It’s a beautiful day here in Sioux Falls as NDSU tries to bounce back after having its 10 game winning streak snapped last week as the Bison face South Dakota at Howard Wood Field. Join WDAY 6 Sports Director Dom Izzo and The Forum’s Jeff Kolpack and Eric Peterson as they preview tonight’s matchup!
July 1, 2012 officially begins a new school year across the nation and with it re-alignment central. Faithful readers of the blog know that I’m crazy and relentless with this stuff, but now we start to see the actual change of things that we’ve been talking about for the better part of two years. We’d be silly to think this the end of it, especially with the new football playoff being created, but sights like West Virginia in the Big 12 and Missouri and Texas A&M in the SEC is just the start of the craziness. With that being said, plenty of changes are directly affecting NDSU, we’ll feature a story on those changes tomorrow night on WDAY 6 Sports at 10. Today we’ll outline them for those that lost track(which is not that hard to do!)
BASKETBALL:
Obviously the headliner leaving is Oral Roberts. A known commodity in the men’s basketball word, the average fan had at least heard of the school before NDSU joined the Summit League. I remember the first time ORU came to Fargo in March of 2008, the year before the Bison were eligible for the Summit Tournament and NDSU clobbered them. The seeds of a great rivalry were planted then, it fully bloomed the following year when NDSU went to Tulsa and beat the Eagles to win the Summit League Championship at the Mabee Center, a place ORU never loses. Even the times NDSU was beat by ORU at the Summit Tournament in 2010 and ’11 were great games. It’s a huge loss for the league, there is no other way to sugarcoat it. Oral Roberts finished with an RPI ranking of 48, they beat a top 10 team in Xavier this year, and now take that reputation and prestige to the Southland Conference, a league that ranked 28th out of 32 in RPI ranking. The Summit’s ranking will dip next year no doubt, but do you take the dip in RPI for an easier road to the NCAA Tournament? A question that may seem easy to answer now, but lack of national respect, reputation and certaintly the idea of 2 bids from the league is LONG-gone for now. Southern Utah leaves today for the Big Sky as well, and while no one will miss the horrendous travel to get to Cedar City, the Thunderbirds always were a capable opponent, including coming to Fargo in 2009 and upsetting the Bison, NDSU’s only home loss that year. In comes Nebraska-Omaha, which for the average fan, it’s a school that fans will recognize, but for the moment doesn’t bring much to the table. UNO will have to go thru the same thing NDSU went thru, playing a lot of road games, playing a lot of high-majors before the transition is done. In just a basketball sense, this is a terrible trade-off. But college athletics is about money, and in that sense, this move makes terrific sense. Losing plane trips to Tulsa and Las Vegas(then busing to CC) for a bus trip to Omaha? You do that trade every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Gene Taylor told me that the Summit League is content to hold on with 9 teams this year, but we know Oakland is being pursued by the Horizon, and who knows what else may happen during the next school year. In my mind there’s one certainty: the Summit best be looking for the next options to join, just because you’re a conference champ,doesn’t make you a great team, especially if the competition is sub-par.
FOOTBALL:
The move here isn’t as dramatic with South Dakota joining the Missouri Valley Football Conference, but it certaintly changes everything that Bison fans have grown accustomed to since 2008. Now with 10 teams in the Valley, that means for the first time, every team will not play one another during the regular season. USD has shown the ability to play with some of the top teams at the FCS and FBS level, already with wins over Minnesota in 2010 and then beating defending FCS champ Eastern Washington last year. The Coyotes also bring in a known commodity in Joe Glenn, familiar to plenty of Bison fans from his days at Northern Colorado and Montana. The ‘Yotes will be plenty competitive and that game between NDSU and USD in Sioux Falls will be a great atmosphere, especially with it being a night game. The one bi-product is like I mentioned not every team will play one another this year and that could seriously affect the standings by the end of the year, here’s a look at who won’t play who this year:
NDSU won’t play Western Illinois
Illinois State won’t play South Dakota State
Indiana State won’t play Northern Iowa
Missouri State won’t play Youngstown State
South Dakota won’t play Southern Illinois
Two of these games I see as wins (NDSU and Youngstown) but the other three are toss-up’s that who knows how it could affect the league race. Makes me wonder if the league wouldn’t try to go to 2 divisions of 5 teams. You play your division rivals every year and then mix up the other four opponents, divisions could look like this:
NDSU, SDSU, USD, Northern Iowa and Western Illinois
Southern Illinois, Youngstown State, Indiana State, Illinois State and Missouri State.
Welcome to a new school year and with it, a new year of re-alignment, there’s no doubt though the talk of movement is just beginning at this level.
It’s the hottest talker right now surrounding the Bison football team thanks to Mr. Kolpack, wrapping up the schedule for the 2012 season. Now I know Florida State, Oklahoma, Michigan State and Pittsburgh are all sexy options and the fans would love to see how NDSU would stack up against the upper echelon competition. But I hate to throw cold water on these thoughts, but it’s NOT a good idea. Craig Bohl and Gene Taylor have stressed to me and Jeff over the past couple of years they want to play FBS games against teams they feel they have a chance to compete. (And beat in my opinion) As impressive as NDSU’s wins over Minnesota, Central Michigan, Ball State and Kansas are, these are not Florida State, Michigan State and Oklahoma. I’m not against NDSU playing one of those schools once every five years or so, but here are the potential downsides of playing an upper-echelon FBS School:
Now I did a little research on five other Missouri Valley Schools and they’re FBS matchups, because the detractors to this post will point at SDSU and USD.
SDSU USD
My opinion (and mine alone) looks at SDSU and USD and says those two schools are in a way different boat than NDSU. SDSU is trying to fund money to renovate it’s football stadium and a couple of big paydays at Nebraska and Missouri can certaintly help in that way; and facing regional schools near it’s backyard. NDSU fans would argue that Nebraska isn’t far away either, but I believe that Bohl just doesn’t want that game. South Dakota is wrapping up it’s D-1 transition and multiple games against FBS is a common trend (think 2007, NDSU played Central Michigan and Minnesota; a strategy Bohl and Taylor said he would NOT go back to) Now there a couple teams on these schedules that could/should appeal to NDSU; Illinois and Northwestern. Both are bowl teams (most years) and Illinois is an area NDSU in the past loved to hit for recruiting. Both also are matchups that NDSU can certaintly think heading into the matchup that they have a solid shot of winning the football game.
Western Illinois Northern Iowa SIU
We know UNI’s situation in terms of funds and the reason they’re playing both Wisconsin and Iowa next season. But you look at Western and SIU and the teams are reasonable in terms of location and skill. And for those poo-pooing NDSU’s future FBS teams a closer look says these squads are pretty good:
2010 – Kansas (Game was announced in June of 2009, NDSU coming off 6-5 season, KU was coming off an Orange Bowl win in 07 and a Insight Bowl win in 08, no reason to think the Jayhawks weren’t going to be pretty good until the Mark Magino blowup in 2009)
2013 - Kansas State ( Wildcats are coming off a 10-3 season in 2012 and a appearance in the Cotton Bowl, one of the oldest bowl games around, losing to Arkansas, I may be the only one in the boat saying this may be the best team NDSU has faced)
2014 - Iowa State ( Paul Rhoades has turned around the Cyclones, enough to beat Nebraska, Texas and this year Oklahoma State, giving OSU it’s only loss of the year, safe to say that’s a pretty good game when NDSU heads to Ames.)
2016 - Iowa ( Normally in the top tier of the Big 10 and almost always playing in a bowl game, you can bet if not Kansas State, then the Hawkeyes take the top spot of toughest team faced yet)
So there you go, definetly sense a Video Blog dedicated to this topic the longer an 11th game is an option! Gene Taylor has told me he wants that 11th game at HOME, the last option to him would be to play an FCS on the road in a home and home series, meaning they’d come to Fargo in 2014 (since 2013 schedule is done) And remember looming for NDSU is a home and home with Montana and Montana State coming to Fargo. Things looked pretty good on the schedule front.
