be eliminated for lack of support and fiscal responsibility. "Regardless of emotion or sentimentality, we need to deal with the facts,"...

On Feb. 11, 1979, a sporting event in Chick Evans Field House held the attention of more than 5000 human beings. Not until Kenny Battle bounced off backboards from 1984-86 for the NIU basketball team would so many people focus on one individual and his...

After an eight-year off-season, the Huskie baseball program recently threw out its first pitch with nationwide classified ads for head coaching prospects with Division I college experience. NIU Athletic Director Gerald O'Dell said since the announcement...

Chuck Ehrlich, NIU men's gymnastic coach for 17 years, said he resigned Wednesday partly because of nationwide rumors of his program's elimination. Ehrlich said the rumors began in August and dealt with the cutting of the gymnastics program to make way...

What if regular people were to take over the sportscasting industry? Some friends and I got to talking about this and decided that the "suits" who read the sports on television should be working in different professions. Don't get me wrong, there are...

The 1-1 NIU men's basketball team faces its toughest challenge of the young season tonight at Chick Evans Field House against Montana State of the Big Sky Conference. "It's going to be a really exciting game," said Huskie head coach Jim Molinari, regarding...