DEKALB, Ill. — In front of a backdrop sporting the Northern Illinois and Horizon League logos Thursday at the NIU Convocation Center, Huskies athletic director Sean Frazier declared a second victory in two months for his department.
“We just got better again today,” Frazier said. “This is really a massive, massive deal for us.”
The NIU board on Thursday approved a $1.4 million fee to join the Horizon League in most sports except football starting in 2026. NIU announced in January that its football team would move to the Mountain West Conference in 2026 after 18 straight seasons and 39 overall in the Mid-American Conference.
That left the school’s other sports in need of a home. Frazier said the decision to join the Horizon League was “a comprehensive process” that included consideration of “many” conferences.
Ultimately NIU landed on becoming the 12th member of the Horizon League, which allows its teams to compete in several large Midwest cities while its football program moves to a conference in the western half of the country. Frazier, NIU President Lisa C. Freeman and Horizon League Commissioner Julie Roe Lach also spoke at the news conference of the “alignment” of the university and league in their academic and athletic values.
Before making the split to multiple conferences, Frazier said NIU looked at the model of Army and Navy to study what success can look like when a school’s football team competes in a different conference than its other sports.
Frazier has pointed to the major changes in college sports — including pending athlete revenue-sharing, name, image and likeness payments, the transfer portal and the expanded College Football Playoff — as the impetus for making the move, which he believes will lead to financial sustainability for the department. He noted Thursday the Horizon League move should result in operational savings of $400,000 to $500,000 annually “off the bat.”
“It’s incumbent for us as leaders to engage in a level of discourse that challenges the status quo. That’s what leadership is about,” Frazier said. “I also think that in this dynamic state of college athletics and higher education, it’s important for us to make sure we do the right things for the institution, and that’s what happened here.
“We had an opportunity and we took that opportunity. I really do believe it’s a model that’s very sustainable, as we’ve watched the service academies really prosper from this. I think it’s the right fit for NIU and the right time.”
The Horizon League is a non-football conference but has members, including Robert Morris and Youngstown State, that compete in other conferences at the FCS level. NIU will be the Horizon’s first school with an FBS program.
Roe Lach said the Horizon League takes pride in “a strong history of being a basketball league, as well as the recent trajectory of the climb in our NET conference rank.”
While the Huskies football program has enjoyed success for much of the last two decades — including victories over Notre Dame and Fresno State in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl this past season — the basketball teams haven’t fared as well this season. The men’s team is 5-23 overall and 1-14 in the MAC, and the women’s team is 12-15 and 5-10.
“We have really prioritized competing nationally in men’s and women’s basketball and experienced that last year with Oakland’s incredible win over Kentucky in the first round of March Madness,” Roe Lach said. “When we started talking, it was very clear to me that Sean is also committed to basketball excellence.
“We talked about what are the pieces of the puzzle that need to go into place to continue to invest and make the move to get the basketball program where he and President Freeman want it.”
NIU has applied to the MAC for affiliate membership for their women’s gymnastics and men’s wrestling programs because the Horizon League doesn’t compete in those sports. Freeman indicated the school is optimistic those moves will be approved.
“We’ve had a longstanding strong relationship with the MAC,” Freeman said. “Our relationship with the MAC has remained cordial through the transitions. We’re very comfortable applying for affiliate membership, and the lack of action to this point has been much more about scheduling than anything else.”
As the 12th Horizon League member, NIU will join Cleveland State, Detroit Mercy, Green Bay, IU Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Northern Kentucky, Oakland, Purdue Fort Wayne, Robert Morris, Wright State and Youngstown State.
