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The NIU game reminds me painfully about the 1990 Stanford game.

While that Stanford team was decent, we should have blown that team out by 30+ points, but we gave the game away. That 1990 team was flat-out loaded with NFL talent.

All we had to do was simply sit on the ball, but two lost punt return fumbles by Ricky Watters and one by Adrian Jarrell, kept giving them new life after the defense had stopped them cold. Two of our best players, Todd Lyght and Rocket, were hobbled with leg injuries, and Jason Palumbis looked like the second coming of Steve Walsh during that 2nd half.

Lyght was hampered for a stretch of several games, that concluded with the loss to Penn State that year. That "deep thigh bruise" was actually one that was complete with a nasty bone bruise as well, and after he took a hit on that same spot on his thigh, he was getting badly burnt in coverage.

Heck, we even had a chance to win the game with 36 seconds left in the game, but a dropped pass by Derek Brown in the end zone sealed a cruel fate for that day.

In the end, this was a game we should have won running away, and given our 2nd and 3rd teamers a lot of playing time, but because of all of those miscues, and shooting ourselves in the foot several times, we got beat in a terrible way.