The FCS National Championship is today, and I love the FCS National Championship. I’m not the biggest fan of the playoffs’ early rounds, but I love me the FCS National Championship. To be clear, this is not an NIT thing. The FCS and the NIT are very different. One is a subdivision of Division I with lower football scholarship counts and cooler schools. The other is the greatest tournament humanity has ever contested. Nevertheless, there are similarities. For example:
- The champion of each is usually better than a whole lot of teams in the “next tier up.” Last year’s North Texas team was about as good as Miami by the time the season ended, if you believe the people who make millions of dollars setting lines on how games will go. This year’s South Dakota State team is about as good as Clemson.
- Each has a tie to Frisco, Texas, which is also known as “Sports City USA.” (This is one of those times when someone is really, really, really trying to make their self-adorned nickname stick.) In 2021, Frisco helped host the NIT when Covid made larger venues not an option. Since 2010, Frisco has hosted the FCS National Championship. Before that, it was in Chattanooga, Huntington, Statesboro, Pocatello, and Tacoma, in reverse order. I told you the schools are cooler.
- Each makes for prime viewing on the ESPN family of networks. People claim they don’t watch. But ESPN pays something for that contract, dammit (I think it’s the same contract, and it covers other sports, too).
- I like them both.
The differences, meanwhile:
- There is no limit on how good you can be to play in the FCS National Championship. North Dakota State and now South Dakota State have ruled the subdivision for more than twelve years now, winning ten of the last twelve championships. Did they move up to the FBS? Nope. Just kept kicking FCS ass. I think their logic goes, “We would be fringe top-25 teams at our best and would give up our in-state rivalries. We would have to spend more money on scholarships. We likely wouldn’t make all that much more money.” Or something like that. So they just keep kicking FCS ass (until NDSU wilted during the Entz era, which is decidedly different from the Wentz era).
- The NIT is a basketball entity. The FCS is about football.
- Nobody pretends they’re unhappy to be in the FCS National Championship. The lack of coyness is refreshing.
- It is harder to follow the FCS than to follow the NIT.
Today’s matchup is iconic. South Dakota State—the Jackrabbits, colloquially the Jacks—look for their second title in a row and their second title ever. They play Montana—the Grizzlies, colloquially the Griz. Montana is seeking its third title, but its first since 2001 (the championship happened in December then, so yes, it was post-9/11).
The story on South Dakota State is that they had the same head coach for years. John Stiegelmeier. In 2004, they moved with North Dakota State to Division I. This was in Stiegelmeier’s eighth year at the school.
South Dakota State didn’t immediately become good. It took them longer than NDSU. Ultimately, though, they did exactly what the Bison did a few hours north: They got big hosses up front and started overpowering teams. Since the 2017 season, they’ve only missed the FCS semifinals one time. Last year, they won the national title by 24 points, and their only loss on the season came by four points on the road against Iowa to open the year.
That loss to Iowa is a bad look. A fringe top-25 team at the FBS level, which is what SDSU is in terms of quality, should be able to beat an 8–5 Big Ten team. But South Dakota State didn’t, and while they haven’t lost since, they really better beat Oklahoma State in Stillwater this coming fall or I’m going to have to stop telling everyone how “actually they’re better than a lot of Power Five teams.”
Stiegelmeier retired after last season’s title, and Jimmy Rogers took over. Rogers is in his 30s (Wikipedia doesn’t know how old he is, which is awesome, because usually Wikipedia only doesn’t know the precise ages of historic figures and terrorists) and he’s been at South Dakota State since his freshman year of college, with a short break to serve as a grad assistant down at FAU. He played linebacker and came up through the defensive side of coaching. That’s another NDSU/SDSU commonality: Each does the big boy thing on defense as well as offense. These guys just dominate the trenches.
South Dakota State’s players? Irrelevant. This is about the machine. But since you asked, Mark Gronowski (quarterback) is a redshirt junior now, possibly with an extra Covid year sitting in his back pocket. He won the Walter Payton Award last night, which goes to the most outstanding offensive player at the FCS level. Isaiah Davis (running back) is a senior now, but again, there might be more eligibility out there. The Janke twins (wide receivers) might be out of eligibility. Honestly, next year is probably going to be a test for the SDSU machine. Gronowski could theoretically go pro or transfer to a Power Four program. Six of what appear to be the Jacks’ eight other non-Gronowski & Davis All-Americans are listed as seniors. The program might be peaking today. We might be seeing the South Dakota State wave crest, before our very eyes.
What is South Dakota State? It’s kind of like Nebraska in its heyday, but for the FCS level, and (probably) minus the (alleged) steroids. It knows what it is geographically and it plays to those strengths. The result is dominance.
The story on Montana is that the Griz were part of the PCC back in the day, the conference that the Pac-12 tries to pretend it was when it lies and says it’s 100 years old. After World War II, Montana took a step back. World War II forced a lot of reevaluation, and while Montana reevaluating its conference membership probably wasn’t tied at all to the largest armed conflict humanity has ever seen, it did happen around that time. I think they said they were going to focus on “academics,” but they had also only won multiple conference games once in their entire history.
Montana stayed in Division I, and they had a few good years here and there, but it wasn’t until the 90s that they really surged onto the scene. That happened under Don Read, who died a few days ago at the age of 90—RIP. They won the title in 1995 and again in 2001, under Joe Glenn (who is, to my knowledge, still alive), and Glenn moved on to Wyoming in 2003, Bobby Hauck took over and ultimately brought the Griz back-to-back national runner-up finishes in 2008 and 2009. His departure for UNLV ushered in a decade of disappointment in Missoula, but he returned in 2018 and the result has been a return to nationally competitive football. The Griz are back in that upper echelon of the FCS. They’re good enough to beat a falling NDSU.
Montana is not a fringe top-25 team, unlike the Jacks. If they win today, it will be a little bit of a Cinderella story, which is wacky considering they’re 13–1 and were the 2-seed in these playoffs. It’s like TCU playing Georgia last year. They deserve to be here, but we all have an idea of how it’s going to go.
The Griz had a rough go of it in September, nearly losing to top-ranked D2 program Ferris State and then losing by a pair of touchdowns to a bad Northern Arizona team. Montana has a little bit of a Texas element to them, where they’re cool and so people want them to be “back.” After the NAU loss, it really looked like Montana wasn’t back. They got on their feet, though, won at UC Davis and at old PCC rival Idaho, and then started stomping teams. They whooped a solid Sacramento State to open November. They whooped a very good Montana State to end the regular season. They whooped a respectable Delaware to open their playoff run. The last two rounds have been dicier—they needed overtime to hold off Furman and double overtime to get past NDSU—but the Griz deserve to be here.
There isn’t the quantity of talent on Montana’s roster that there is on SDSU’s, but running back Eli Gillman did win the Jerry Rice Award for FCS freshman of the year, and punt returner Junior Bergen is a boss. Clifton McDowell, who played at Louisiana-Lafayette, Kilgore College, and Central Arkansas before finding his way to the Big Sky as a grad transfer, is not Gronowski. He does, though, do a lot on the ground, and he’s undefeated as the starting quarterback.
To give a comparison for FBS quality—like how SDSU’s about as good as Clemson—Montana is about as good as Georgia Tech. To give a comparison for the school’s identity—like how SDSU is NDSU, also known as the Nebraska dynasty but in the FCS—Montana is basically Wyoming but if Wyoming decided to go FCS all those years ago. It’s a good and cool state school playing solid football. Montana would probably be favored by about a field goal against Wyoming right now. Wyoming won a bowl game!
So, that’s the FCS National Championship. It’s no NIT, but I’m excited. 2 PM Eastern. ABC. SDSU’s a 14-point favorite and I think we might lay the points. Don’t know yet what Joe has cooking.
