The Bison have had just three losing seasons since 1964. The football team was successful in Division II, though not quite at the same dominant level, winning five national championships from 1983 to ’90. The D-II world was changing and our president felt the university, research, enrollment was growing and we needed to make the move.” “Cal Davis left, Northern Colorado left, Northern Iowa had left. “We left Division II because it was similar to what it is now,” Taylor said. Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor was the Bison AD from 2001 to 2014 and led that transition. The football team is now in the Missouri Valley Football Conference, while the remaining sports call the Summit League home. NDSU has been a Division I school for just 20 years, moving up from Division II in a process that began in 2003. Attendance has begun to dip with all the success, and anything short of a championship creates a deep amount of pressure. But the program can’t raise its level of competition. This program has hosted “College GameDay” twice and produced 10 NFL Draft picks since 2014, including quarterbacks Carson Wentz and Trey Lance in the top three. It creates one of the odder dynamics in sports. At the same time, can NDSU wait for the right fit? Or should it jump onto any boat it can as more schools depart the FCS? School officials say right now they want the right fit. (Liberty received a rare waiver for FBS independence due to its deep resources, something NDSU would find difficult.) Sources throughout the Group of 5 conferences told The Athletic that adding NDSU has come up in the past, but there is nothing imminent. FCS teams can move up to FBS only with a conference invitation, and that hasn’t officially come. “You’d be crazy if you weren’t looking internally about what’s best for you.”īut wanting to move and actually moving are different things. “A lot of things have changed in the last 10 years,” athletic director Matt Larsen said. More tangibly, a $54 million practice facility that opened in October is another sign of preparation. A Twitter account and website called “NDSU to FBS” started by a fan a few years ago lays out the numbers comparing NDSU to the Group of 5. Many people around the program feel it needs to happen, lest the program get left behind. What started as a fun hypothetical a decade ago has evolved into a legitimate thought. Sam Houston (the spring 2021 national champion) and Jacksonville State will join Conference USA next year, and Kennesaw State, which started playing football in 2015, will join C-USA in 2024. Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Coastal Carolina, Liberty and James Madison have moved up to the FBS and continued their success. But win or lose, it’s not hard to notice what has happened in the FCS over the past decade. NDSU is actually an underdog in this game against rival South Dakota State, which beat the Bison in the Fargodome earlier this year. Fans buy tickets to Frisco long before NDSU even qualifies, and the Bison Tracker app allows fans to see the herd of supporters make the drive down ahead of the game. The Bison have won nine FCS championships, with a 9-0 record in the title game. Now NDSU is in the national championship game for the 10th time in 12 years, trying to continue the most dominant stretch of success in college football history. NDSU overcame a 16-0 deficit, scored the go-ahead touchdown with eight minutes left and secured the win with a late interception. Rather, it was a rare close and competitive game. That kind of on-field celebration was unique for NDSU - not the home playoff win the Bison are 34-1 in the Fargodome in the playoffs, after all.
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