FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.Amid the cacophony that is the newfound media attention that constantly surrounds the Northern Illinois Huskies, one word has found a way to break through the noise.
In almost every question asked, you'll hear it: underdog.
What else could you call the Huskies? The team is the first-ever MAC school to make the BCS, and they'll go against a No. 12 Florida State team that was in the national-title hunt for all but a few weeks this season.
Some teams would take offense to being called an underdog, but Northern Illinois hasn't been quick to point out that they finished the regular season only three spots behind the Seminoles in the BCS Standings.
No, they rather like the title of underdogit fits.
"I think this team is made up of guys who, at one point in their life, were told that they're not good enough to play here," tight end Jason Schepler said. "So people saying that we're not good enough to be here is just another day for us."
Schepler is the perfect example of NIU's I'll-show-you attitude. Coming out of Sycamore high school, just up the road from NIU's campus, Schepler says he visited every Big Ten school. Each told him he wasn't big enough, wasn't athletic enough, was downright not good enough to play at the BCS level.
NIU took him on as a walk-on and put him at a position that seems from a bygone eraa blocking tight end.
Across the country, most blocking tight ends are role players, buried on the overall depth chart, only to be used in special situations. Not Schepler. He's been NIU's offensive player of the week three times, a Lowes Senior CLASS Award finalist and a second-team academic All-American.
The man Schepler blocks for, quarterback Jordan Lynch, might have had Heisman hype this season, but he too came to Northern Illinois as a nobody. Only former Huskie coach Jerry Kill offered him a scholarship out of Mount Carmel high school.
"Im a quarterback first I would say, and no one really liked me for quarterback," Lynch said. "NIU was the only school that wanted me to play quarterback. It was the only school that gave me a shot, so he Kill came down to Mount Carmel and talked to Coach Lenti and invited me to a one-day camp, and I went up there, and he saw me play quarterback, and offered me that night."
Lynch has made good on his one opportunity.
After waiting on the bench for two years, Lynch ran for an astounding 1,771 yards this seasonnot Johnny Manziel, Cam Newton, Eric Crouch, Mike Vick nor Steve Young ever rushed for as many. It set a new single-season rushing record for a FBS quarterback, and it was done without SportsCenter cut-ins or front-page fanfare.
It wasn't until the record was set that Lynch began to be noticed nationally, and now that he is, he's hoping to parlay the stage of the Orange Bowla game Lynch called the next-best thing to the National Championship Gameinto another proving ground.
"It was always my dream, play in the NFL," Lynch said. "Just like Russell Wilson, RGIII and all that, theyre doing a great job and it seems like the NFL is starting to make the switch year by year with more quarterbacks like that. That definitely gives guys like me hope that are 6-foot or under."