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North Dakota State is not a bad football team. North Dakota State has rarely ever been a bad football team, at least within the last sixty years. Traditionally, North Dakota State has been good at football, and lately, North Dakota State has been very good at football. So when we say North Dakota State has fallen off, or that North Dakota State isn’t what it was, we aren’t saying North Dakota State is bad. Most of what we’re saying, really, is that in Fargo, North Dakota, the 2010’s were a special time.
To thoroughly trace NDSU’s dominance back into the past, you must familiarize yourself with the 1960’s landscape of what we now call Division II football. We will not task you with that today. Let’s leave the pre-2004 section of NDSU’s history at this: They won five D2 national titles, and before D2 was born, they won the “College Division” national championship two or three times, depending which poll you trust (and how you feel about San Diego State tying Tennessee State in 1968). Overall? Very, very good.
This D2 excellence is probably what provoked NDSU’s administration, in the early 2000s, to embark upon the Division I transition. This is where our section of the story begins.
Alongside friend and rival South Dakota State, NDSU jumped from D-II to Division I-AA in 2004, helping to form a little league called the Great West Conference. The Bison lost to the Jackrabbits that year, and to conference foes Northern Colorado and Cal Poly as well. On Halloween weekend, though, a ranked Northwestern State came to Fargo, and the Bison sent them packing. Two wins later, an 8–3 mark had NDSU finishing their first D-I year not only with a comfortable winning record, but with a spot in the most prominent I-AA Top 25. It was Craig Bohl’s second season at the school. In his fourth, things really heated up.
In 2006, North Dakota State lost one game. They lost it by a single point. They lost it to Minnesota, who was not only an FBS team (I-AA was now called the FCS) but a Big Ten team, and not only a Big Ten team but a team who went on to make a bowl game. In 2006—North Dakota State’s third year competing at the Division I level—they beat all opponents except for a bowl-eligible Big Ten team. That team, Minnesota, only escaped the Bison by a single point, playing on the Gophers’ home turf at the Metrodome.
Then as now, there was a long transition period before North Dakota State could play in any Division I postseason contests. They were ineligible for the FCS Playoffs in 2006. They were ineligible again in 2007, when they beat a much worse Minnesota team, smoked a MAC opponent in the form of Central Michigan, and nearly finished the year undefeated only to find themselves on the receiving end of their own upset, falling to SDSU in Brookings on the season’s final day. Could North Dakota State have won the FCS title those two years? I’m not sure. As Michigan fans know well, Appalachian State had good teams back then. Looking into the past, Movelor has App State a hypothetical 6.5-point favorite in an end-of-2006 matchup with NDSU. In a hypothetical end-of-2007 showdown, it puts the spread at roughly two points. The bottom line? North Dakota State was rising. North Dakota State was competing at the Division I level. It was beating BCS Conference teams. It was playing at the top of the FCS level. The best was only ahead.
I don’t know why things went badly for Bohl in 2008 and 2009. Was it the move to the MVFC? Was it roster turnover after 2007? Whatever the case, NDSU didn’t make the playoffs either year, despite being eligible. 2010 was better—the Bison beat Kansas in Lawrence and reached the FCS Quarterfinals—but it is not where the dominance began. The dominance—the unparalleled, crushing dominance which makes Nick Saban’s Alabama tenure look fraught with potholes—began in 2011.
Here is a list of every game North Dakota State lost between 2011 and 2019:
- November 12th, 2011: Youngstown State 27, North Dakota State 24
- October 13th, 2012: Indiana State 17, North Dakota State 14
- November 8th, 2014: Northern Iowa 23, North Dakota State 3
- August 29th, 2015: Montana 38, North Dakota State 35
- October 17th, 2015: South Dakota 24, North Dakota State 21
- October 15th, 2016: South Dakota State 19, North Dakota State 17
- December 16th, 2016: James Madison 27, North Dakota State 17
- November 4th, 2017: South Dakota State 33, North Dakota State 21
Here are some noteworthy games North Dakota State won during that timeframe:
- September 24th, 2011: North Dakota State 37, Minnesota 24
- September 8th, 2012: North Dakota State 22, Colorado State 7
- August 30th, 2013: North Dakota State 24, Kansas State 21
- August 30th, 2014: North Dakota State 34, Iowa State 14
- September 17th, 2016: North Dakota State 23, Iowa 21
- Eight separate FCS National Championships, by an average of 15 points. From 2011 through 2015, they won five in a row.
That 2013 Kansas State team went on to win eight games. So did that Iowa team in 2016, a Hawkeye outfit which was ranked 13th in the country when the Bison beat them. Iowa went on to upset 2nd-ranked Michigan in November. Eventually, FBS teams stopped scheduling the Bison for a while.
Nine years. Eight losses. Four power conference foes defeated, two of whom went on to comfortably make bowl games, one of which upset a national championship contender at the FBS level. The 2018 team was so dominant that in Movelor backtesting, they finish the season ranked 6th in the entire country, one tenth of a point ahead of Notre Dame. Notre Dame went 12–1 that year. Notre Dame made the College Football Playoff.
6th in the country, despite playing with 22 fewer scholarships available than the rest of the top 40. 6th in the country, despite playing in a stadium only a sixth the size of the Big House. 6th in the country, despite recruiting its athletes to Fargo, North Dakota, athletes who hardly ever registered on the 247Sports recruiting rankings. If greatness may be measured relatively, comparing achievement to potential and expectations, the 2018 North Dakota State Bison were one of the greatest college football teams of all time.
Kansas State, well-versed in NDSU’s lessons, took notice.
By 2018, Craig Bohl had moved on. Wyoming had also taken notice of NDSU’s dominance, hiring the Nebraskan away after the 2013 year. Bohl’s top lieutenant, defensive coordinator Chris Klieman, slid admirably into the role, producing four national championships and a 59–6 record over five years. But Kansas State came knocking, and Klieman, an Iowan who played at UNI, moved south. In turn, his top lieutenant, Matt Entz, stepped in.
It’s funny to criticize Matt Entz. He went 60–11 in five years in Fargo. He won two national titles, completed the 39-game win streak Klieman started, and might have won a third title and extended that win streak longer had Covid not pushed the 2020 FCS season to the spring, leading Trey Lance to opt out and prepare for the NFL Draft. By FCS standards, Entz’s teams were still great. By North Dakota State standards, they were—on average—acceptable.
Again: North Dakota State finished the 2018 season as the 6th-best team in the whole of Division I. In 2019, they finished 22nd. In 2021, they finished 27th. 2022? 68th. 2024? 47th. They begin this year ranked 49th, and that’s very much on the high end of where models like Movelor have the Bison. Betting markets seem to have NDSU somewhere between ten and seventeen points worse.
This is not bad. For an FCS school, this remains extraordinary. But between the end of 2018, when Entz took over, and the end of 2023, when Entz left to take a job coaching the linebackers at USC, North Dakota State went from a team who could realistically compete with College Football Playoff semifinalists to a team who couldn’t beat Arizona in a year when Arizona missed a bowl. Maybe Entz recognized how things were going and doubted he could recapture the magic. To be fair to Entz, recapturing that magic was probably impossible for anyone. Klieman is one of the best college football coaches in the country, and even for him, the stars probably aligned on the banks of that particular Red River.
Still, as North Dakota State goes to Boulder tonight, don’t get it twisted. North Dakota State is a good FCS team. They’re no longer a good college football team.
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What to expect tonight between the Bison and the Buffaloes? First off, I’d imagine ESPN gives us a fun graphic comparing bison and buffalo, ideally with some witty speculation on whether Ralphie will turn traitor and defect to her kind. Second, it’s Tim Polasek’s first game as NDSU’s head coach, the former assistant returning to Fargo after four years coaching linemen at Iowa and three running the offense for Bohl at Wyoming. Third? Well, Colorado, of course.
What will Colorado be this year? It’s a more interesting question than it was last year. Last year, we knew what Colorado had been. This year, we’re not so sure. What was Colorado in 2023? They opened so strong, upsetting a TCU team coming off a national championship appearance. They continued so strong, terrorizing Nebraska in Deion Sanders’s first game coaching at Folsom Field. From there…it got ugly. A narrow escape from Colorado State. A karmic clapback at Oregon. So many close games over the next two months, ultimately leaving Colorado 4–8 while Sanders threw his offensive line under the bus and prepared for an offseason trashing anyone who dared enter his much-praised transfer portal.
Deion Sanders is more a cult leader than a football coach. He understands how easy it is to sway an unsure public. He knows how many people prefer to treat truth as a relative matter. He’s adept at using force as a tool of persuasion. For his sons and Travis Hunter and other players “in the fold,” life is great under Deion Sanders. He’s forward-thinking and empowering towards players. For those outside his chosen circle, repercussions are harsh. Thank God the man doesn’t like scouting. If he won’t visit high schools to look for recruits, we probably don’t have to worry about him traveling to look for land in Guyana.
Deion Sanders convinced AP voters his Buffs were the 18th-best team in the country. Deion Sanders convinced thousands if not millions of football viewers that surviving Colorado State was an accomplishment. Going back further, Deion Sanders painted a three-year stint at Jackson State highlighted by cataclysmic Celebration Bowls as a success, and as a victory for HBCU football as a whole. People don’t understand how disappointing those Jackson State teams were relative to their top-line talent, how little business that Jackson State team had losing by three touchdowns to South Carolina State in 2022. Don’t let anyone FCSplain to you: North Dakota State is no longer great, and under Deion Sanders, Jackson State never was.
True to his demagogue identity, Deion Sanders excels at recruiting. He is very good at convincing football players to attend Colorado. Is he good at identifying the talent himself? There’s no way to know. We have no evidence he’s ever tried. He won’t visit high schools. This offseason, his son Shilo posted an Instagram story saying, “Defense transfers DM me. Offense transfers DM (Shedeur Sanders.)” Are Deion Sanders’s sons running Colorado’s recruiting office? Maybe so. Someone had to do it, given at least one member of the staff spent the holiday season courting government officials in Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the pursuit of NIL funds.
Deion Sanders is and has been many things. He was a great athlete. He’s a tremendous testament to how far confidence can take a person. He is, again, very good at recruiting athletes whose potential others have already identified. Is he a good football coach, though? Probably not. In fact, I’m not sure he’s a football coach at all. He doesn’t seem particularly interested in that part of the job.
Theoretically, the model can work. Get strong enough assistants and a talented enough roster, and you can win football games. Sanders’s greatest developmental accomplishment is under center, and to be fair, Shedeur Sanders is one hell of a developmental accomplishment. Can he and Travis Hunter steal Colorado a couple games? Theoretically. But with the NFL Draft awaiting both, it wouldn’t be surprising if neither sees the field by the time November rolls around. For Deion Sanders, perception is more important than reality. A 3–9 season in which Colorado “empowered its players” (encouraging the two everyone knows to opt out) is better for Deion Sanders than a 6–6 campaign in which the Buffaloes gutted out wins down the stretch in the snow.
Lincoln Riley has had a very hard time winning big at USC. This, despite assembling impressive collections of talent around one of the best NFL quarterback prospects in the last few years. Deion Sanders might beat Riley when it comes to motivating players. Maybe. But in terms of actual football acumen, there’s no comparison. Lincoln Riley has had a very hard time winning big at USC. If a better coach in a better job can’t lean on his talent, we can’t expect Deion Sanders to do it either.
Colorado will probably win tonight, meaning tomorrow morning’s talk shows will ask whether this is the year in Boulder while AP voters forget their offseason criticisms and prepare to add the Buffs to “Received Votes.” We’ve seen this script before, though. Buffs fans might not like the ending.
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Other games of note tonight:
North Carolina and Minnesota (8:00 PM EDT on FOX) play in Minneapolis. The luster’s worn off for Mack Brown again as much as it has for P.J. Fleck, but one of those two teams will open the year 1–0, having beaten a power conference foe with a decent shot at a bowl.
Lafayette (at Buffalo, 7:00 PM EDT on ESPN+) and Sacramento State (at San Jose State, 10:00 PM EDT on TruTV) are the two FCS teams the market most expects to pull off FBS upsets. Movelor isn’t as high on either, and we tend to agree, but the Sac State game is also Ken Niumatalolo’s first at SJSU, so if your TV gets TruTV and you want late-night football, it should be fun.
Among College Football Playoff contenders, Missouri, Utah, Kansas, and NC State all play, but while their games will tell us things about their ability (it takes good teams to win by a lot of points), the viewing pleasure will likely be limited. Colorado and North Dakota State is the big one. It’s a lot bigger in college football culture than it is in the rankings and standings.
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We’ll be back tomorrow with a bigger look at Week 1. In the meantime, our model is live! A few links:
- Full Movelor rankings; College Football Playoff probabilities
- CFP bracketology
- How the model works
- The model’s homepage, which will always have the latest from our college football numbers department
We’ll get the model’s Week 1 game-by-game predictions up later today or tomorrow. Thanks for bearing with us this week as we get our 2024 coverage off the ground.
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