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Big Noon Kickoff returns with Hoosiers hosting North Texas
Rob Stone previews the Indiana-North Texas matchup, discusses Illinois’ win over UAB and weighs in on LSU’s legal battle and the College Football Playoff.
It's a new day for Northern Illinois. Goodbye, Mid-American Conference. Hello, Mountain West.
Here’s a preview of the Huskies' upcoming 2026 season, where NIU football starts a new era for its football program.
NIU Huskies football: Key information
Head coach: Rob Harley (Interim head coach, 0-0 overall)
Key Additions: S Avery Jones Jr. (Lafayette), DE James Bradley (Mississippi Valley State), WR Cam Thompson (Mississippi State), QB Taron Dickens (West Carolina).
Key Departures: S Taylor Powell, DT Tanner Phelps, OL Abiathar Curry, OL Evan Malcore, CB Jacob Finley, QB Josh Holst.
Northern Illinois football 2026 preview
What we know:
There’s a lot of moving parts this year for NIU.
Rob Harley is leading the charge as the interim coach. NIU is now a Mountain West football team, which is still a sentence that needs getting used to. There are plenty of new players, thanks to the transfer portal.
There won’t be anymore weeknight games for the Huskies. That was a MAC thing. The Mountain West offers more competition with teams like UNLV, Hawaii, New Mexico and Fresno State, all teams that won nine games or more.
This year will test where NIU is as a program.
What we don't know:
This is a loaded premise.
We don’t know how NIU fits into the Mountain West Conference.
We don’t know if Harley can shake the interim tag and earn the permanent head coach title.
We don’t know if NIU can find its footing in a new era of college football where the rules keep changing, the goal posts are hard to track and the future is hard to predict. But, this can be said for every team in the nation.
We don’t know what’s in the cards for NIU until they play the games.
Big picture view:
This could be a bumpy year in DeKalb.
The schedule is front loaded with Iowa and Arizona. Even a Sept. 26 game vs. Georgia State is on the road. Air Force, Wyoming, San Jose State and Nevada all finished in the bottom half of the conference in 2025.
There will be opportunities to win games. Adding Taron Dickens from the portal late in the game is a boon for a team that needed an upgrade at quarterback and allows the team to develop Brady Davidson.
But, the consensus is that earning bowl eligibility and earning a winning record would be considered a widely successful season for NIU in 2026. Harley deserves his shot to see if he can get the Huskies there, too.
NIU Huskies 2026 Football Schedule
September 5 – at Iowa
September 12 – vs. Illinois State
September 19 – at Arizona
September 26 – at Georgia State
October 10 – vs. Air Force
October 17 – at Wyoming
October 24 – vs. Hawaii
October 31 – at UNLV
November 7 – at San Jose State
November 14 – vs. Nevada
November 21 – at North Dakota State
November 28 – vs. UTEP
2026 season prediction: 5-7