Cerrone: NIU vs. Notre Dame is a dream that has become reality

Making my first visit to Notre Dame for a football game in about the same time period as Rudy Ruettiger’s dad in the 1993 film “Rudy” my reaction upon entering the stadium could not have been more different.

“This is the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen,” the die-hard Fighting Irish fan Daniel Ruettiger Sr. – wonderfully played by Ned Beatty – tells his oldest son as he gazes at the field at Notre Dame Stadium.

A poignant moment in what would become a classic sports movie.

My first impression when I walked into that same stadium Nov. 16, 1974?

“Now this is big-time college football,” the 19-year-old me would likely have said.

To make that trip to South Bend from DeKalb – with tickets secured by a fellow resident adviser at the University Plaza whose boyfriend attended Notre Dame – I would miss a home game for the first and only time in my four years at NIU. But the choice was an easy one – the No. 5 ranked Irish hosting No. 17 Pitt before 60,000 fans at historic Notre Dame Stadium or the 3-7 Huskies taking on Idaho before a fraction of that in the 19,000-seat newly named Huskie Stadium.

And that’s the way it was for each of my four years at NIU, including my senior year when I called the games for the campus radio station and its 50,000-watt sister station on the FM dial.

Game after game my dorm buddies and I would trek to the nearby stadium to cheer on the Huskies as they hosted other fledgling NCAA Division I programs like Long Beach State, West Texas State, Indiana State and Xavier. And, after the games, we’d retreat to a dorm room and watch whatever game may have been airing on network TV on tiny black-and-white sets.

Michigan. Ohio State. Nebraska. Oklahoma. Penn State. USC. And, of course, Notre Dame – the most famous college football team in the nation.

Now this, we all thought, is big-time college football. NIU, having ascended to Division I status just a couple of years earlier in 1969, was – in my 19-year-old mind – ”big time” on paper only.

We just couldn’t grasp the commitment grand vision for NIU football shared by athletic director Bob Brigham and sports information director Bud Nangle. Without question, they saw a future that had NIU competing with these “big-time” programs that in 1974 we could only watch on TV.

If Dr. Brigham or Bud had comforted me back then by saying, “just be patient, son, someday our Huskies will be playing, even beating these teams that you and your buddies are watching on TV,” my response would surely have been, “I have a better chance of walking on the moon.”

But, then, their vision started to become a reality. “Big-time” teams began to dot NIU’s schedule each year. Wisconsin. Miami. Nebraska. Oklahoma. Penn State. Alabama. Ohio State. Michigan. The story was usually the same – take a big check from the host school and mostly get our butts kicked. But, even if the games against these opponents were always on their home turf and the results were mostly lopsided losses, they were vital stepping stones for what would become a golden age of NIU football.

Beginning with NIU’s first “Boneyard” victory at Kansas in 1983, the tide turned – no pun intended. Sure, we’ll take your money – thank you very much – but now we’ll kick your butt. Nationally ranked Alabama – Alabama! – would fall at home to NIU in 2003 just three weeks after the Huskies shocked No. 15 Maryland. Before a sellout crowd at Huskie Stadium. Before a national TV audience. Wisconsin fell to NIU, too, as would Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Iowa State, Minnesota and Purdue. And, in just the last two seasons, George Tech and Boston College have been added to a growing list of “Boneyard” victories.

My beloved alma mater – with a fraction of the revenue and resources – is now indeed a “big-time” college football program, winning the Mid-American Conference championships five times in the past 12 seasons. No other MAC school has won more than two titles in that period. In a 10-year span from 2010-19, the Huskies posted a remarkable 91 victories.

The 2012 team went 12-1, finishing at No. 15 to earn a berth in the Discover Orange Bowl against Florida State.

The Orange Bowl? NIU? Seriously?

Quarterback Jordan Lynch finished third in voting for the Heisman Trophy.

The Heisman Trophy? NIU? Seriously?

Three seasons later the Huskies would travel to Columbus, Ohio, to take on the No. 1 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes – then the reigning NCAA champions and owners of the longest winning streak in the nation at 15 straight. The Huskies entered the game as 34.5-point underdogs and walked off the field with heads held high after the Buckeyes escaped with a 20-13 win, surviving multiple opportunities by NIU to win the game in the final minutes.

And now, finally, it will be Notre Dame – a football opponent that, as a student 50 years ago, would be on NIU’s schedule only in my dreams.

Saturday’s nationally televised game – a little more than two months shy of my 70th birthday – will be my first visit to Notre Dame Stadium since that raw and rainy Saturday afternoon 50 years ago. This time my reaction upon seeing the field – with my NIU Huskies on it – will be the same as Rudy’s dad.

It will be “the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen.”

Rick Cerrone, a Class of 1976 graduate of NIU and elected to the NIU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2022, has spent more than 45 years in and around Major League Baseball as a PR executive and magazine editor and publisher. With the New York Yankees from 1996-2006, he earned four World Championship rings.