Best (or Worst) of Bisonville + Ancient History of the NDSU/SDSU Rivalry
SDSU outlasted NDSU and the Bison faithful are in meltdown mode
“It’s staying home.”
In the 113th meeting between South Dakota State University and North Dakota State University—the first time as the #1 and #2 ranked teams in the country—SDSU managed to overcome a 21-7 halftime deficit to “upset” the defending national champions and top ranked Bison. This is the third straight time that SDSU retained the Dakota Marker trophy, which was the subject of a lengthy piece on ESPN and was featured on College Gameday Saturday morning.
In case you missed it, the game hinged on two plays: A Cam Miller taunting penalty and a miracle Mason McCormick fumble recovery.
It was midway through the second quarter and NDSU was driving, up 21-7, when Miller connected on a deep ball that put the Bison inside the Jack’s 10-yard line. After the play was over, Miller was tagged with a 15-yard penalty for taunting which pushed the Bison back to the 21-yard line. If he decides to not do the classic “bow and arrow into a throat slash celebration” straight towards the Jackrabbit bench, the Bison probably go up 28-7. Instead, backup quarterback Cole Peyton throws up a 50/50 ball and the Jacks were gifted new life.
Later, SDSU’s Mark Gronowski got crunched on a 1st and 10 in SDSU’s own territory, which caused him to cough up the ball. It looked like it was going to be a clear turnover only for McCormick to wrestle it away from Kole Menz, a defensive end (#55) for the Bison. McCormick’s effort kept the comeback hopes alive and resulted in a SDSU touchdown which cut the lead to four.
I watched the game at Cubby’s and there was an audible groan when SDSU sent out Hunter Dustman for an 18-yard field goal late in the fourth quarter. Stig chose to lean on the defense—which has been the Jack’s strength to this point in the season—rather than roll the dice with a 4 and goal. Ended up being the right decision and another great lesson in why we—the collective fans of the program—are the fans and not the coaches. Always easy to complain about playcalling but there’s a reason Stig is one of the highest paid state employees.
Speaking of coaching, the good folks over on Bisonville are ready to send Matt Entz, NDSU’s head coach, packing after Saturday’s loss. Mind you this is literally weeks after he was rumored to be a candidate at Nebraska. Now, I took the bullet and decided to venture through the Bisonville threads to see how the rest of the postgame meltdown was going and oh boy, there was some gems (?).
Obviously, these “takes” don’t reflect the entire fanbase up north but my goodness those are rough (especially the last one). To be fair, it does seem that a majority of the posters on there nowadays are more concerned about an invite to Conference USA rather than actual football games.
One last observation from Saturday: How do you let Jeff Kolpack on TV with his collar like this? It’s a relatively minor thing, yes, but how does no one say anything or even fix it for him? I’m not even trying to poke fun at this, I just can’t believe no one said anything to him before he went live on TV.
Anyways, back-to-back rivalry wins is huge but next weekend’s game at UND is no gimme and—in my opinion—might be one of the toughest games of the year. It’s a must win in terms of ensuring the road to Frisco goes through Brookings. Game is scheduled for a 3:00 p.m. kick in Grand Forks.
Last fall, I wrote a brief history on the SDSU/NDSU rivarly. I figured a few people might still be interested in learning about the very early days of the rivalry so I reposted it below:
Digging through digitalized newspapers and archived yearbooks, it appears that the first ever meeting between the two schools was in 1903. The headline in the October 20th, 1903 edition of the Fargo Forum and the Daily Republican read “THE FLICKERTAILS WON – The North Dakota Farmers Skinned those from South Dakota - Hamline Saturday.”
In the early 1900s, NDSU was known as North Dakota Agriculture College (NDAC) and SDSU was known as South Dakota Agricultural College (SDAC). Newspapers commonly nicknamed both teams “the Aggies” and oftentimes used a variety of names to describe each college (NDSU was referred to as A.C., NDAC, North Dakota State, Fargo, North Dakota). While the 1903 matchup is likely the first time SDAC and NDAC met on the gridiron, there is a very real chance that the teams had met previously, as SDSU had been playing football since the late 1800s. For the purposes of accessible records, 1903 is likely the known start of what we now call the Dakota Marker game.
The series got off to a bang for SDAC. The Forum reported that the game was “decisively settled by the overwhelming score of 85 to 0 in favor of the North Dakotans.” The score is shocking—to say the least. Other results in the early years of football for SDAC are along the lines of “11-3”, 20-0, 17-5”, low-scoring, gritty, more-street-fight-than-football type games. The Forum reported that early penalties cost NDAC from scoring even more, leading to a 22-0 first half. In the second half, it was reported that a “better understanding was reached between players and officials as to the Fargo style of play and the boys tore through South Dakota for sixty-three points.” Remember, this was at a time when the forward pass was barely legal and the games were more wrestling match than anything. They didn’t have this term in 1903 but SDAC was boat raced, badly. In fact, this is the biggest margin of defeat in any Dakota Marker game since then. The Forum did credit the South Dakotans as “no quitters” playing to the bitter end.
At one point in the game, it was reported that SDAC didn’t know some of the rules, which lead to a NDAC touchdown. From the Forum:
The officers admitted that North Dakota should have had one more touchdown as a result of the clever trick by Spellisey, but the South Dakota boys didn’t understand it at the time and the locals, like true sportsmen did not insist. There was much work that it was hard on the officials and no blame is attached to them. The spectators are frequently prejudiced against officials in not being able to see the plays as the officials see them.
Following the game, one player from “Brookings” said that “Fargo defeated us from superior knowledge of the game.”
Despite the lopsided defeat, SDSU dominated the series for most of the first half of the 20th century, holding a 24-10-3 record between 1903 to 1950. Apparently “the boys from the south” studied up on the rule book a bit.
The Wikipedia entry for the Dakota Marker game says that SDSU and NDSU faced off at some point in 1907, but running through SDSU’s 1907-1908 yearbook, it shows that the 1907 football team did not play NDSU (NDAC) rather they played the University of North Dakota, losing 24 to 6.
In 1908, SDAC and NDAC resumed their rivalry, playing in Fargo. This time, SDAC turned the tables on the Aggies, winning 11 to 5. The October 29th edition of Brookings Register reported that “Brookings made its two touchdowns in a clean manner” while Fargo scored on a “fluke” in the last three minutes of play. The fluke play, described by the Register, leaves a lot of question marks about what the actual rules of football were back then.
North Dakota tried a long forward pass, which struck on the shoulder of a Brookings player, who was watching the opposing end, and rolled over the goal line, where a Fargo man fell on it.
SDAC’s defense was apparently suburb and it was reported from “a Fargo dispatch” that SDAC was a well-drilled, veteran team whose play was the best shown in Fargo for years. SDAC had a chance to win the South Dakota State Championship that year but lost to Yankton 21-0 a few weeks later.
The 1909 matchup between the two ag schools was held in Brookings, at the county fairgrounds. The game was reportedly played in a rainstorm on a muddy field. NDAC won 11 to 5. The Register reported that “North Dakota was lucky and that was the reason for their victory.” SDAC reportedly outplayed the Aggies but because of the weight of the North Dakota players (who the Register reported as being 15 pounds heavier per man than SDAC) they were able to muscle their way to victory.
The latter half of the 20th century saw NDSU dominate the series. At one point, from 1964 to 2001, SDSU won a grand total of four games—all four of them at old Coughlin Alumni Stadium. It was only in the last decade or so that the series has really swung between the two schools.
NDSU currently leads the all-time series, 63-45-5.