After 12 hard fought seasons, it's over. Joe coached the Huskies to a 63-76 (8th all-time in the MAC) career record and appearances in the 2004 Silicon Valley Classic and the 2006 Poinsettia Bowl. From 2000-2006, NIU had a winning season every single year. His teams won or shared the MAC West title 4 times, including making the MAC Championship in 2005. I still can't believe the 2003 squad went 10-2 and still didn't make a bowl upsetting #15 Maryland and #21 Alabama. We were ranked as high as #12 that year in the polls. I can pretty much say that I became an NIU fan because of the Wake Forest win in '02 and the Maryland win in '03, both thrillers. He's had 5 All-Americans and 9 of his players are in the NFL.
It's really easy to repeat over and over what the numerous articles have to say about Coach Novak. The most important thing in his tenure is that he had great integrity and his players really exemplified him as an individual. The overall scholarship of the football seems to improve every year. The success of Joe paved the way for the University to fund the Jeffery & Kimberly Yordon Academic and Athletic Performance Center. The Yordon AAPC is such a vast improvement over what would some say to be some of the worst facilities in the nation. Coach Novak took one of the worst teams in the nation in 1996 to one of the top teams in the Mid-American Conference almost every single year. From the worst to the best with both the teams and the facilities. That's what Joe Novak has accomplished here. It is almost a double-edged sword, because he has mentioned over this past season that players now are maybe just expecting to come to NIU to win. Obviously this season was a wake-up call. Another big difficulty Joe had to pull through was the abundance of assistant coaches that went on to bigger and better things making more money at BCS schools. That hurts when some of your best guys leave.
Joe Novak wasn't selfish. He saw that this was the opportune time to retire. He didn't go out on bad terms, despite our 2-10 record. We only have 9 or 10 scholarships to hand out this year and 4 guys have already committed. The new coach is going to have a senior-laden team and ability to recruit 20-25 guys, which is a great opportunity with the new coach already in place. Novak is going to stick around and help Jim Phillips search for a new coach. Coach Novak is a man of true character that is so hard to find these days. He did things the right way, the old school way. The NIU Huskie way that I hope continues to be a tradition. Here's to you, Joe.
well said and thank you Joe, I've only been here for two years but thanks to me doing a little research I was able to find out exactly what you did for NIU. I do have to say though that Coach Novak is a great person, he came and gave us(the band) a pep talk at the beginning of the year and you could just sense how much he cared about his players and the entire university. Thanks Joe
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