Two days after Thomas Hammock had just run for 172 yards on 38 carries in an upset of Wake Forest, his Northern Illinois Huskies began preparing for a game against USF in Tampa Bay, Fla., the following week.
But during a conditioning run on that fateful day, Hammock couldn’t catch his breath and something just didn’t feel right. Following a plethora of tests, he found out that he had a heart condition and that his football-playing career was over.
“I was devastated,” Hammock told me Wednesday. “I had NFL aspirations. When you’ve been playing football since you were 6 years old, and then you’re told it’s over, it hits you hard. But I found a greater purpose — helping mold and develop young men. And I’m enjoying every minute of it.”
Especially this week.
Hammock is now the head coach of the Northern Illinois Huskies, who pulled off one of the biggest upsets in recent college football history with a victory at No. 5-ranked Notre Dame on Saturday. It was NIU’s first-ever win against a top-10 team and the first time a team from the MAC has ever beaten a top-5 opponent.
Coach Hammock broke down and cried during the post-game TV interview. He cried because he loves his players, he loves his job and he loves his school. He met his wife at Northern Illinois. He named his son “Douglas” after the dorm he lived in at Northern Illinois. He will tell you that the college degree and the lessons he learned in the classroom and on the football field at Northern Illinois are among the main reasons he is what he is today.
“I grew as a player and man at Northern Illinois,” he says. “Everything that I am as a man goes back to me being a student-athlete at NIU. And now I am living out my dream coaching here.”
So much for all of the clanging cymbals in the national media who claim college football is just a scam that exploits athletes.
Coach Hammock is one of the thousands upon thousands who got his education, bettered his life and now is bettering the lives of the young men at his alma mater. And he’s doing it without a 10-year, $10-million-a-year contract.
Hammock’s Huskies don’t have the 8-figure NIL budget of schools like Ohio State, Notre Dame, Georgia and Alabama, and that’s why they are so inspirational. They showed us that sometimes you don’t need to have the most money, the biggest staff, the top recruits and the plushest facilities to be a winner.
“All of that NIL money looks great,” Hammock says, “but at the end of the day, football is still about your passion, your discipline, your want-to and your grit. … I think we showed the power of belief, the power of relationships and the power of growing up together and developing within a program.”
In other words: NIU trumps NIL.
If you ask me, Coach Hammock and his Huskies are what college football should be about. …
Short stuff: I was really happy to see former UCF basketball coach Kirk Speraw just get announced as one of the inductees for the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. However, UCF’s former administration — because of the shoddy way it treated Speraw and eventually fired him — should be inducted into the school’s Hall of Shame. … If the traffic stop involving Miami-Dade police and Tyreek Hill were an actual football game, Hill would have been flagged for taunting and that one Miami-Dade police officer would have been whistled for unnecessary roughness. Sigh. Such an avoidable outcome. … How stupid do all of the Caitlin Clark haters in the WNBA look now that she has put the WNBA on the mainstream map, singlehandedly catapulted the league’s TV ratings and led the once-moribund Indiana Fever into the playoffs for the first time in eight years? In hindsight, leaving Clark off the U.S. Olympic team will go down as the worst sports-marketing move since LeBron’s “The Decision.” …
Did you see where Dwight Howard is going to be a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars”? Maybe he can resurrect that old dance move he used when he swore his “loyalty” to Magic fans and then forced his way out of Orlando a few months later: “The Hustle.” … David Whitley of the Gainesville Sun writes that UF already has started moving forward as if Billy Napier is going to be fired: “Big-money boosters have seen enough,” Whitley writes. “Donations are drying up, other than pledges to fund Napier’s $26 million buyout. A short-term succession plan is in place in case Napier is fired before season’s end.” Wow, giving up on the season after one loss — albeit a bad one — to Miami in the first game? If this is true, then UF needs to change the lyrics of the traditional hymn We Are the Boys from Old Florida that Gator fans swing and sway to at UF football games. Instead of the original verse —“Through all kinds of weather, we all stick together” — may I suggest a replacement verse? How about: “After one game, we start to cast blame at F-L-O-R-I-D-A.” …
Many fantasy football owners (like me) who have Christian McCaffrey on their team were livid when the 49ers waited until 90 minutes before kickoff Monday night to announce McCaffrey wouldn’t play in the game against the Jets. By then, it was too late to fill his spot with an adequate replacement. Hey, us fantasy football losers, er, owners have rights, too! … It appears NASCAR essentially strong-armed all of the race teams to sign a new revenue agreement, with one of the few holdouts being Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing team. Memo to NASCAR: It’s never a good idea to butt heads with a GOAT. … Do the Cleveland Browns wish they still had Baker Mayfield as their quarterback instead of Deshaun Watson? At this point, the Browns wish they had Curtis Mayfield as their quarterback instead of Deshaun Watson. … Mikey likes: UCF over TCU by 7, FSU over Memphis by 10, Texas A&M over Florida by 5, USF over Southern Miss by 14, Miami over Ball State by 100, Dolphins over Bills by 6, Lions over Bucs by 4, Jags over Browns by 8, Harris over Trump by three (mentions of pet-eating immigrants).
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