When the NIU football team exits the Yordon Center doors, touches the Huskie statue by the south end zone and locks arms at the goal line, it is used to hearing the thunderous cheers of the Huskie faithful reverberate around Huskie Stadium.

On Saturday, however, it was like NIU was charging into a deserted town from the Old West rather than its home stadium.

While Saturday was the first collegiate football game in DeKalb since a homecoming match-up against Western Michigan, fans were in short supply as the Huskies took down Akron, 27-10.

With a recorded attendance of only 10,148, there was more of the silver bleachers showing than
was covered up by fans.

In previous games at Huskie Stadium this year, there were 21,427 fans for the opener against Western Illinois, an FCS opponent, and the previous low was 16,320 against Idaho.

In comparison, Central Michigan had 20,032 fans present for its Sept. 26 game against the Zips.
Even though the fans weren’t out in droves, NIU (5-3 overall, 3-1 MAC) head coach Jerry Kill was quick to point out that, no matter how many fans show up, there are distinct advantages to playing at home.

“I’m an old-fashioned dude,” Kill said. “We’ve been on the road for a six-hour trip to Toledo, and you take a six-hour trip to Miami and you’re on a dang bus and you’re as old as I am, [being in DeKalb is] a home-field advantage.”

While familiar bearings helped NIU to a come-from-behind victory, scoring 21 fourth-quarter points, the crowd had thinned considerably by the start of the second-half. The student bleachers, not crowded by any means at the start of the game, had taken the biggest hit.

The band section of the stands was easily the most heavily populated.

Reduced crowd noise did have an effect on the game being played as well. The perfect example came at the end of the second quarter, when Akron (1-7, 0-4) ran a no-huddle offense to near-perfection.

Throughout the drive, the Zips’ freshman quarterback, Patrick Nicely, was able to look at the defense and audible at the line at will. Nicely took constant four-wide receiver sets down to NIU’s 21-yard line before a missed field goal ended the drive.

Saturday was Nicely’s third collegiate start.

On a pass interference call against the Huskies in the second half, one on the sidelines could hear the cheers of the Akron contingent well above the boos from NIU’s fan base.

“It seemed like the cold weather and [NIU’s] under-performance made people sort of apathetic,” junior biology major Alex Bean said. “My friends and I stayed the whole time, and as I was leaving I thought ‘of the time that people spent at this game, I think we’re easily in the top five or 10 percent.”

The fans who braved the cold tried to create a raucous atmosphere, but as the crowd grew to its loudest on an Akron third-and-12, the calls being made by Nicely were still easily audible.

Kill was resolute that his team wouldn’t concern itself with such matters, however.

“You can’t control anything but what you do,” Kill said. “You’ve got to win, week in and week out. The more you win, people’ll come. If we put a good product out there, they’ll come. If the [Chicago] Bears start struggling, people are going to stay in the bar and drink and yell at the Bears. [If] we keep winning, there’ll be more people.”

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