FARGO — The news that North Dakota State will play football in the Mountain West Conference has been met with much rejoicing from the tiny slice of an office on the south side of the newsroom in The Forum building in downtown Fargo. That would be the one belonging to the aging columnist who’s been getting increasingly crabby the last few years as the Football Championship Subdivision kept losing top-end programs and Football Bowl Subdivision programs, big or small, continued to refuse scheduling the Bison.
There’s only so many 62-7 nonconference victories over St. Thomas and 59-6 whoopings of Murray State a guy can take.
Considering the dwindling number of fans tailgating before games and filling the blue seats inside the Fabulous Fargodome since about, oh, 2021 (the real season that occurred in the fall, not the silly season delayed from fall 2020 to spring 2021 because of COVID), it’s clear Crabby Columnist was not the only one feeling the negative vibes.
If the early returns are any indication, the Bison’s announcement this week they were moving up to FBS and will compete in a tougher league that happens to include potential stops in Hawaii, Las Vegas, Colorado Springs and the San Francisco Bay area has rejuvenated some interest in NDSU football.
No. 1 question asked of Crabby this week by Bison fans: “Who are we going to play?”
No. 2: “Are they going to Hawaii?”
No. 3: “Will some of the big FBS schools play us now so we can have better nonconference games?”
Answer No.1: Eight conference teams every year from the other nine teams in the league that include New Mexico, San Jose State, Hawaii, UNLV, Nevada, Wyoming, Northern Illinois, Air Force and Texas-El Paso.
Answer No. 2: Yes, every other year.
Answer No. 3: Possibly, maybe even probably.
We’ll know what the Bison’s inaugural Mountain West Conference schedule looks like soon when it is released by the league. Conference commissioner Gloria Nevarez said “very soon, almost certainly before the end of the month.”
The 2026 nonconference schedule for NDSU is a little tougher.
As of now NDSU has four nonconference games scheduled as an FCS: at Incarnate Word on Aug. 29, East Tennessee State at home Sept. 5, at Central Arkansas on Sept. 12 and Austin Peay at home Sept. 19.
All but one of those is likely going away. NDSU athletic director Matt Larsen said he’d like to keep one home FCS nonconference game (FBS teams generally include one FCS among their four nonconference games) and find three FBS opponents to fill the open dates.
The guess here is NDSU will keep the East Tennessee State home game and drop the other three.
Finding three FBS games, including one at the dome, is going to be a challenge.
Especially considering there are three (3) FBS teams that have open nonconference dates, according to Kevin Kelley of the
web site.
They are USC, Ohio and Jacksonville State (the same Jax State the Bison hammered in the 2015 FCS title game, now an FBS program). And word on the street is USC has already filled its open date, it just hasn’t been announced yet.
That is … not good.
“That is priority number one,” Larsen said at NDSU’s press conference Monday, Feb. 9.
Larsen said the school already called “a national guru of scheduling,” believed to be Dave Brown, a college football scheduling consultant who uses a unique computer program to help with the job.
“I’d love to say in a couple of weeks, but we have a lot of moving parts to it,” Larsen said.
With the 10-team Mountain West playing an eight-game conference schedule, there would be one team not included on NDSU’s schedule this year. Could the Bison play that team as a nonconference opponent?
It would be much easier just to keep the current nonconference games knowing that there is only six months until the season begins, but NDSU wants to bust into FBS looking like an FBS program. The school will ask for an exemption from the two-year NCAA ban from participating in bowl games or qualifying for the College Football Playoff, so it has to drop three FCS opponents.
“We’re going to start having conversations with those schools. We want to be good partners, so if there are opportunities for us to find games for them as we’re trying to find games for us,” Larsen said. “But I think moving forward, we’re going to look to have a Power Four game if possible. We’ll have the eight conference games. We’ll have some home and homes with some Group of Six schools and then we’ll usually have an FCS game at home as well.”
The college football world, the Bison fan base and Crabby Columnist await NDSU’s inaugural FBS schedule. Year One might be rough, but he knows this: Anything is better than seeing a Pioneer League team on NDSU’s schedule ever again.
Mike McFeely is a columnist for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. He began working for The Forum in the 1980s while he was a student studying journalism at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He’s been with The Forum full time since 1990, minus a six-year hiatus when he hosted a local radio talk-show.