Until Saturday Newsletter 🏈 | This is The Athletic’s college football newsletter. Sign up here to receive Until Saturday directly in your inbox.
Fellow video gamers, no longer will we have to keep re-downloading user-created North Dakota State teams once per year. That’s EA’s job now.
Stampede: NDSU finally moves up, all of a sudden
Longtime FCS mega-dynasty North Dakota State is officially moving up to the FBS, joining the remodeled Mountain West … and doing it this season.
NDSU won its 10th FCS title in 2024. So the move was long-anticipated, to say the least. Two examples:
Three years ago, our Chris Vannini reported on what’d already been a roughly decade-long movement in Fargo (and throughout college football) to see what the Bison could do at the top level. All the while, the school was investing in its football facilities.
On the biggest NDSU message board, a single discussion thread about the potential FBS move was ongoing for almost 12 straight years, since September 2014. “We already dominated this stage,” wrote one NDSU fan 160 months ago. “Time to pump it up.”
There’s little surprise they were so eager. At that point in 2014, the Bison were cruising toward their fourth straight FCS title and had just beaten FBS’ Iowa State, at which point I edited this little post advising Power 5 teams to stop playing NDSU. (I then updated it in 2016 after Iowa failed to heed.)
Meanwhile in 2014, FBS’ Sun Belt had just added Appalachian State and Georgia Southern, former FCS dynasties that’d respectively beaten Michigan and Florida along the way. In the 2010s, daydreaming about the Bison getting that kind of stage in the MAC felt limiting. In some of those years, NDSU could’ve won the Big Ten West.
Still, 2026’s timing feels especially strategic, with the Mountain West having lost Boise State and several of its second-tier names to the new Pac-12. It’s easy to imagine NDSU taking over this Boise-free conference, perhaps even as quickly as Southern, App State and then JMU claimed the Sun Belt. The MWC is also adding the admittedly non-mountainous Northern Illinois, a team well within NDSU’s familiar travel range.
(Speaking of travel, one sneaky contributor to NDSU’s success: It might have college sports’ most underrated airport situation. Direct flights from recruiting hotbeds like Atlanta, Dallas and Orlando land across the street from the Fargodome.)
Also, the recently expanded Playoff means the Boise-less MWC need a marquee contender who can compete for an autobid with UNLV and the best teams from other G6 leagues. From Fargo news site InForum:
“The Mountain West was afraid of adding FCS schools and then having the rules change to exclude them before they’d completed their transition. ‘That has changed, that issue no longer exists,’ (MWC commissioner Gloria Nevarez) said.”
The MWC’s new football lineup:
Plus, for NDSU, there were no more worlds left to conquer in FCS, as this past season made extremely clear. With other heavies having left FCS, Fargo was bored by everything other than beating archrival South Dakota State or traveling to the FCS title game.
At what ended up being NDSU’s final FCS game, when Illinois State shocked the No. 1 Bison in the playoffs, the 19,000-seat Fargodome was half-empty. Suffering from success, as DJ Khaled put it.
Something similar happened during NDSU’s eight-title Division II run, which lasted until 2004. “Cal Davis left, Northern Colorado left, Northern Iowa had left,” former AD Gene Taylor, now at Kansas State, told Vannini in that 2023 story. “The D-II world was changing.” For 40 years now, the Bison have been on this FBS trajectory.
At the same time, this long-awaited, well-timed, inevitable move is quite sudden. The NCAA requires a two-year FBS transition period, during which newbies are ineligible for postseason games (in order to discourage hasty decisions). Most newcomers spend one of those years in FCS, amassing resources and redshirts. JMU boldly spent both of its years in FBS, announcing its move in 2021 and joining the Sun Belt in 2022.
Now the Bison’s first MWC game (schedule TBD, as is the SDSU rivalry status) will be only about six months after their jump — and 2026’s only portal window is already closed. But sure, why not?
“NDSU’s ceiling should be a team that competes for the College Football Playoff (when it becomes eligible in 2028),” Vannini told me on Slack. “What’s been evident in FCS-to-FBS moves is that winning traditions usually translate up. We saw it at Appalachian State, James Madison, Liberty and several others. I think NDSU will be the same. The Bison finished 66th nationally in Bill Connelly’s 766-team SP+ ratings this past season, one spot behind Boise State.”
Furthering the tradition will still require major investment. “In FY24, North Dakota State reported $30,251,922 in total athletic department operational expenses, far below the smallest Mountain West institution, San Jose State ($47,405,380),” wrote Matt Brown at Extra Points. The move itself will be expensive: “NDSU is expected to pay over $10 million to join the Mountain West, in addition to a $5 million NCAA fee to move from FCS to FBS.”
Also, seeing as Vannini and I are in the same College Football 26 dynasty (one in which his recruiting class just scandalously beat mine for the No. 2 ranking behind Yahoo writer Charles McDonald’s LSU), I had to ask him: Is EA Sports going to be able to get the Fargodome into this summer’s release?
“I did ask someone, and got a laughing emoji in response. My take: Adding a team’s logos and players isn’t difficult, but stadium and player likenesses take a lot more work. My guess is NDSU will be in the game, but TBD on if it’s the real Fargodome or a generic stadium.”
As for what’s next: UC Davis is among the MWC’s potential football adds. The public will certainly call for other Dakotas and the Montanas to move up. And Sacramento State will keep talking about throwing money around, but until the Hornets start winning titles, will anyone care?
Quick Snaps
📰 News:
Last week, Montana head coach Bobby Hauck stepped down, saying, “Dealing with what college football has become is not always enjoyable as a head coach.” Apparently those last four words were key. He’s Illinois’ new defensive coordinator.
Returning to Montana, however: Solomon Tuliaupupu, a four-star USC linebacker in Trevor Lawrence’s 2018 class, who’s playing a ninth year due to injuries.
“Virginia WR Jahmal Edrine charged with rape and abduction; no longer on roster.” Details.
These days, Deion Sanders still gets asked about NFL head-coaching ambitions. He says “what transpired” with his son, Browns QB Shedeur Sanders, means he has no interest.
🖋️ Meet the QB recruit who was surely the world’s first student to narrow his college choices to BYU, Penn or USF. He chose … Penn.
📺 YouTube TV will begin offering a $65 sports-focused package. Better than the current $83 deal, though we pine for 2017’s $35 era.
Grad School: Spotlights on Mendoza and Buckeyes
Football season is done, ICYMI. Thanks mainly to the masterful work of former Texas Longhorns punt lord Michael Dickson, the Seattle Seahawks won Sunday’s high-profile contest partly named after college bowl games.
We enter draft season, the time of year when NFL and college football align. I’ll try not to overload you with draft stuff, though I always find it a decent gauge of where programs stack up at the moment.
Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza is universally expected to be the Las Vegas Raiders’ pick at No. 1, joining new head coach Klint Kubiak (formerly the Seahawks’ OC) and a part-owner by the name of Tom Brady. Three-round mock draft here, with four Buckeyes in the top 12.
Overall, Ohio State will once again be the prospect factory on display. Three Buckeye defenders rank in the top five of Dane Brugler’s top 100, led by linebacker Arvell Reese, and Carnell Tate is the top WR at No. 10.
Also, here was my favorite Super Bowl stuff:
Seattle GM John Schneider, who’s now built two entirely different title rosters, offers a lot to ponder about construction in any sport: “It’s not being afraid to move on from certain players when it’s time, but then also going to get guys that, when you plug them in, are as good or better with you.”
Evaluating kickers might be the hardest thing in all of football. How did a nondescript Marist Red Fox just cap the highest-scoring season in NFL history by going 5-for-5 in the Super Bowl?
The Wisconsin Badgers get a credit for an assistant professor’s Puerto Rican history contributions to Bad Bunny’s halftime show. (This thread on the show’s Puerto Rico lore was also great.)
Marshawn Lynch (featuring fellow Seattle icon Kenny G) had the only particularly good commercial.
Actually, I also liked the what’s-your-favorite-Pokemon ad. My sister and I have Beedrill tattoos because our high school alma mater’s teams are the Yellow Jackets. See you Friday!
