Sean Frazier spoke for all of college football. Well, maybe half of it. OK, at least the gaggle of programs that sometimes relies on getting the snot kicked out of it to keep the lights on.
Until Northern Illinois pulled off the biggest upset to date this season on Saturday at Notre Dame, perhaps the most interesting facet of its trip to South Bend, Indiana, was that it would be worth it -- at least in terms of the bottom line.
Frazier, NIU's athletic director, and Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame's former AD, had come to an agreement on the game a few years ago. The Huskies would come to South Bend for what projected to be a ceremonial beating. In return, NIU would get a $1.4 million check for providing the, uh, "competition." Wham, bam, send 'em back to DeKalb (Illinois).
Call these types of contests what you want -- "guarantee games," "buy games," etc. That's what NIU was getting into. Notre Dame came in as a 28-point favorite.
Until it wasn't.
"To go in and actually show up and not take the check and run," Frazier told CBS Sports. "I don't want to poo-poo the money, but to actually go in there and compete, all of it was good for the Huskies."
It was more than that. NIU's 16-14 win inside Notre Dame Stadium was a monster upset, but not the only one featured in Week 2. Iowa State knocked off Big Ten tormenter Iowa. The Red Flashes of Saint Francis University beat the MAC's Kent State.
These stunning wins all sent the same message: more, please!
Give us more of the Davids biting the ankles of Goliaths. Give us goalposts being dumped into rivers. Give us more super powers -- at least on the balance sheet -- walking off their home field in shame with their heads bowed. Give us NIU coach Thomas Hammock crying his eyes out after seeing not only his team but his alma mater win at Notre Dame.
Give us Saint Francis from tiny Loretto, Pennsylvania, knocking off Kent State after being stripped for parts in the portal. Give the Red Flashes credit for doing it with 45 scholarships while Kent State is allowed 85.
If nothing else, keep giving us the 134 in FBS together for entertainment's sake. We love to see those who don't keep up with the herd get knocked off. Or maybe that cuts too close to Notre Dame, which suffered another stunning loss to Marshall two years ago at home.
In these tenuous times when it seems like the Big Ten and SEC are going to separate from the rest of FBS like kings dismissing jesters from the royal court, we needed Saturday. We needed it to remind us why we love college football in the first place.
Its unpredictability. The absurd, unlikely upsets. It was refreshing to watch a school with the 143rd largest athletic department (Northern Illinois) beat a school with more money than God. OK, maybe not. But considering its Catholic underpinnings, Notre Dame has the ability to know for sure.
But if the winds continue to blow as they have, these wonderful upsets will become more rare than table manners in a frat house. If the FBS subdivides where only the power schools play, there is less need for them to play the rest of the Group of Five and the FCS.
"That's always a scary thought," Saint Francis AD James Downer told CBS Sports. "These guys are important to us from a financial perspective. Our kids enjoy playing them. They have an opportunity to go out there with a chip on our shoulders. I'm not going to lie -- if these opportunities go away, it's going to affect the bottom line."
It felt good to see an FCS program with an identity problem triumph. St. Francis University of Pennsylvania is not to be confused with Division III University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, or the University of Saint Francis in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, During a recent road trip, the Red Flashes saw a hotel meeting door marked with the logo of St. Francis of Brooklyn.
Easy mistake. There are two Saint Francises in the Northeast Conference. The Terriers of St. Francis College play in a New York borough but don't play football.
The Red Flashes have only been Division I FCS since 1993. They played their first FBS program three years ago. Saturday's win was the biggest in school history even though Kent State has exactly two winning seasons since 1987.
Yes, give us more of that.
"We really didn't see it coming," Downer said. "Our program has been decimated over the past few years by the transfer portal. Our coaches have done an incredible job of finding talent. We don't have NIL here. We don't have that capability here."
Take that back. Saint Francis head coach Chris Villarrial says a local contractor has "invested in a couple of guys."
Saint Francis basically is Loretto, Pennsylvania. The town has a population of 1,500. The school has an enrollment of 2,500. The central watering hole is the Loretto Pub & Grill which, if it didn't have a streaming service, couldn't have possibly tuned into Saturday's game on ESPN+.
Villarrial is an 11-year NFL veteran who has compensated for the portal raids by landing guys like quarterback Jeff Hoenstine. The pride of Central Martinsburg (Penn.) High School made his first career start accounting for 275 yards in total offense in the 23-17 win over Kent State. The Golden Flashes were favored by 19.5 points.
Kent State is still big time compared to Saint Francis. The Golden Flashes are part of the MAC, which is part of FBS, half of which is watching over its shoulder to see what flex by the Power Four does to the current arrangement.
"I've talked to my staff about waiting to see what direction college football is going to go in," Villarrial said. "If they stop having these games, if it's worth it to the big schools to play these games anymore. How do these small schools stay alive?"
Part of that arrangement is allowing the likes of Saint Francis even a small piece of the pie. In this case, the Red Flashes got $315,000 -- more than four times less than NIU -- to play in front of 11,000 folks at Dix Stadium.
This sort of thing kind of perpetuates itself. Saint Francis wants to play up. Kent State wants to catch its breath with a schedule that features Pittsburgh, Tennessee and Penn State -- all on the road.
Downer, though, can see into the future. He has guarantee games scheduled up to 2030. That's when he says, "the temperature changes" talking to other ADs. Larger schools are less willing to commit because of the end of media contracts during that time and possibility of that breakaway.
Frazier has been monitoring. He has long been a proponent of a Group of Five playoff that would reward teams that don't have access to all the Power Four riches. Frazier calls it "unrealistic" to think NIU can fund $23 million annually in revenue sharing due if the House v. NCAA settlement is approved.
What no one had on their preseason bingo card, however, was "Notre Dame needs to hope Northern Illinois wins out to get to the playoff." Right now, that's exactly where the Irish stand. Because of a soft schedule -- that included NIU -- Notre Dame was being grandfathered a spot into the bracket by some.
The No. 18 Irish (1-1) can still get there, and the remaining schedule is still relatively soft, but the effort will be helped immensely if Northern Illinois can win the MAC. If that happens, then suddenly a horrible loss for the Irish turns into, well, something not so horrible. And it should already be assumed that the CFP Selection Committee has that built in bias because it is Notre Dame.
But that's ignoring the fact that the Huskies, at this moment, have an inside track to the CFP. Win the MAC with that Notre Dame victory in their hip pocket and the Huskies would have to be in consideration to become the highest-ranked Group of Five champion.
That designation would get Northern Illinois an automatic berth in the playoff.
There's more than a bit of history here. NIU was the last BCS buster, going 12-1 and winning the MAC in 2012 before losing to Florida State in the Orange Bowl.
"If you look at our history of winning, it's not like we're going to creep up," Frazier said.
Hammock had already beaten Georgia Tech (2021) and Boston College (2023) during his six seasons. CBS Sports' John Talty detailed how Hammock kept the team together in this age of NIL and the transfer portal. Eighteen players jumped into the portal from a team that went 7-6 in 2023.
Only two went to Power Four programs.
"There is something to be said about kids playing for a Power Four, and it's not all that it's cracked up to be," Frazier said. "If we stay together, we might shock the world."
