Amid the excitement of North Dakota State moving to the FBS, the Bison men’s and women’s basketball teams did one thing the football team won’t get to do for the foreseeable future.
That’s beating the University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks. The Bison football team had a storied rivalry with the Hawks, formerly the Fighting Sioux, once featured on NFL Films, but that rivalry will go into hiatus for the second time in two decades amid the latest move.
The rest of the sports will stay put this time in the football-only move to the Mountain West Conference, so the Bison-Hawks rivalry will continue in other sports. That said, Bison men’s basketball coach David Richman acknowledged where his team fits in the grand scheme of things in Fargo.
“I am extremely, extremely excited for our fans,” Richman told reporters on Feb. 28 after a 96-63 beatdown of UND. “I understand that, as the basketball coach, this is a football school, and I will openly say that. I know that when Bison football is in a healthy place and supported and doing well, it is a great thing for everybody.”
NDSU basketball has had its moments in the national spotlight, though, with four NCAA tournament appearances and an upset of Oklahoma in the Big Dance once. The Bison football program, meanwhile, dominated the FCS for 15 years with 10 national championships, but the recent move to the Mountain West Conference will only boost the program’s profile.
NDSU Brass Details FBS Plans
NDSU spent big in the 2000s when all sports moved to Division I. The Bison basketball programs, for instance, moved out of the old Bison Sports Arena into the new 5,700-seat Scheels Center.
For football, the Bison built an indoor practice facility, but the 19,000-seat Fargodome remains similar the same since the Division II days with mostly minor renovations. Now, more renovations are among the NDSU administrators’ and boosters’ plans, as outlined by CBS Sports.
Other plans include doubling budgets for football operations and NIL, adding 22 scholarships, more recruiting staff, new offices and meeting spaces, salary increases, and travel expense increases. The Bison will log the miles playing at Hawaii, Air Force, UNLV, and New Mexico in Mountain West play this year.
‘A Calculated Risk’
NDSU athletic director Matt Larsen acknowledged the risk for the Bison football program moving up, during his interview with CBS Sports.
The Bison dominated Division II and the old College Division with eight national championships between 1960 and 1990. NDSU took it to another level with an unprecedented run in the FCS, but the Bison will be hard-pressed to ever win an FBS crown, go deep in the College Football Playoff, or even make a New Year Six bowl game. That all comes with the price of increased expenses and losing potentially three extra home games annually if the Bison had stayed in the FCS and kept rolling through the playoffs.
“The line of demarcation for college athletics is 2032,” Larsen told CBS Sports. “All of these major TV contracts come up. Is there going to be a new subdivision? Are you going to have a break off? Even if that happens someday, we may end up playing some high-level FCS programs, but in our mind we’ve had a six-year head start getting in here and being established.”
“We just felt the timing was right, given everything that’s going on. There is some uncertainty, a little bit of risk, but I really felt like it was a calculated risk in terms of positioning our football program,” Larsen concluded.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post North Dakota State Hoops Coach Makes Admission Amid FBS Move appeared first on Heavy Sports.