Joe Novak, the man who took Northern Illinois from one of the worst programs in the country to a nationally ranked one over a decade in DeKalb, has passed away.
He was 81.
Novak spent 12 seasons as the Huskies head coach, from 1996 through 2007, and no coach did more to establish what NIU football would become. The record book says 63-76, but that number doesn't tell the full story.
The coaching veteran inherited a program that had bottomed out and spent his first years absorbing brutal losses before the whole thing turned. In the Huskies debut season as an FBS independent in 1996, they went 1-10, that was followed by a winless 0-11 campaign in 1997, and a 2-9 season the next year. Then started a slow climb to 5-wins, then back-to-back seasons of 6-wins before breaking through to the 8-win mark in 2002.
Less than a decade after those struggles that marked his early tenure as a head coach, Novak had the Huskies ranked inside the top 15 nationally and knocking off Power conference teams on the road.
Before he ever ran his own program, Novak was a top tier defensive mind. He played defensive end at Miami (Ohio) under Bo Schembechler, part of that Cradle of Coaches lineage that produced so many of the game's most respected names. He got into coaching at the high school level in Ohio in 1968, then worked his way up through college assistant stops at Miami, Illinois (under Gary Moeller), and then Northern Illinois. He spent 1980 to 1995 on Bill Mallory's staffs, first at NIU and then a long run at Indiana, serving as defensive coordinator on some of the best teams in both schools' modern history. His 1983 Northern Illinois defense helped that squad go 10-2, finish ranked, and win the California Bowl.
That defensive background showed up when NIU finally broke through. His 2003 team is the one people around the program still talk about. The Huskies opened 7-0, beat No. 13 Maryland, went into Tuscaloosa and beat No. 21 Alabama, and knocked off Iowa State, climbing as high as No. 10 in the BCS standings. The next fall he led NIU to a 9-3 record and the school's first bowl game in 21 years, a win over Troy in the Silicon Valley Football Classic.
Along the way Novak won four MAC West titles, reached a MAC Championship game, and was named the conference's Coach of the Year in 2002. He put together seven straight winning seasons from 2000 through 2006, an unprecedented stretch of stability that program had never known.
Novak announced his retirement on November 26, 2007. "Winning is fragile," he said at the time. "You've got to enjoy it when you're doing it. People have always said, 'You'll know when it's time,' and I believe that now is the time." Jerry Kill took over the program he left behind, and the foundation Novak poured carried NIU into the run of MAC titles and bowl appearances that followed.
Please join us in sending prayers to Novak's family, his former players, and the coaches who worked alongside him.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.