Across the country, everyone has rung in the New Year, and celebratory parties were still ongoing. After all, it’s bowl season, and the big-ticket games were about to start. This was in a time before the Playoff, when bowl committees had to adhere to certain rules in terms of “automatic qualification.”
This particular season, a relatively new name in the national lexicon emerged to become a player in the BCS bowl as a “bowl-busting” team: the Northern Illinois Huskies.
The 2012 Huskies were the first “non-power” team east of the Mississippi River to qualify for an AQ bowl and the only one to represent the Mid-American Conference in the BCS era.