Over the past four seasons, the North Dakota State football team has lost attendance, interest and overall excitement about the program. Attendance numbers have dropped since the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. When Tim Polasek was hired as the thirty-second head football coach in December, he noticed these issues and immediately got to work on trying to draw the fans back and bring excitement back to Bison football. 

Polasek mainly wanted to address the gameday experience at the Fargodome. The first thing that changed was now the team has a “team walk” down the street leading up to the FargoDome, where the fans can interact with the coaches and players and have a moment with them before they get ready for the game. This idea came from Polasek enjoying the team walk before the National Championship games in Frisco, Texas.

This was a big hit, as many fans appeared at the team walk at the home opening win over Tennessee State, and the players appeared to enjoy it as well. The other main changes that came to the gameday experience were the tunnel walk and the pregame introduction. The blowup helmet that the team would run out of every game is gone and now is in the tailgating lot for the fans to take pictures by. 

When fans walk into the stadium, they will also notice the new concessions. There are still the classics like Perfectly Nuts, Fargo Fillies and Domino’s. But they have also added new vendors, including Buzzy Bee Nitro Coffee, Cowboys Jack’s Burgers and Fries, Brew Bird Funky Fried Chicken and Mahana Fresh. In addition to that, there have also been “Grab and Go” markets that are cashless behind sections 8 and 16. 

For the pregame introduction, they used to have the band form a path for the team to run out of and play a hype video to get the crowd into it. Now Thundar, NDSU’s mascot, hits a drum and in between the beats, one side of the dome chants “Let’s go” and after he hits the drum again the other side says “Bison” to combine into “Let’s go Bison.” It was a good idea as many colleges do this including Colorado who the Bison just played a couple weeks ago and it worked other than the drum wasn’t quite loud enough and the timing was off but it will only get better as the season goes on and the fans know what to do. 

Next comes the 60-second countdown on the video board with the classic “Thunderstruck” playing. Thunderstruck is one of the few things that was off-limits when it comes to the gameday changes. There’s just too much tradition involved with that song and they couldn’t change it. When the 60-second timer runs out along with the video playing with the timer, Tim Polasek leads the Bison out and they run out of the tunnel through the band’s formation they have formed. The band also is angled towards the middle of the field rather than towards the Bison sideline like previous years. They also have added machines that sit on the ground and blow out flames when the team runs out, similar to what the Minnesota Vikings do at U.S. Bank Stadium.

Overall, something needed to change to bring the excitement back and overall they did a good job considering they got 16,000+ fans in the seats. There is plenty of work to do and timing to get down before we can say this is a success but there are five more home games to get it down and possibly up to eight home games depending on how the playoffs go.