"The most important thing at the end of the day is not going to be the ring or the championships and all of that. At the end of the day, it's your family," Kill said.

"I leaned on our players and our staff just to try to get through the situation. Football saved my life."

Miles Osei is a huge commitment for Northern Illinois. He's a lefty QB, very similar to Pat White. Best catch for NIU since Michael Turner

"They had to go against Northwestern’s ‘D’ which is tough to deal with, [and] now our defense," Weber said. "You know, it’s a great experience for them. Now they get a couple home games. If they stay together as a team they can be successful this year."

"They told me they wanted to go to an all-Canadian backfield," Harris said after practice Tuesday. "It’s hard. But that’s the nature of the game up here. Every player has to get used to the [Canadian-American] ratio. It kind of worked against me in Edmonton, being an American."

"I have to be patient," Kill said. "Now, like I said, I'll be patient for about five or six days and then I'm going to be pretty [impatient] and I'll probably throw somebody out of camp. But the bottom line is I've got to teach them what we expect."

As a team, we want to win the MAC. We feel like we have the talent and experience to come back and really compete for a MAC championship. I feel like we have a pretty favorable schedule to do that. From there we want to go onto a bowl game, and win a bowl game. For me personal goals, that’s more a thing of the past. I feel like I’ve kind of matured and grown up to where, if we do those things then to personal goals will follow.

"We need to bring pressure," Smith said. "This is a guy that can bring the heat. (He’s) physical, nasty, great presence. We’re going to give him to Coach (Ron) Rivera and turn him loose."

"We're going to schedule our games next year at six or 5:30 in the morning because our punters and kickers kicked the ball better during the morning [today] than they've kicked it all year," Kill said. "I'm going to see if we can work that out with the MAC, see if we can't play at 5:30 in the morning. They (ESPN) might need some early-morning programming before 'Mike and Mike.'"