Joe Novak thought he had walked into someone else’s dream by mistake on the night of Jan. 1, 2013, when he was on the field before the Orange Bowl.•Northern Illinois, which once was called out by critics for masquerading as a Division I football team, was about to play Florida State in a Bowl Championship Series game. No Mid-American Conference team had ventured that far.
Novak was on the pass list because he was a retired coach who raised the Huskies from the dregs.
“Sure, I had dreams for the team,” he said. “But I never thought Northern Illinois would have gotten that far.