Zimmer: Finally, it's South Dakota State vs. North Dakota State in Frisco
BROOKINGS – Finally.
Finally, Dakota Marker rivals North Dakota State and South Dakota State will square off in Frisco.
Finally, the two programs that have established themselves as the best in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision will play for the ultimate trophy.
Finally, the best rivalry in the FCS takes center stage on national television.
Finally, Jackrabbit fans get their chance to show Bison fans Frisco isn’t their sole domain in early January.
It’s really only been about six years since the Jackrabbits have been able to credibly say they’d narrowed the gap between themselves and the 9-time national champions, though it feels a lot longer than that.
In 2016, led by a freshman quarterback from Sioux Falls named Taryn Christion, the Jackrabbits stunned NDSU in the Fargodome to take back the Dakota Marker and snap a six-game losing streak in the series. NDSU, to be clear, kept on winning national championships and the Jackrabbits have not, but the days of the Bison owning SDSU were over.
The Jacks beat them again in 2017, in the spring of 2021, the fall of 2021 and this past October. Are the Bison still the gold standard? By all means. But do the Jacks fear facing them? Clearly not.
More:FRISCO BOUND: South Dakota State football going to national championship with rout of Montana State
Which makes the fact that it took until Saturday’s 39-18 win over Montana State to finally force a Bison/Jacks national championship feel like such a long time in coming.
This was the third time since 2017 that the Jacks took the field in a semifinal knowing they’d get to play the Bison in Frisco with a win. They lost 51-16 to James Madison in 2017 and 31-17 to Montana State last year. Both times, the team that knocked out the Jacks were defeated by the Bison in Frisco.
Now, it’s finally happening.
The Jacks will likely be the favorites. They’re 13-1, winners of 13 in a row, and they dominated a Montana State team that was steamrolling its way towards what would’ve been a national championship game rematch with NDSU. The tears and disbelief on the faces of Bobcat players in the aftermath of Saturday’s loss made it clear – Montana State fully expected to be the ones going back to Frisco. They did not see the Jackrabbits coming.
NDSU, meanwhile, needed some good fortune to survive its semifinal against Incarnate Word, a program that launched in 2009 and has been Division I for less than a decade. The Cardinals led 16-0 at one point and nearly ran the Bison (12-2) out of their own arena in the early stages of the game.
Still, overlooking the Bison would be extremely foolish. For a couple of years there have been whispers that NDSU might quietly be slipping, that cracks in the armor have been slowly emerging. If true it hasn’t stopped them from continuing to win national championships. This year’s team has been beset by a litany of injuries, and they still advanced to Frisco.
More:South Dakota State football's Tucker Kraft plays best playoff game in Jacks' semifinal win
And for what it’s worth (and it’s probably worth a fair amount), the Dallas suburb of 200,000 people has become like a second home to the Bison and their fans. This is their territory – a 10th trip in the last 12 years, and NDSU is 9-0 there. I’ll repeat that: NDSU has never lost in Frisco. The two times during their dynasty that they didn’t win it all they were knocked out in the earlier rounds.
Can SDSU be the first team to beat them at Toyota Stadium? Sure they can, and certainly they believe it.
Much was made Saturday night of a photo posted to Twitter by a certain sportswriter in which Jackrabbit stars Tucker Kraft and Caleb Sanders flashed the ‘horns down’ sign, a playful jab at NDSU’s ‘horns up’ tradition.
I’m not sure what all the commotion was about, though. Jacks players have been doing it for awhile. The first time I saw an SDSU player do it I was surprised. But they’ve continued to flash the ‘horns down’ as they’ve struck back in the Dakota Marker rivalry. Clearly the time to nip that activity in the bud has passed.
When a few NDSU fans responded to the photo by saying it shows the Bison ‘live rent free in the Jackrabbits heads’, one SDSU fan gave what I thought was the perfect retort: They’re about to play each other in the national championship game. What else would they be thinking of?
Were Kraft and Sanders’ actions out of line? No way. Will they provide the proverbial ‘bulletin board material’ that always gets coaches clutching their pearls? Yes. Does it give the Bison added motivation? Probably.
More:History of the Dakota Marker: South Dakota State trails North Dakota State 10-8
But guess what? They didn’t need any. They already blew a two-score lead to the Jacks to lose to them at home this year. They’ve lost to them three times in a row. It’s pretty safe to say the Bison were gonna be coming in hot regardless.
And the Jacks, well, they’ve got their own motivations. They got to Frisco once (in the spring of 2021) and an injury to star quarterback Mark Gronowski contributed to a heartbreaking loss. The lack of a national championship trophy in the office of the Dykhouse Center grows more and more glaring with each passing season. That the Bison keep adding to theirs in ho-hum fashion only twists the knife.
Would the Jacks have faced less drama and perhaps a lesser challenge in Frisco if they were facing Incarnate Word instead of the Bison? Probably. And they’d take a national championship any way they can get one.
But this is what they wanted. A chance to take down the Bison on the biggest stage of all. To not only raise that championship trophy, but to do it against the Green and Gold.
In three weeks, they finally – finally – get that chance.
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Zimmer: Finally, it's South Dakota State /North Dakota State in Frisco
