If you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band.
As North Dakota State celebrated a Football Championship Subdivision semifinal win against Incarnate Word, offensive lineman Cody Mauch brought the hit Alabama song to life, attempting (poorly) to play a fiddle on the field. The visual went viral and Mauch was invited to a local middle school to learn proper fiddle form. The next stop for Mauch and his teammates is Frisco, Texas, on Sunday for the FCS national championship, the Bison’s second home.
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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. Rather, it was a rare close and competitive game. NDSU overcame a 16-0 deficit, scored the go-ahead touchdown with eight minutes left and secured the win with a late interception.
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. The Bison have won nine FCS championships, with a 9-0 record in the title game. 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.
NDSU is actually an underdog in this game against rival South Dakota State, which beat the Bison in the Fargodome earlier this year. But win or lose, it’s not hard to notice what has happened in the FCS over the past decade. Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Coastal Carolina, Liberty and James Madison have moved up to the FBS and continued their success. 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.
Some of those schools were NDSU’s toughest challengers. Five of NDSU’s nine title wins came against teams mentioned above. But NDSU remains in the FCS. With those departures, there may be no end in sight for the Bison’s FCS dominance.
“NDSU beat all those teams,” said Jeff Culhane, the former NDSU play-by-play broadcaster who took over at Florida State this year. “Fans see that success and say, ‘We have been more successful than those programs and for a longer period of time. Why can’t we make that move up?’”
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What started as a fun hypothetical a decade ago has evolved into a legitimate thought. Many people around the program feel it needs to happen, lest the program get left behind. 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. More tangibly, a $54 million practice facility that opened in October is another sign of preparation.
“A lot of things have changed in the last 10 years,” athletic director Matt Larsen said. “You’d be crazy if you weren’t looking internally about what’s best for you.”
But wanting to move and actually moving are different things. FCS teams can move up to FBS only with a conference invitation, and that hasn’t officially come. (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. Geography is the biggest issue. 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.
It creates one of the odder dynamics in sports. NDSU is too good. 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. But the program can’t raise its level of competition. Attendance has begun to dip with all the success, and anything short of a championship creates a deep amount of pressure.
Is there too much of a good thing?
NDSU has been a Division I school for just 20 years, moving up from Division II in a process that began in 2003. The football team is now in the Missouri Valley Football Conference, while the remaining sports call the Summit League home.
Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor was the Bison AD from 2001 to 2014 and led that transition. From afar, he sees a familiar situation.
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“We left Division II because it was similar to what it is now,” Taylor said. “Cal Davis left, Northern Colorado left, Northern Iowa had left. The D-II world was changing and our president felt the university, research, enrollment was growing and we needed to make the move.”
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 Bison have had just three losing seasons since 1964. Fans are used to winning a whole lot. Current Wyoming head coach Craig Bohl took charge of NDSU right before the Division I move and built the foundation for the ongoing run that continued with Chris Klieman (now at Kansas State) and current head coach Matt Entz.
The Division I success came quickly under Bohl, with an 8-3 record and Top 25 finish in their debut in 2004, then consecutive 10-1 records in 2006 and 2007. The first FCS national title came in 2011, and North Dakota State hasn’t looked back since. The Bison are 44-3 all-time in the FCS playoffs. They’ve also won nine of 13 games against FBS opponents, including Power 5 victories against Minnesota in 2007, Kansas in 2010, Minnesota again in 2011, Kansas State in 2013, Iowa State in 2014 and No. 13 Iowa in 2016.
“I’ll never forget, we played Minnesota in the Metrodome (in 2006) and lost 10-9 but we had more fans there,” Taylor said. “We went back the next year and beat them and our fans realized this was different.”
NDSU didn’t play an FBS team from 2016 until a late loss at Arizona in September 2022. The main reason for the lack of games? Nobody wants to schedule NDSU anymore. It’s a high-risk, low-reward game for FBS schools. A 2020 game against Oregon was moved to 2028 due to the pandemic, and the only other FBS game on the schedule is a 2024 trip to Colorado. The struggle applies to FCS games as well. The Bison need to pay in the six figures just to get some home nonconference FCS games.
“They became a victim of their own success,” Culhane said.
Amid the dominance, attendance has begun to fall a bit at the 18,700-seat Fargodome. NDSU’s average attendance jumped to more than 18,000 in the first national championship season in 2011, and it was more than 18,400 every year from 2012 to 2016. The NCAA loved playoff games in the Fargodome because it was always a packed house. But attendance declined in each of the next three seasons. The fall 2021 attendance of 15,101 fans per game was the program’s lowest in a fall season since 2005, perhaps due to COVID-19 and the spring 2021 season. It rebounded to 17,309 in the regular season this year, but only one of the three home playoff games topped 13,000.
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Attendance is an issue across the country, and NDSU remains near the top of the FCS. Still, any drop-off is particularly notable with a winning team.
“The kids and the coaches work their tails off and live up to the almost ridiculous expectation of, if there’s not a national championship, it’s a failure of a season,” Culhane said. “I don’t think there’s one answer, but the fan base is looking for a spark, which is bizarre to say when you’re winning all the time.”
Kyle Bennett, the fan who created the NDSU to FBS website, shared the same sentiment.
“If you’ve seen a show 10 times, are you going to pay a couple hundred bucks to bring your family so you can go see it again?” he said in an email.
The most obvious answer at this point is to make the move up. But someone has to want the Bison.
NDSU hasn’t received an invitation from an FBS conference, Larsen said.
People around NDSU and Group of 5 conferences agree: If NDSU was located in Texas or Virginia or a different part of the country, it would be in the FBS by now. Geography is the biggest hurdle for the Bison. They’re not a natural fit anywhere. Being a football-only member would be ideal from a travel perspective, but Group of 5 conferences don’t favor doing that, even if football is where most of the money comes from. And as with any expansion, adding NDSU could lessen television payouts per team by splitting money with an additional member.
“Outside of the highest levels of FBS where geography doesn’t matter anymore, it still does for most conferences,” Larsen said. “We have a great brand, but with certain geography, I would venture to say if we were in a different part of the country, we would have received an invite by now.”
Looking at a map, the Mountain West might be the best geographical fit. The school has a profile similar to places like Boise State, Wyoming and Utah State. The league already has a football-only member in Hawaii, and it remains possible San Diego State could be a Pac-12 target. Yet MWC sources said there isn’t an urgency to expand right now. The league opted against expansion last year and then saw the American Athletic Conference add Conference USA schools in Texas. Perhaps that could change under new commissioner Gloria Nevarez, who took over on Jan. 1. NDSU is also in the Central time zone, which doesn’t make a western-based conference ideal for kickoff times.
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Entz, the current head coach, would pick the AAC if it was his call.
“Just in terms of football, I think our best fit is the American,” he said. “From a geographical standpoint, there are (four) in Texas, plus Tulsa. Those are in the Central time zone and (others are) in the East, so it would fit for our fans and TV. From a travel standpoint, flying to Dallas is just as fast as Youngstown or Macomb, Illinois.”
Had the AAC pulled off its western wing by adding Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State last year, NDSU would fit, but it didn’t happen. The AAC also has a football-only member in Navy. The league will be at 14 football-playing teams next year, and while the idea of further expanding to 16 has been talked about, per league sources, it’s not on the front burner.
The MAC covers a similar footprint as the MVFC, so North Dakota State’s travel would be somewhat similar there. The league looked at adding Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee last year but pulled out when MTSU opted to stay in Conference USA. Expanding outside of the heavy Ohio and Michigan footprint is not favored by some, and the idea of adding NDSU has not been discussed much, according to a league source, though the appeal of the Bison brand is obvious.
Conference USA will add three FCS teams over the next two years and has considered adding more, but it spreads from Virginia to New Mexico, and the level of competition is not very appealing to an NDSU program that wants to play Power 5 games, rather than current FCS teams. Still, it’s a seat at the FBS table, and if NDSU feels an urgency to move, it might be an option. C-USA prefers to add all-sports members, but the appeal of Bison football might make for an exception. The Sun Belt hasn’t ruled out expansion, but NDSU makes no sense as a fit for a conference that has leaned into favorable geography.
And that’s it for options. Though the Western Athletic Conference and the ASUN Conference have begun to explore a combined move from FCS to FBS as a football conference, Larsen and many others around college sports are skeptical of its chances.
In the meantime, the Bison continue to prepare for the FBS moment, whenever it arrives. Larsen joked that fans wanted to jump into the Big Ten when he arrived in 2014, but he knew infrastructure wasn’t in place for an FBS move yet. That’s changing. A new indoor practice facility just opened, and a second facilities upgrade phase will include a new weight room, football locker room, team meeting room, training facilities and more. The athletic department budget is a little more than $25 million, which is in the G5 range, though on the lower end. There would be an increase in scholarships, but NDSU already pays cost-of-attendance to athletes, making it one of a small number of FCS teams that do. Travel costs could increase as well.
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Before joining the Sun Belt in 2022, James Madison passed on Group of 5 invitations, believing it needed to first develop the infrastructure to succeed. That’s what NDSU is doing now.
“Being around a Power 5 program now, North Dakota State treats their program just like Power 5,” Culhane said. “The way they travel, how they support the student-athletes, it’s there.”
NDSU fans have begun their annual trek to Frisco this week for the 10th time in 12 years. This FCS championship game, against a hated rival in South Dakota State, could mean more than all the others, especially as the underdog.
But the long-term future remains on the minds of everyone, especially after JMU’s 8-3 debut season in the FBS this year. Entz doesn’t even like using the term “FCS” very much. In recruiting, he compares NDSU to schools like Marshall, App State, Boise State and UCF when talking to prospects. That’s how NDSU views itself. It just needs to find the same level of competition.
Nobody wants to take for granted this unprecedented run of success. The effort put forth by players and coaches to live up to the immense pressure every year deserves as much.
“Part of the reason kids come here is because the expectations are to win championships,” Entz said.
But the nature of every competitor is to want more, to want to play the very best.
“The expectations are high, but that doesn’t make it difficult to enjoy the team,” Bennett said of his NDSU fandom. “What makes it difficult to enjoy is when the other team is from a different world than NDSU. NDSU is treated like an NFL team in Fargo. They flaunt their green and gold. That doesn’t happen at other FCS schools, except for a very small handful.
“When you have support like that, you don’t want to play Indiana State. You want to play Boise State.”
(Top illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; photos: C. Morgan Engel and Zach Del Bello / NCAA Photos via Getty Images; Sean Arbaut / Getty Images)
