Northern Illinois Coach Thomas Hammock Tells Marcus Freeman He Won't Share Notre Dame Secrets With Opponents

It was supposed to be a ‘buy-game’ for Notre Dame this past weekend against Northern Illinois in South Bend, a true David vs. Goliath matchup. But the Huskies were not heading into that game with the mindset of just playing well. 

This was an opportunity for Coach Thomas Hammock and his team to shock the college football world, even if they didn’t shock themselves with the win. 

A 28-point underdog heading into the game, the thought was Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and the Irish would overcome some offensive problems that occurred the week before at Texas A&M and beat the Huskies handily. 

Little did the Irish know that Northern Illinois had been preparing for this moment since the start of fall camp. Hammock knew the grind would be tough, but if they could get through the first two weeks of the season, which included that trip to Notre Dame, his team could recover during their bye-week. 

Watch OutKick's Full Interview With Northern Illinois Head Coach Thomas Hammock

What happened next has already been written in the history books, as Thomas Hammock watched Kanon Woodill hit a 35-yard field goal to give Northern Illinois the lead with 30 seconds remaining on the clock. 

"The thing that is interesting, is that when you're on the sidelines, that angle that you're at you really can't tell (if it was good.)," coach Thomas Hammock told OutKick. "When our guys started yelling in the pressbox ‘He made it, he made it’, you know it was just a sigh of relief. So when he made it, I thought we had a good enough defense that we can hold them."

But this wasn't a football team that was looking at this game as a ‘David vs. Goliath' type of game, even though the Huskies were playing a Top-5 team. During his postgame speech to the team, Coach Hammock made it clear to his players that they had earned the moment.

"During the week, I told them the opposite. This was not a David vs. Goliath situation, nor is this going to be a situation where we shock the world. To outside people it may look like that, but to us I thought we really had a chance to compete at a high level. So, when i got back to the locker room, it was almost like an ‘I told you so’ moment, because they believed and stayed committed to the process.

"It was one of those situations in the locker room where it was like, ‘Listen, we talked about this, we done been through this all week and look at the fruits of your labor’ right at this moment."

Hammock Made It Clear To Marcus Freeman He Wasn't Sharing Secrets

Knowing that both teams would not see each other again this season, or in the near future, unless it's in the College Football Playoff, Coach Hammock decided to reach out to Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman. We see this in sports, where the opposing staff will contact a team they had just played to figure out what they did right and wrong, or what the coaches saw that might help them down the road. 

What we normally don't see is a coach being so blunt about not sharing secrets with opposing teams that might call. 

"I wanted to reach out to him (Marcus Freeman) in a different respect," Coach Hammock noted. "I said I'm not gonna give another opponent that you play any information, but if you wanted some information that we had, some tendencies that we may have had, I wanna give them to you because I want to see you be successful. 

"He treated me so well, in the pregame and in the postgame that I gained a tremendous amount of respect for him as a person, as a man, and obviously he's the head coach at Notre Dame, which is phenomenal. I just wanted to give him that opportunity to say ‘Listen, I’m not gonna share information with anybody you play, but if you wanna take advantage and talk'..I just wanted to make sure I could help him in any way possible if he wanted it. I felt like that was the right thing to do."

The level of respect between the two coaches was clear, and when Marcus Freeman did not try to act like he was bigger than Hammock because he coached at Notre Dame, it was a way for the Northern Illinois coach to show his appreciation for the way he acted. 

The Most Unexpected Name To Call Or Text Hammock After The Win

As his phone continued to blow-up following the win, it was clear that Coach Hammock was going to be spending a lot of time returning calls and text messages. But there was one message in particular that stood out more than others, for a different reason. 

Being a New York Yankees fan, Hammock tries to find the time to watch his favorite team play, even if that means trying to keep away from spoilers at times. So, when he looked down at his phone and saw a certain area code, he was shocked to see the message when he opened it. 

"Well, I'm a huge Yankees fan, and Aaron Boone texted me, I thought that was phenomenal," Hammock described with a grin on his face. "So, he said ‘great win, was watching the game’. And for him to text me while they’re still playing and in the race to give themselves a chance to play for the World Series, I thought that was great."

Northern Illinois players and coaches celebrate in the locker room following the win over Notre Dame. Courtesy of NIU Athletics

But it wasn't just the manager of the New York Yankees that stood out to Hammock, it was the response from fellow coaches in the MAC. 

"Also, the other MAC head coaches, a lot of them reached out to me saying congratulations," Hammock noted. "And it just showed the camaraderie that we have, the brotherhood we have as MAC head coaches, that even though we're gonna be competing here pretty soon for a championship, we can still support each other."

This Northern Illinois team will be remembered forever now, much like how the college football world remembers App State for beating Michigan. 

But in the eyes on the Huskies, and head coach Thomas Hammock, this was no upset. They just went out and executed like they prepared for, and the result is that fans across the country now know who Northern Illinois is.