Matt Zimmer: What Kalen DeBoer's USF Cougars can teach us about NDSU and the future of FCS

Feb. 12—SIOUX FALLS — In 2008, the USF Cougar football team went 14-0 and earned the NAIA national championship for the second time in three seasons. Their defense pitched seven shutouts that year (would’ve been eight if not for a safety against their offense). They outscored their opponents 511-83. They routed perennial powerhouse Carroll College 23-7 in the title game.

One year later, they went 15-0 and won the NAIA title again.

Only three shutouts this time, but the Cougar offense scored a mind-numbing 775 points (51.7 per game), and along the way came the much-celebrated 28-13 win over Division I North Dakota.

It was their third national championship in four years. They had a 29-game winning streak.

Their coach at the time, one Kalen DeBoer, had compiled a record of 67-3 in five seasons at the helm.

If the painful beatings they administered to Great Plains Athletic Conference foes on a weekly basis hadn’t made it fully clear, USF’s convincing win over UND, a former Division II power that was ranked in the D1 FCS poll at the time, hammered it home.

The Cougars no longer belonged at the NAIA level.

It wasn’t just the lopsided scores, though.

The Cougars played in a Division II-caliber stadium in Bob Young Field. They had an aggressive athletic director in former LA Dodgers executive and MLB agent Willie Sanchez. They recruited and developed talent well above their level. As history would show in the coming years, they had an incredible coaching staff.

USF’s opponents in the GPAC played in high school stadiums, had just a few full-time coaches, rostered subpar players and in some cases struggled to keep up-to-date stats or get their games on the radio.

Put simply, USF had little in common with their opponents.

It was time to go. If they stayed in NAIA and DeBoer remained their coach (which he seemed perfectly content to do) the Cougars could’ve won another 10 national championships.

Instead they announced they would transition to Division II and DeBoer embarked on a climb up the ladder that led to him becoming the coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

USF spent one more year in NAIA (the Cougars lost in the 2010 national championship game under Jed Stugart), endured one transitional season then officially joined the NSIC in 2012.

The move was instantly successful. USF knocked off a ranked St. Cloud State squad in their NSIC debut, going 9-2 that first year. After a 6-5 season in 2013, they went 11-1, 9-3 and 12-1 over the next three seasons, making the Division II playoffs in 2015 and 2016, then Stugart left for Lindenwood (they’re now an FCS program and he’s still there).

The Cougars went back to the playoffs twice more under Jon Anderson, and recently completed their second straight winning season under current coach Jim Glogowski.

Still, as successful as USF has been at the Division II level, they have not played for a national championship. They haven’t gotten particularly close.

Does that mean the Cougars regret leaving NAIA? Do their fans (and by extension players and coaches) wish they were still the big fish in the small pond, rather than simply a good Division II program?

No, not really.

Why? Because they’re playing a better brand of football. They’re playing in nicer stadiums in bigger towns.

From a football standpoint, USF had much more in common with Bemidji State, Augustana, Minnesota Duluth and Northern State than Dordt, Doane, Northwestern and Briar Cliff.

In the NSIC, they’re going against teams that have similar stadiums, similar coaching staffs, offer the same number of scholarships and recruit largely the same players.

They’ve found where they belong. Maybe they’ll win a D2 title someday. Maybe they won’t. They’re still in the right place.

This, obviously, is the scenario into which North Dakota State is venturing, on a much bigger scale. But I think the parallels are noteworthy.

Is it fun to look back at the glory days of USF winning titles? Sure. It’s where DeBoer built his legend. It’s where the Cougars built their identity as a small-college power. But they had to grow up. There was nothing left to accomplish in the NAIA.

With 10 FCS titles NDSU has nothing left to accomplish in FCS. Are they giving up something incredible for something less certain? Yes. But just like nobody was really worried that USF wouldn’t be competitive in D2 (again, they went 9-2 in their first year and 11-1 in their third), nobody doubts the Bison will be fine in the Mountain West.

And just like USF doesn’t really miss the NAIA, NDSU isn’t going to miss the FCS.

Also noteworthy: When the Cougars were still in NAIA, there were really only two teams in the GPAC that could realistically hang with them — Northwestern and Morningside — and a few others around the country that had a shot, among them Saint Xavier and Saint Francis.

Before USF left, none of those programs had won an NAIA championship. Since the Cougars left, Morningside has won three, Saint Francis two and Northwestern and Saint Xavier one each. Getting rid of the big bad Cougars opened the door for new champions.

Obviously the hope in FCS circles is that the same thing will happen with NDSU gone. While the Missouri Valley and Big Sky figure to remain the dominant conferences, the shadow the Bison cast over the FCS has lifted for good. The sun is shining.

Youngstown State (4) and SDSU, Montana and Montana State (two each) are the top remaining programs in terms of national titles. Can USD or UND win their first FCS title? Could another team jump into the picture? Perhaps the Bison’s departure will inspire somebody to do so.

The college football world has already identified SDSU as the next likely candidate to move up to FBS, and someday they probably will, if there isn’t some kind of realignment/merger that takes care of it for them.

Like the Bison, SDSU probably has more in common in resources, talent, coaching and facilities with G6 teams than they do what’s left of FCS.

So why aren’t they going now? Well, besides the obvious (no conference invite), the Jacks just don’t seem to be sick of the FCS yet. They still have peers in FCS. It’s not boring yet. They went 9-5 last year. And unlike, say, Missouri State, which wisely realized they had a better chance of competing in Conference USA than the Valley, they still have the option of being the big fish in a small pond.

Maybe someday they’ll get to where DeBoer’s Cougars did, look around and, like the Bison, say ‘this isn’t fun anymore’.

Today isn’t that day.

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