South Dakota State football motivated to take back bragging rights

BROOKINGS – South Dakota State has largely dominated their rivalry with South Dakota over the last few decades. They’ve won 21 of the last 26 meetings, which included 10 straight wins and the first seven of the Division I era.

That’s all fine and good. Both sides know where the bragging rights stand right now.

USD has won the last two. They snapped their 10-game losing streak to the Jacks with a 24-21 win in 2019, the Coyotes’ first win in the series since 2000. Then came last year’s 23-20 win, also at the DakotaDome, in which SDSU had the win in hand but lost on a 57-yard Hail Mary as time expired.

South Dakota State is the team with 10 straight playoff appearances and a national runner-up finish on their resume, but it’s the Coyotes who currently claim the upper hand head-to-head. For at least another couple days, it’s a Red State.

“The past two losses definitely hurt,” said linebacker Adam Bock. “I know the guys in the locker room are motivated by them to come back and play really well in this game. They’re our in-state rival and you want to have it be a blue state. It’s bragging rights and right now they have it. We want to get it back.”

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SDSU has 10 other opponents every year besides USD, of course. And one of them, North Dakota State, is a bigger rival to them at the moment, as the Jacks and Bison have battled for not just the Dakota Marker trophy but Missouri Valley Football Conference supremacy. And SDSU plays the Bison next week.

But the Jacks couldn’t give this one the "just another game" treatment even if they wanted to. It’s been 11 months since the Hail Mary, and anyone in South Dakota with a television or social media account likely hasn’t gone more than a week without seeing a replay.

So, no, SDSU players haven’t gone out of their way to forget about last year’s final play or pretend it didn’t happen. That would be impossible. It happened, it sucked (for them) and now they get a chance at redemption.

“I would say the main reason we ever think about (the Hail Mary) is because it’s on every commercial ever,” joked Jacks guard Mason McCormick. “But honestly I don’t think that play has any bearing on this game. They’re a good football team. That’s what it’s about. We have to bring our best to beat them.”

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One of John Stiegelmeier’s mantras as coach has long been for his team to "play in the present." That enabled Stiegelmeier to move on from the failures of the Hail Mary, and for his team to do the same. They’re not pretending it didn’t happen, but Stiegelmeier says it’s his job to worry about making sure it doesn’t happen again, without dwelling on it with his players.

“I’ve done this long enough to not beat myself up or beat our players up,” the coach said. “How do I handle it? I play in the present like I ask our players to play in the present. If I was to talk about (the Hail Mary), I’d talk about the sequence that led up to it. There were about five things that went wrong. My job is to eliminate those moving forward so that maybe we’re not in that situation.”

The Coyotes will be making their first trip to Brookings since 2018. The last time they played at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium, Taryn Christion was playing quarterback for SDSU and a freshman running back named Pierre Strong rushed for 253 yards as the Jacks put up 28 first-quarter points on their way to a 49-27 win.

Defensive linemen Caleb Sanders and Reece Winkelman played in that game for SDSU, as did safety Josh Manchigiah, who will be on the other side in this one, having transferred to USD before this season.

It was 17 degrees that day and snowing, and a crowd of only 8,517 showed up. Saturday’s forecast calls for a high of 64 degrees and sunny. It’s the first Showdown Series game since beer sales were introduced at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium. Considering SDSU just drew over 15,000 for a game against winless Western Illinois, a large crowd is expected.

“Rivalries become a thing when it’s going back and forth,” McCormick said. “And I’m 1-2 against these guys in my career. So heck yeah, it’s a rivalry. It’s definitely grown and it’s gonna be an exciting atmosphere. We can’t wait.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: SDSU football motivated to reclaim bragging rights vs. South Dakota