North Dakota State football has undergone a rapid ascent since 2011, winning nine national championships in thirteen seasons under three head coaches and five starting quarterbacks. This success at the FCS level has caused local media and fans alike to start dreaming of the greener pastures of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), where the likes of Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, and Texas all compete for the College Football Playoff. It’s also where former FCS rivals like James Madison, Coastal Carolina and Georgia Southern have all moved up, had success and are contenders for the group of five playoff spot come late December. Since 2022, money and conference realignment are all the rage in college football, as more money gets thrown around between what was the “Power Five” conferences and their respective teams. The universities start to get antsy and start to look for new conferences to call home to hit the biggest jackpot possible. 

There have been 33 FBS teams to move conferences since 2023, and that number will climb to 35 in 2025 when Missouri State and Deleware jump ship for Conference USA. For Bison fans the frustrating part is that NDSU hasn’t been one of those 35 schools, and they are instead left being the big fish in what is becoming a very small pond. NDSU Spectrum sports writer Ethan Ibach and I have decided to throw in our two cents in this massive debate that has dominated talks among sports fans around the FM area and the FCS. The question is: Will NDSU become an FBS program sometime in the future?

Grant’s take:

I have been to over 100 Bison football games in my 19 years as an NDSU fan, student, and now media member. Over the past few years, fan attendance and interest has leveled off due to a variety of reasons, from the bulk of games being blowouts to soaring ticket prices to the fact that the FargoDome is in need of a renovation. North Dakota State is an FBS program stuck at the FCS level, and I want them to go to FBS. But the Bison are a victim of their own success I believe they will not be a FBS program in the near future for the following reasons:

1.  Too Good

• Why would conference commissioners and presidents vote to let in a team from the FCS that would win a couple of FBS leagues? In my opinion, NDSU would win Conference USA and the Mid-American Conference. 

2. Bad Geographical Market

• Recently, FBS conferences have thrown caution to the wind when it comes to geographical locations as schools like Stanford and California, teams on the Pacific Coast, are playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Does that make sense? Of course not, but when it comes to NDSU, they don’t fit into any FBS conference due to the fact that they are in the upper Midwest. The problem is Fargo, North Dakota, isn’t a huge media market like other FCS schools that have made the leap like Missouri State. The Bears are not a great team, but being in Springfield, Missouri, they are close to big media markets in Kansas City and St. Louis.

3. 5 strings attached: UND, SDSU, USD, MSU, UM

• This may be the biggest problem NDSU faces going forward. If the Bison move up, the University of North Dakota may very well intervene and try to block the move, or the Fighting Hawks would demand that they tag along with NDSU and not be left behind again. Another issue is that the Bison would be attached at the hip with South Dakota State and the Montana schools because if the Dakota schools exit stage right, those schools will likely demand to leave with NDSU.

4. What Conference?, and When?

• Personally, my biggest issue with this whole debate is that until someone can definitively tell me what conference the Bison would go into and when they would do it? That is the question that must be solved before any movement can take place.

5. Conference commissioners and presidents aren’t eager to share money with FCS schools

• The last point I will make is that conferences aren’t real crazy about the idea of sharing some of their precious TV money and other funds with a new FBS team rather than giving it to an existing FBS team that is seeking a new home.

Ethan’s Take: 

I have been going to Bison football games for so long that I have gotten used to watching FCS playoff games in the Dome and all the things that come with going to Frisco. But I have to say, it’s time to make the move. When NDSU moved up in the mid-2000s, they joined the Great West conference, and it was sort of a short-term thing as they finally joined the Missouri Valley in 2009, and we all know that has worked out pretty well considering they have won 10 conference championships in the Valley. A Great West conference situation, I think, would be great for the Bison moving to FBS as a “window period,” whether that means being independent for a few seasons or being in a weaker Mountain West, I think you need to make the jump and worry about the future problems later. Do I think it’s going to happen? No. I think the only way you move up is if SDSU comes with, and from what the media has shown us, they don’t seem too eager to jump up to FBS. The fee for moving from FCS to FBS isn’t the issue; it’s the geography, and they also just flat-out need to get an invite.

The FCS has lost major assets to the league in the last 5-10 years, with Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Jacksonville State, James Madison, Coastal Carolina, Sam Houston State, and now Delaware and Missouri State leaving. All of these teams have been in the playoffs and made it deep in the FCS playoffs and as a result of them leaving, we rarely see any close first-round or second-round matchups or even quarterfinals matchups. I think NDSU would thrive at FBS based on the following: they have the booster money that would come in if they jumped up. I do think it would solve a lot of the issues with attendance we have seen since 2021. But in the end, North Dakota is just too far from any of the big-time conferences for them to make a jump, and I don’t see it happening anytime during the current realignment that is going on, even though I think it would be great for the fans and for the state of North Dakota. 

Until then, the Bison will have to continue on in the 2024 FCS season, and they have a big game on Saturday as #2 NDSU takes on #7 UND.