Days before Stig
SDSU football in the mid-1990s
BROOKINGS—SDSU football is a modern college football powerhouse in Division I-AA (FCS), spurred on primarily by the stability of just two head coaches in 30 years, a rarity in college football. Coach John Stiegelmeier has been fundamental in the current success, but the groundwork for the program was laid long ago.
“If John (Stiegelmeier) is the father of SDSU football, then I’m the grandfather,” said former SDSU coach Mike Daly.
Daly coached the Jacks from 1991 to 1996, announcing his retirement before the first kick in 1996, ultimately paving the way for Stiegelmeier to take the reins, whom he hired three separate times throughout his coaching career.
“I learned the most about football from Mike Daly,” Stiegelmeier said to the Argus Leader in 2017.
While Daly is a relative unknown to the newer generation of Jackrabbit fans, the foundation he built back in the 1990s is still being felt on the field for the Jacks today.
Days as an assistant
Daly got his start in college athletics playing football at Augustana. The Fairmont, Minnesota, native graduated Cum Laude from Augie in 1971, majoring in biology. Following graduation, Daly jumped at an opportunity to become a coach, working as a graduate-assistant at both Augustana and Minnesota.
Daly bounced around assistant coaching jobs in the region, working on the staff at NDSU, Idaho State and SDSU.
The first time Daly hired Stiegelmeier came during his first stint at SDSU, working as the defensive backs coach.
“(John) walked into (former SDSU head coach John Gregory’s) office and said, ‘Coach, I really want to get into college coaching,’” Daly said. “At the time, John was in Coach Gregory’s coaching class, so he asked me if I would take this young kid under my wing, so we moved his desk into my office and he spent a year there as a student-coach.”
Daly got the got his first taste of “big-time” football, becoming an assistant at Tulsa. Daly eventually found his way back to the Midwest when he became the defensive coordinator for the University of Wisconsin.
“(Wisconsin) was tough,” Daly said. “I was an assistant coach at several schools where we had been really successful and then at Wisconsin, we hit a brick wall.”
Daly says the culture of the university made things difficult. Back then, the university did some things that didn’t allow for success on the football field, according to Daly.
“We lost many more games than we won,” Daly said. “Recruiting was difficult, because the academic qualifications were so high.”
Daly said the university also made decisions that directly affected the success of the football team.
“Two years before I got there (in 1985), Coach (Dave) McClain got them a good enough record to go to a bowl game and the school turned them down,” Daly said. “The professors voted down and didn’t allow the team to go to the bowl game because it was finals week.”
The other thing that made success difficult at Wisconsin was the way in which tests at the university were conducted. According to Daly, the university only allowed tests to be taken from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. The university didn’t want tests to be taken during class time so they made students take them in the afternoon, which happened to coincide directly with practice.
“I bet for my three years there, we didn’t have all 11 starters for any one practice,” Daly said. “It was a really weird deal.”
During Daly’s time at Wisconsin, he also made a new hire: John Stiegelmeier. Daly was responsible for hiring four graduate assistant coaches every year and Stiegelmeier applied.
“I got a call from him out of the blue and he was an assistant coach at Northern State at the time and he goes, ‘I’d really like to get a job coaching there,’” Daly said. “I said, ‘You're nuts, you got a full-time job’ and he said he really wanted to make that change so I hired him.”
Daly turned the secondary over to Stiegelmeier since he had so much respect for him.
“I just coordinated which was great.”
A stop in Canada
Gregory, a former SDSU football coach from the 1970s who worked with Daly previously, invited him to coach with him up in Canada. At the time, Gregory was a Canadian Football League (CFL) head coach of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and periodically invited people from the states to coach with him during the summer (the CFL starts in July).
Daly spent about a month in Canada being the linebackers coach but took away some interesting points when learning the CFL’s unique rules.
“The three-down thing was phenomenal," Daly said, referring to the three-down rule (instead of the usual four). “It was so fast, you were really starting on second down.
“The 12 versus 11 was really interesting, the 12 defensive players versus 11 offensive. That’s what they did to give the defense a fighting chance. It was pretty wild, those were great experiences and good football.”
Daly was offered a job at Western Michigan as the running back coach, which he took and moved his family to Kalamazoo, Michigan.
“Once you get to Canada you can get lost up there, and that’s not to be negative about the league,” Daly said. “But once you get up there, they can forgot about you pretty quick down here and that’s why I jumped at the chance to get back to the U.S.”
Changing the culture
In December of 1990, Mike Daly was hired by then SDSU athletic director Fred Oien to replace Wayne Haensel. Daly inherited a 3-8 team from the previous year and knew he had an uphill battle to join the upper echelon of the North Central Conference (NCC).
Daly says that the approach to football and mindset of the players he inherited just didn’t allow the team the best chance to win and needed to be changed immediately.
“They had a huge number of kids that didn’t participate in spring football because they went out for track and baseball,” Daly said. “You just can’t run a football team like that. If a kid was on a football scholarship, we were going to have him. But if we could work it out where they could do both they would, but it would be at times other than practice.”
Daly also said the discipline of the team needed to improve.
“We tried to tighten that up a lot,” Daly said. “We just gave up way too many points due to discipline issues.”
Daly said that there would also be a no tolerance policy for anyone who got in trouble with the law.
“We really set the tone from the standpoint of, if you get in trouble with the law, your time is going to be short here,” Daly said. “The three strike rule but you might strike out after two or one. We were fortunate, we just didn’t have those issues.”
Before the season, Daly says his staff started a stronger off-season program that would no longer be optiona—attendance would be required. His staff also implemented a stronger academic program as well.
“There was a lot of optional things there that (the previous staff) was comfortable with that I eliminated,” Daly said. “I made them students and football players first and then whatever else they wanted to do second.”
Daly said that he also was strongly against foul language and cocky behavior, both of which were eliminated once Daly took over as coach.
“We had one player who tested me right away with the one rule of ‘you’re just going to be here.’ He wanted to go to the state tournament in Minnesota to watch and I said ‘no, you’re going to be here, we have responsibilities on this football team today.’” Daly said. “He went anyway. He never had his name listed as a starter for the entire spring season and most of fall camp. There were ramifications if you chose to break the system.”
The first game of the Daly-era started with Nebraska-Kearney in Brookings at Coughlin-Alumni Stadium. Storms were in the area on a hot and muggy September day and the new look Jackrabbits were itching to get on the field.
“I was giving my first pre-game speech as a head coach and were about to go out on the field and then lightning hits,” Daly said. “We got sent back in the locker room and had to wait 45 minutes and kind of had to start over.”
The Jackrabbits went on to beat Kearney by a field goal and gave Daly his first win as a head coach. The rest of the year, the Jacks played some tough games, losing to both North Dakota schools, but also went on a four-game win streak during the month of October, including one of the wins over rival South Dakota (USD).
“The biggest win of the year was the last game of the year (against Northern Colorado),” Daly said. “They were playing for the conference championship and we beat them at home. We won on the last play of the game, they were throwing into the endzone and we got a penalty called against them for a pick play, resulting in the game ending.”
Following the season, Daly was named the NCC Coach of the Year for SDSU, turning around a basement-dwelling 3-8 team into a 7-3 upstart. It was the first winning season for the Jacks since 1988.
The middle years and the “best team I coached”
In 1992, the Jackrabbits went 6-4 in another successful but not “special” year.
A staple of Daly coached SDSU teams were the emphasis they put on “state games.” These meant every time SDSU played USD or Augustana, they were ready.
“We started out really circling the state games, and at the start of every year we put red circles around those games,” Daly said. “We only ended up only losing once to Augie in six years and only once to USD in six years. We were 13-2 against those and I think it was the emphasis we put on those games that made the difference.”
During his tenure at SDSU, Daly says that SDSU’s biggest rival was USD, but since he was a former defensive coordinator at NDSU, they were also natural rivals.
“I think USD was the biggest rival and Augie from the standpoint of, you just couldn’t afford to lose to Augie,” Daly said.
Following the 1992 season, it was clear the Jackrabbits had “righted the ship” and were headed in a good direction, but needed a little more to get over the top. In the Division II days, making the playoffs was exceedingly difficult, with only eight teams making it. This meant that SDSU had to win the NCC, which meant they likely had to beat NDSU, something that hadn’t been done in 17 years.
First on the schedule was Montana, the Division I-AA champions from the previous year, and the biggest nonconference test for the Jackrabbits in years.
The game, played in Missoula, was a thriller. The Jackrabbits at one point had a 35-7 lead and were looking to send the Montana faithful to the parking lots early.
“We came out in the second half and fumbled right away and then we punt and they run it back,” Daly said. “And all of sudden its 35-28 and it’s a game again.
“We were ahead going into the last play of the game and they threw a pass on third down that our defensive back dropped that would have sealed the game. On fourth down, they threw one over his head and won 42-38. That just ripped us apart.”
Despite the loss, there was room for optimism among the Jackrabbits. After a couple tough games, the Jackrabbits went on a roll in October, something that was becoming a staple of Daly coached teams.
During the stretch, NDSU visited Coughlin-Alumni stadium riding a winning streak over SDSU that was too long for many to remember. In quite possibly the biggest win of Daly’s career, the Jackrabbits took down NDSU, 42-30, breaking the 17-year drought.
The last game of the year, the Jackrabbits again turned the tables against a North Dakota school, blanketing the University of North Dakota 28-0 at home. North Dakota ended up winning the NCC and going on a deep into the playoffs.
“’93 was our best football team. We really had a great football team, and I really felt if we had gotten to the playoffs we would have had a good shot at the national championship,” Daly said.
Challenges
While Daly saw the potential that SDSU had immediately, he also identified some key issues that were challenging for him and his staff during his tenure at SDSU.
“There was some tremendous facility issues,” Daly said. “When I went into the locker room in 1991 it was the same locker room that I left in 1978. I mean I think some of the same mud was on the wall. It was a pit, it smelled, it hadn’t been painted for years. It was just a dungeon, so that had to be corrected.”
Daly said that his staff made some changes that helped but improvements were still necessary. He said the absolute biggest hurdle was the lack of meeting spaces, however.
“We didn’t have any meeting rooms, so we would reserve rooms in the HPER center,” Daly said. “This was something the former staff didn’t do as much because they didn’t have any meeting rooms. So we would schedule meetings before practice but if a professor decided to have a meeting at that time, we were bounced.
“That happened on our first team meeting as the head coach, we got bounced before the meeting could happen. The meeting room thing was appalling.”
Daly said that this happened far too often and to get their own meeting spaces, they brought in trailers, which they put behind the bleachers on the east side of Coughlin-Alumni.
“We had meeting rooms then, that we knew we could have meetings in,” Daly said. “We had control of the timeframe, we could meet any time during the day and no-one could boot us out.
“That was a difficulty the previous staff had that wasn’t their fault, that was an administrative decision. I’m not saying anything bad about Fred (Oien), that was just the philosophy of the athletic department at that time.”
Daly said the trailers helped them get past those issues but other things around the program were also challenging.
“We didn’t stay in the nicest hotels and we only took one bus,” Daly said. “I tried to get that changed and the nicer hotel thing we got figured out, but the bus thing, we never did. You know now, shoot, I think they take three buses.”
Daly said the first spring practice was eye-opening. In his time at Wisconsin, they had an indoor facility that made Wisconsin springs and winter very manageable. At SDSU, no such facility existed (yet) and spring practice became very challenging at times.
“We got two new practice facilities which were great and helped us improve our facility issues,” Daly said. “So we practiced outside almost always, but if it was really horrible we would try and get in the HPER which was difficult because we couldn’t always do it. We didn’t have any place to go when it was bad weather or when we wanted to practice inside because we were playing a dome team and wanted to make a lot of noise (to prepare).”
Despite facility issues, Daly and his staff recruited well, focusing primarily on South Dakota grown kids.
“If there was a decision between a player from South Dakota or a Minnesota or Iowa on who to give a scholarship too, we would give it to the South Dakota player,” Daly said. “If the Minnesota or Iowa kid was better, we would give it to them, however.”
Daly said that his “state” games emphasis carried over to recruiting. He said that in order to beat USD and Augie, they had to get more kids from South Dakota.
“We got more good players from South Dakota than USD or Augie did,” Daly said. “That was part of the philosophy in that we were going to beat USD and were going to beat Augie, then were going to find a way to win six other games, unfortunately we’d win five.”
Daly and his staff’s recruiting brought in talent that would eventually be drafted in the NFL, including linebacker Doug Miller and offensive tackle Adam Timmerman. Daly also recruited some kicker out of Rapid City named Vinateri, who would go on to be the all-time leading scorer in the NFL.
“The first guy I offered a scholarship too was (Adam) Vinateri,” Daly said. “That was a philosophical change too as far as recruiting kickers and punters. I just really believe that you needed to win the kicking game and the emphasis was on scholarship-ing kickers and punters.”
Final season
Before the start of the 1996 season, Daly was contemplating his future in coaching he says that he had always been a family guy and their son was at an age where Daly wanted to be around more.
“In coaching, you raise everybody else’s kids and not your own,” Daly said. “You see other kids more than you see your own kid and I didn’t like that. As a family guy, I wanted to be around more.”
On a fishing boat during the summer before the start of fall camp, Daly decided that he would inform the administrative team that this would be his final year in coaching.
“It really had nothing to with wins and losses, it was really a personal decision,” Daly said. “I made a decision to announce it before the season because I wanted to give the inside people to prove to the administration that they were the right person for the job.”
The Jacks ended up with a 7-4 record that year, beating USD, Augie, and North Dakota. Following the season, the administrative team needed to make a decision on who to hire next. It seemed as though the hire would come from inside the program. The man for the job ended up being defensive coordinator John Stiegelmeier.
“John had such a big influence on recruiting the region—especially South Dakota,” Daly said. “John was John and that was one of the great decisions Fred (Oien) made was hiring him and that has been proven out.”
SDSU Football today
Since retirement in 1996, Daly has continued a solid relationship with SDSU and the football program.
Some of the biggest changes since the Daly-era has been the move from Division II to Division I. Other changes have been the facility upgrades. Since Stiegelmeier took over, SDSU has built the Dykhouse Center and Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium. But Daly says the biggest difference maker, however, has been the SJAC indoor facility.
“We went from the saddest facilities in the region to maybe the best facilities in the country,” Daly said. “John will tell you this today and I know this for a fact, the thing that was the difference maker was the indoor facility. The ability to always have a quality place to practice is just huge.”
Daly is also impressed with the makeup of the team now. He was on the field during the Minnesota game in 2019 and was blown away by the size of the team compared to Minnesota.
“John has just taken it to another level, it’s just phenomenal. I shake my head thinking about what they’ve accomplished now,” Daly said. “I go to practice now and see the players and they are so much taller and faster than even our Wisconsin teams were.
“I really believe that at that (Minnesota) game that right from the start, if you would have just switched jerseys and put Minnesota on us and ours on them, we would look like the Big Ten team. We looked as good as them physically.”
This year’s version of the Jackrabbits started their season on the road at Colorado State. Daly was in attendance for that game and spoke to the team in the days leading up to the game.
“John had me talk to the team and one of the things I said was, I coached national championship games and when I was at NDSU, we lost the first time we went to the national championship. We got beat and the team we lost to, Southwest Texas, was a heck of a team but we could have won that football game,” Daly said. “Two years later, we came back and took a different approach and we won. It’s a process, very few teams win a national championship the first time they go, it just part of the deal. There’s steps you got to take.
“They got one step left now.”
