For 42 seasons, Lindo has been on the call for NIU football
Northern Illinois University’s football team is 1-0 all-time on the road against both Alabama and Notre Dame.
Those respective 2003 and 2024 victories are obvious highlights in Mark Lindo’s long career as a Huskies broadcast analyst.
A retired prep baseball and basketball coach who collected hall of fame inductions like some people collect shoes before retiring from Naperville North in 2018, Lindo also is in his 42nd consecutive season calling NIU football on the radio.
“I’d never think I’d have a run like that,” Lindo said, “but the Lord’s blessed me and my family, and I hope we’ve been a blessing both coaching and broadcasting to some young people as well — that I had some influence, because that’s the ultimate goal.”
Lindo’s analysis and broadcast partner Andy Garcia’s play by play are heard on WDKB 94.9 FM and streaming online.
Out of East Aurora High School and Aurora University, Lindo took his first job in coaching and education at Aurora Central Catholic High School. After a couple years assisting Jim Schmid in both boys basketball and baseball, Lindo took over both sports, plus athletic director.
In 1983, Lindo’s first season leading the baseball team, the Chargers won the Class A championship. In 1984 ACC was runner-up.
Bill Baker, then the legendary “Voice of the Huskies,” also called those baseball games for WKKD 94.9 FM. The silver-tongued Lindo, always eloquent in a postgame address, impressed Baker.
“’I’ve got an opening to do some Huskie football,’” Baker told him, “and that’s how it started,” Lindo recalled.
“Obviously I’ve since been able to do a plethora of other opportunities, but none of that would have happened if I didn’t get that first opportunity from Bill.”
Moving on to Naperville North, where he earned state hall of fame honors as the Huskies’ pitching coach and as head boys basketball coach (he's in the Naperville North athletic hall of fame, too, and ACC's plus a couple others), in retirement Lindo is familiar to high school fans for his WCIU television work with Dave Bernhard on football and boys basketball state finals.
“It’s been a humbling ride in both my careers,” Lindo said.
Focusing on analysis, Lindo also is in studio for the girls basketball finals, works state baseball for the NFHS network and calls college basketball for ESPN+.
Crediting the support of his wife of 46 years, Carrie, and sons Andy and Sean, Lindo still hustles to reach athletes and coaches for “any advantage I can find to add to the broadcast,” he said.
A 2024 YouTube video of Northern Illinois’ 16-14 upset win at No. 5 Notre Dame featuring Lindo and Garcia on the call has been seen by more than a million viewers.
“It was kind of surreal. As you got deeper and deeper into the game it was like, this might actually happen,” Lindo said.
“It was a national shock but for NIU it was a monumental moment, and to be a part of that was an incredible blessing, a memory that I know our whole broadcast team and Huskie Nation will never forget.”
More Reese
We nearly fell out of our chair reading Bill McLean’s story about Barrington senior golfer Reese Wallace shooting a 59 Monday at the Class 2A Jacobs girls golf sectional.
Though the Illinois High School Association’s Matt Troha couldn’t confirm it as a state record — state records are achieved at the state final — Wallace’s score is 6 strokes below the best single rounds listed on the IHSA website, a pair of 65s.
Fillies coach Tim Martin did confirm Wallace’s 59 was a Barrington school record for both girls or boys. It also broke the prior Randall Oaks Golf Club mark of 61, Martin said.
Scoring 12 birdies, Wallace reached 17 of 18 greens in regulation, and the one green she missed, she chipped the ball in, Martin said.
“It is the greatest round of golf I have ever seen,” Martin said.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com