Ryan Black: 'It's humbling': Rough 2020 season makes Chris Klieman more appreciative of historic success at North Dakota State

Sep. 3—Even at a glance, it's breathtaking to look at the dominance of North Dakota State's football program in the past decade.

In fact, it's unprecedented.

In the annals of NCAA football, from the FBS level to Division III, no team ever has been more dominant than the Bison in the nine-year stretch from 2011 to 2019. During that time, NDSU won eight FCS national championships. No other college program, regardless of level, can match that. The closest: Yale won eight FBS national titles, starting in 1880 and ending in 1888, in the nascent days of college football. The difference between those Yale teams of yore and the NDSU squads of recent vintage: Yale shared the first national championship of that run, alongside bitter rival Princeton, in 1880.

But those crowns carry an asterisk; the titles, per the NCAA record book, were awarded, retroactively, by a pair of organizations (the National College Football Foundation and the Helms Athletic Foundation) committed to determining the country's best teams in the sport's earliest days, in the time before weekly rankings and playoff games.

Putting aside that North Dakota State won all eight of its national championships on the field, comparing it with Yale of the 1880s is — almost quite literally — like judging a Bugatti Chiron against a Model T.

They're so different, it's merely a comparison for comparison's sake.

Shifting gears — pardon the vehicular pun — to the present, consider the case of Chris Klieman. He was part of seven of the Bison's eight national championships, the first three (2011-13) as the team's defensive coordinator and the latter quartet (2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018) as head coach. (NDSU added another national championship in 2019 under first-year coach Matt Entz.)

In five seasons leading the Bison, Klieman went 69-6. His "worst season" in Fargo was a 12-2 campaign in 2016, the only year NDSU didn't cap the year with a national title. (It lost to the eventual national champion, James Madison, in the semifinals.)

Further, he never lost consecutive games with the Bison.

Now, he's entering the 2021 season — his third as Kansas State's head coach — on a five-game losing skid. It's the longest of his career, as he ended his one-year tenure at Loras College in 2005 with four straight defeats before joining Northern Iowa's staff as the defensive backs coach.

The Wildcats' five-game losing streak immediately followed a 4-1 start, including a 4-0 mark in Big 12 games.

That the second half of the season didn't mirror the first made the offseason all the more difficult, especially given the immense success he's enjoyed over the years.

"It's humbling, without question, and Coach Riley is an ornery guy to be around," said Klieman, referring to offensive line coach Conor Riley, who also was a member of the NDSU staff for those seven national titles. "But it is what it is."

The many difficulties last season presented, with the coronavirus and its protocols at the forefront, made it easier for Klieman to put his career in perspective.

By all accounts, he's lived a charmed (coaching) life.

"Guys, I was blessed beyond belief to win as many games, as many championships (as I did at North Dakota State) — and I know that that's not always going to happen," he said. "It's only happened a couple places in the country. There's a great challenge here. You better come prepared every week to play."

K-State had to deal with that first hand in last season's opener, when it fell to Arkansas State, 35-31, in a stunning upset at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

"Anybody can beat anybody, as everybody knows, on any given Saturday across our schedule," Klieman said. "I think we have the capabilities of beating anybody, and I promise you anybody can beat us, because I've seen some practices where I think we couldn't beat anybody. And I've seen some other practices where I'd say we can compete with anybody in the country."

Even Klieman's former school wasn't immune to struggles last season.

The Bison, the FCS colossus, had a down year — at least by their incredibly high standards.

NDSU went a "lowly" 7-3 in an abbreviated spring campaign, its most losses since going 9-5 in 2010. The Bison's season ended in the FCS quarterfinals, their "worst" result in the playoffs since falling in that same round in the aforementioned "middling" 2010 effort.

It's impossible to win a national championship every year, even if NDSU made it look routine at times in the past 10 years.

A Chiron, for all its engineering elegance, still needs a tune up now and then.

"Look at that last year with North Dakota State: They lost three games," Klieman said. "It happens. There's a lot more parity across the landscape of college football."