Matt Zimmer: For South Dakota State, winning the Dakota Marker has become business as usual
Matt Zimmer, The Daily Republic, Mitchell, S.D.
6 min read
Nov. 4—BROOKINGS — No. 1 South Dakota State cruised to another Dakota Marker victory over North Dakota State on Saturday, a 33-16 win in front of a Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium-record crowd of 19,431.
As the final seconds ticked off the clock, photographers covering the game scrambled to get into position behind the 75-pound Dakota Marker trophy, eager to get a shot of the Jackrabbit players racing to the south end zone to lay their hands on it.
But that didn't really happen. When the game ended, SDSU's players meandered towards the middle of the field to shake hands with their rivals from North Dakota State, a team the Jacks have long respected, whether they were beating them or watching them celebrate a national championship on TV.
Eventually they started to make their way to the quartzite mini-monument, where they went through the motions of holding it aloft and celebrating a victory in one of the Division I Football Championship Subdivision's premier rivalries.
The whole thing felt...perfunctory. Like they were used to it.
Wonder why.
"We were really locked in to just winning the game," said Jacks coach Jimmy Rogers, who is still undefeated in the job at 9-0. "I think at the end there we forgot it was the Marker game and forgot to even rush the trophy. I was wondering what they were doing. I said guys, you've got to go rush the trophy now."
The Jacks have now won five straight meetings with the once-mighty Bison, the team that won nine national championships between 2011 and 2021 and eight straight games against the Jacks from 2010-2015. SDSU beat the Bison twice last year — once in Fargo and again in the national championship game in Frisco, and after NDSU lost to South Dakota and North Dakota earlier this season, most expected a Jackrabbit blowout on Saturday. It fell just short of that, but was certainly never a really close game. NDSU scored on its first drive, then saw SDSU go on a 27-3 run to take control. NDSU only really flirted with a comeback, never causing any concern for the record crowd.
The game felt a lot like the celebration. All part of a plan. Nothing special, just a job well done. No need to wildly celebrate.
"I think we just went about our business all week," said All-American offensive tackle Garret Greenfield. "Like we were preparing for just another game. Even though it's a rivalry game, they're a great program and there's a lot of respect there. So it was, 'Go shake their hand, then go get the rock.'"
It was, linebacker Adam Bock revealed, at the directive of former coach John Stiegelmeier. The retired coach apparently made a point of insisting his players shake the Bison's hands before celebrating.
"Maybe his message finally set in," Bock chuckled.
Well, you win five times in a row — four for the Marker, the other for the national championship — eventually it becomes routine. None of which is to say the win didn't mean as much to the Jacks. All week while fans and media from both Dakotas speculated on how badly the Jacks would win, on whether or not the Bison should even bother showing up, SDSU's players and coaches insisted they still viewed NDSU as a national powerhouse. Still loaded with great players. Still backed by years of unbelievable tradition.
And there were moments on Saturday that you still saw it. Cam Miller, the Bison's underrated quarterback, made plays. The offense scored on each of its first two possessions against the nation's best defense. When SDSU recovered a fumble deep in NDSU territory moments after having taken a 17-9 lead, the Bison defense stiffened and held SDSU to a field goal, where a touchdown might have started the process of putting the game away.
But those moments were too few and far between for NDSU. The Jacks were far from perfect, and maybe even a ways from their best. But they were plenty good to win. They are, after all, the best team in FCS and it's getting harder and harder to identify anything resembling a close second.
"It feels great," said quarterback Mark Gronowski, who threw for 213 yards and two touchdowns and is now 4-0 as a starter against the Bison. "That team is much better than their record shows. It feels great to beat that team every single year. To continue to do that is a lot of fun."
Every. Single. Year.
They felt that one up in Fargo, Mark.
The Bison are 6-3, having lost to each of the three Dakota schools. The last time that happened was 2002 (it was a Grand Slam that year, as the '02 Bison also lost to Augustana). The Jacks, meanwhile, swept the Dakotas for the second year in a row.
While the Jacks close in on the conference title and top seed, NDSU is going to have to win at least one of their last two to make the playoffs, and given that those are against contenders Southern Illinois and Northern Iowa, it's not a given. Yeah, you just read that sentence. NDSU could miss the FCS playoffs.
Still, the respect SDSU insisted on all week is real. After all, the Jacks got to where they are by essentially copying the Bison's blueprint of physical, old-school football.
"Success breeds imitators," Greenfield said. "You look at what they were doing and it worked pretty well for a long time. To catch them and compete with them you've got to try to do what they do and try to do it better. It might not have been a fast process but to build up the O-line and D-lines and learn how to run the ball and control the clock is a great recipe for success."
So, too, is recruiting great players, developing them, and keeping them. SDSU has 34 seniors, 10 of whom are sixth-year "COVID" seniors. And those 10 are all either starters or part-time starters. Not many college football teams get to keep the same players for six years. It tends to make them a little easier to coach and harder to beat.
"It feels like we've played the same names for a damn long time," said Bison coach Matt Entz. "You can tell — it's a lot of veteran guys who have seen a lot of football and played a lot of football and are well-coached."
The Jacks have two more before playoffs. They visit Youngstown State next, and the Penguins are a solid team at 6-3, with a playoff berth in their sights. Then the Jacks finish up by hosting 3-6 Missouri State.
Western Illinois, Indiana State and Murray State, the Valley's three bottom feeders with a combined 2-25 record — the Jacks face none of them this year.
The work to get where they are has been hard-earned, and they continue to avoid the temptation to look ahead.
"I've taken over a program at an opportune time," said Rogers, who, like both of his coordinators, Zach Lujan and Jesse Bobbit, was a standout player for SDSU not long ago. "We've got great talent and I'm blessed to be in this situation. We have a great team with great leadership, and when your best players are your hardest workers and your best leaders it's easy to rally behind them and easy to have success."
