Thomas Hammock says "it gives me pride" to lose transfers to Power 4 schools

No one in power has ever come out and said this, nor will they ever, because they don't really need to: college athletics has turned into a major league/minor league system. It's not quite Major League Baseball -- a AAA player in the Detroit Tigers system isn't free to join the San Diego Padres after each season. It's closest to European soccer, except without a transfer-fee structure that ultimately would end up benefitting both sides. (More on that below.)

It's inefficient, but it's omnipresent. If a Power 4 school calls, a Group of 6 player is almost always answering.

Northern Illinois head coach Thomas Hammock has chosen to accept reality as it is. His Huskies lost 25 transfers in between the 2024 and 2025 seasons, mostly to schools like Mississippi State, Arizona State, Texas Tech and West Virginia. Illinois, Missouri and Indiana also came calling. The Huskies took 13 transfers, the vast majority from the sub-FBS level. There's traffic in both directions, sure, but it mostly moves one way. 

Hammock has chosen to take that information as confirmation that he and his staff are doing the right things in DeKalb. 

"It gives me pride knowing that they all came from here, which means they were all developed here," he said. "They were all recruited here. They were all evaluated here. That's not talked about enough, in my opinion. So, we can say we lost them, or we can say, you know what, somebody had to evaluate these guys, somebody had to develop these guys, somebody had to take care of these guys.... You have to be a lot better than a lot of other people for them to come take what you have. That's how I look at it, because they can't do what we can do. If you can do what I can do, then you don't need to take what I have."

One can say the players that ultimately wound up in the SEC, Big Ten or Big 12 were good players all along and would've ended up in the Power 4 no matter what MAC school they signed with, or that these were hidden gems that required the kind of polishing only available at NIU. Either explanation is complimentary to Hammock and the Huskies staff. Reality is likely somewhere in between.

Last month, Hammock's boss, NIU AD Sean Frazier, took the same approach.

"You come here, you're going to have a shot at the NFL, you're going to be developed here, we're going to be sound on all three phases of the game, and if somebody else has a larger bounty out there? That's fine too," he said. "At least you gave us that time."

Frazier also argued for a European-style transfer fee, which ultimately benefits both sides of the equation. The Indianas, Texas Techs and Missouris of the world pay a fee to Northern Illinois for swiping their player, which in turn gives NIU more resources to develop the next round of Hoosiers, Red Raiders, and Tigers. "You want to come in, talk to our person, poach our player -- make sure you do it legally -- why don't you throw something back into the kidney to help us to continue to develop so we can have an ecosystem that's fair."

This new reality is uncomfortable for those below the Power 4 level, but reality doesn't ask our permission, it just is. For better or worse, they've accepted that at Northern Illinois.