Safe to say I havent covered a crazier week of football off-season activity in mid-February in my six years in Fargo, but we sure had it this week. Everything from Barry Alvarez’s comments to Delaware State being added, to Montana State saying no thanks to coming to Fargo. It’s a loss for FCS fans, not just NDSU and Montana State fans, that would have been one of the top five FCS matchups of the season. Also take a closer look at NDSU’s BracketBuster matchup with Akron coming up on Friday on ESPN2, everyone enjoy!
Tag Archives: Montana State
Photogenic
This is just a great photo that we didn't use yet that I wanted to get in. Forum photographer Dave Samson shot some beauties last Saturday.
Weather talk
Talked with Montana State head coach Rob Ash and he said about the only way weather will have a major impact on Saturday’s playoff game with NDSU is if there is heavy snow during the game. The little black pellets in the FieldTurf, then, act like snowballs and it gets messy. That happened against Weber State a couple of years ago, on homecoming in October no less, and Ash said it was “brutal football. They had a quarterack from Hawaii and he torched us so go figure.”
“If it snows before or light snow during the game, it’s going to be OK,” he said.
The forecast as of this morning calls for a few snow showers and a high of 28 degrees, a slight downgrade from the partly cloudy outlook and a high in the low 30s earlier in the week.
Playoff TV info
Here is the TV schedule for Saturday’s playoff game at Montana State. So for you out-of-staters, find a joint that can get one of those networks. It should be doable almost anywhere.
The game will be televised on the North Dakota NBC Sports Network, Max Media, Altitude, ESPN GamePlan and ESPN3.com … Trey Bender will handle the play-by-play and Jay Taylor is the color analyst … Stations on the North Dakota NBC Sports Network include KVLY-TV (Channel 11, Fargo), KFYR-TV (Channel 5, Bismarck), KMOT-TV (Channel 10, Minot), KQCD-TV (Channel 7, Dickinson) and KUMV-TV (Channel 8, Williston).
NDSU back in December football
I had to wipe my eyes and make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, but that was some offensive firepower the Bison finally found in the second half of the Robert Morris game. The Colonials won’t be mistaken for Appalachian State anytime soon, but they brought a better team to Fargo than I thought.
They were faster than other Northeast Conference teams that Wagner and Central Connecticut brought to the dome. RMU head coach Joe Walton said his team wore down and you can attribute that to NDSU’s 63 scholarships to RMU’s 30. Walton said his team is “a couple of years away from competing at this level of football.”
The 43-17 win sends the Bison to Bozeman, Mont. The big picture is still this: NDSU was a 3-8 team last year and will be playing a game in December.
