Despite the Big Ten collectively trying to convince us otherwise, the gulf between the very best teams from the power conferences and lesser teams from inside their own conferences has never been bigger. The obvious talent gap is something approaching a gaping chasm now, and that’s without considering some of the mid-major teams from the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), who’re regularly punching bags for elite programs in the first two weeks of the season.
With that in mind, I’ve always been baffled that some of the better teams in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) aren’t given more time in the national spotlight. I mean, it’s a rare occurrence these days that an FCS school doesn’t upset an FBS foe early in the season. We saw it this year, we saw it last year, and there was the victory that shook up all of college football in 2007, where unheralded Appalachian State humbled Michigan in the Big House, a victory that, it could be argued, sent Michigan into a nosedive from which they’re only just now beginning to recover.
Thankfully, the powers-that-be at ESPN are doing what they can to reverse that trend, and for the second year running, the all-conquering College GameDay program – far and away the gold standard in pre-game shows – is headed back to Fargo, North Dakota this week. It’s the first time that an FCS school has had two GameDay visits, and the Bison are one of just four non-FBS schools to have had the ESPN circus come to town. And for NDSU, it is rich reward (and important recognition) for years of football excellence.
Fargo, perhaps best known for being the setting of the 1996 Academy Award-winning Coen Brothers film of the same name, even though the town itself is only seen briefly at the beginning and mentioned only twice. Considering Fargo wasn’t even filmed in Fargo, this charming town should be better recognised for having a consistently good football program, chock-full of A-grade talent.
ESPN’s picked a good time to be heading north. For one, it won’t be too cold – not that winter’s ever worried a North Dakotan – and, secondly, the Bison (actually pronounced “Bizon”) out of the Missouri Valley conference, are riding the crest of a wave, having opened the 2014 season with two straight wins, pounding FBS foes Iowa State 34-14 on the road in Ames, Iowa on opening weekend before dispatching Weber State last week, behind 123 yards and a touchdown from RB John Crockett to extend their FCS-record winning streak to an impressive 26 games.
NDSU are also three-time defending FCS National Champions, recording a narrow 17-06 win over in 2011, a more decisive 39-13 victory against the same team a year later and last year, handling the Towson Tigers 35-7. More than that, the Bison have beaten an FBS school every year since 2010: Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado State, defending Big XII champions Kansas State in 2013 and, of course, Iowa State two weeks ago.
A season ago, with College GameDay in town, then-head coach Craig Bohl recorded his ninety-second victory, a 5-10 thumping of Delaware State, making him the most prolific coach in North Dakota State history. It was one of the all-time great GameDay broadcasts in the show’s storied history, and it makes you wonder how the crew will top it a year later, but if there’s one thing that GameDay has always been good at, it’s elevating their product. Saturday should be quite the spectacle!
Such a coaching record will invariably bring a coach to the attention of the big leagues, and it did, with Bohl departing Fargo after guiding the Bison to their third-straight National Championship. He’s at Wyoming now, where the Cowboys have also opened their season 2-0.
Chris Kleiman is now behind the controls, and judging by the Bison’s hot start to 2014, the head coaching change hasn’t slowed the Bison down. Nor has losing a whopping twelve starters from last year’s National Championship team, including All-American QB Brock Jensen, who had a pretty handy 47-5 record as starter.
That’s the thing about really good teams: they don’t have down years, they just reload and go again, a la Nick Saban and Alabama. So the Bison return to the Fargodome, one of the few indoor venues in college football, and a tough place to play if you’re not wearing the yellow and green of NDSU. Why? Because about 19,000 Bison fans cram into the joint, and it’s as loud and intimidating under the lid as anywhere else in college football.
If you call yourself a real college football fan, the Fargodome should be on your bucket list of must-see venues.
With NDSU’s rapid start, you get the feeling that the Incarnate World Cardinals – yeah, that’s their name – are going to be playing the role of the sacrificial lamb on Saturday afternoon. A 0-2 start to their season, including a 38-3 last-start loss, doesn’t bode well coming up against the undefeated Bison, who will again look to Crockett to spearhead their offense.
GameDay will broadcast from the corner of Broadway and Third Avenue throughout the morning, before the Bison faithful descend upon the Fargodome for the home opener, and it bodes well that NDSU has won fifteen straight home openers. It also bodes well for the continuation of their FCS-record winning streak.
Kudos, ESPN. You could easily have gone to the Oklahoma-Tennessee game in Norman, Oklahoma or out to Lubbock, Texas for the Red Raiders game against Arkansas, but is the right move. Good programs, be they FBS or FCS, deserve recognition, and there’s no exposure quite like GameDay exposure. I can’t wait to settle in and watch Chris, Kirk, Corso and the crew live from downtown Fargo.
Oh, yeah, and…Go Bison!
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