More from Compher

Tuesday, the Daily Chronicle sat down with Northern Illinois athletic director Jeff Compher for a one-on-one interview. Yesterday, we broke the news that Compher stands behind NIU men's basketball coach Ricardo Patton. Today, there are a few other parts from that interview that I wanted to share with you.

Compher on negotiations with Iowa for a game against the Hawkeyes in 2012 at Soldier Field:

"They're very good. Very positive. They had a great experience there last time (in 2007) and we hope to duplicate that again in [20]12."

On using a similar financial agreement for that game like the one used in 2007:

"For the Iowa game we use a similar template. We work with them. It's a cooperative agreement."

On three BCS road games next year and what it means in regards to funding a potential indoor practice facility:

"I wouldn't get confused on guarantee money for BCS games to fund an indoor. That's not what I envision our source of funding to be."

On how the funding for an indoor facility is going right now:

"We've certainly gone down some steps into initiating that process. I'm hoping that in the near future we can talk about it in a lot more definitive terms that I can right now."

On if he has a timetable for an indoor practice facility:

"No."

On why there was no ongoing dodgeball tournament at halftime of men's basketball games, which was announced as a plan at NIU's basketball media day.

"I'm disappointed. We talked to a student group early on and said 'What would you like to see?' And they said 'Dodgeball. Everbody's into dodgeball.' Well, it must have been a trendy thing because we went to the groups and said 'OK, sign up.' And we didn't get enough groups to sign up. We couldn't really have a tournament if we couldn't get enough groups to get through the year."