Bison Illustrated September 2015

CONTENTS

feature

26

ANATOMY OF A RIVALRY

The last game between North Dakota State University and the University of North Dakota concluded with the first overtime period in the history of the 121-year rivalry. We break down the rivalry starting in the 1980s and dissect why the rivalry was discontinued and what it took to bring it back.

60

ATHLETIC DIRECTOR MATT LARSEN TALKS FOOTBALL

Athletic director Matt Larsen sits down with us to talk about the state of the Bison football program, the Missouri Valley conference and the status of Division I college football.

74 FINDING THE NICKEL The Nickel Trophy was the symbol of the NDSU-UND rivalry beginning in 1938. Now retired in the depths of Grand Forks, we head north in hopes of catching a glimpse of this sacred piece of history.

AT A GLANCE 16 Bison Shots

100 Falling For The Enemy

20 Another Step Forward

104 Dahlen Family

64 What’s Up With UND

108 Brotherly Love

70 NDSU Football

112 Foes Turned Pros

72 UND Football

116 Microsoft Nickel

84 The Call of a Lifetime

126 Kathleen (Hegg) Rustad

92 “When They Were Kings”

136 Swany Says

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88 Pat Sweeney has covered the ups and downs of the UND athletic program for more than 30 years. He will their radio voice this year.

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SEPTEMBER 2015 | VOLUME 10 ISSUE 2 Bison Illustrated is a free publication distributed monthly (12 times a year).

Our mission is to help promote North Dakota State University Athletics, provide a quality and fun reading experience and to improve the way of life in our community. The publication is mailed to homes across the US and has newsstand distribution throughout North Dakota and Minnesota.

PUBLISHER Spotlight Media PRESIDENT Mike Dragosavich ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Bougie EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Andrew Jason EDITOR Joe Kerlin DESIGN/LAYOUT Ryan Koehler, Sarah Geiger CONTRIBUTORS Josh Swanson, Joe Kerlin, Pace Maier, Steve Walker COPY EDITORS Erica Rapp, Nate Mickelberg, Pace Maier GENERAL MANAGER Brent Tehven MARKETING/SALES Tracy Nicholson, Paul Hoefer, Paul Bougie, Tank McNamara, Amy Dagen SOCIAL MEDIA Samantha Day CIRCULATION Codey Bernier MANAGER PHOTOGRAPHY J. Alan Paul Photography, NDSU Athletics, Paul Flessland ADMINISTRATION Heather Hemingway, Laura Ingalls SPECIAL THANKS Ryan Perreault, Wes Offerman, Ryan Anderson, Jeff Schwartz, Colle en Heimstead WEB DEVELOPER Lydia Gilbertson DELIVERY Chris Larson, Peyton Berger, Hal Ecker, Mitch Rapp, Nate Olsby FOR ADVERTISING CALL 701-478-SPOT (7768) or email info@spotlightmediafargo.com

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EDITOR’S NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Joe Kerlin

This month was far and away the most difficult month we’ve had at Bison Illustrated. This month tested the patience of all of us. It tested our willingness to take the extra step, to ask the uncomfortable question and to find the cold hard truths.

HUNTING DOWN

HISTORY

F

or me, coming into this month with little to no prior knowledge of the NDSUUND football rivalry other than a two-hour documentary by Prairie Public made the process similar to a long cramming session before taking the semester’s last final. It not only tested the patience of me and the staff, but the content took a deep dive into the patience of a state and a region filled with two vast fan bases waiting for one day to have its Super Bowl back.

You heard the gripes. “Why give UND any publicity?

The publication is named BISON Illustrated. Forget our neighbors to the north.”

But it wasn’t about us.

This month’s issue is more about the state and community’s roots that are 16

joe@bisonillustrated.com

anchored within the depths of the Bison and Fighting Sioux rivalry. But to some, too much has changed.

The clash of two greens – Bison and Kelly – hasn’t been seen since 2003. The names have changed on the football field, sideline, administrative staffs and among the alumni.

Nicknames have been changed, a 75-pound trophy made of aluminum alloy has been retired and hundreds of football games have been played without the one that used to define the grit of the northern prairie.

There are too many unfamiliar perplexities with today’s fans. Many people of my generation see UND as that poor school the NCAA bullied into losing its nickname, even though it defined hostile and abusive. My generation knows national titles, not Nickel trophy celebrations.

Names like Rocky Hager and Roger Thomas simply don’t register.

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bisonillustrated

@bisonmag

That’s exactly why we made this magazine. To set a new boundary for our creative arc, while dabbling into the unknown.

We saw this game on the schedule as an opportunity to re-educate the Bison minds across the state. We want to remind people of the games importance in our fandom.

In the end, what’s difficult is knowing the novelty of this month’s game. It will never be an annual celebration of two football programs.

However, it will serve as a reminder of how far each institution has come since that Saturday in October 2003 at the Alerus Center.

So much good has happened. Why not celebrate by looking back at the important parts of the rivalry and what it means to the regular North Dakotan. After all, this game was the benchmark for both programs and established bragging rights

@joebisonmag

for whichever fan base left victorious.

So I plead with you, football fan, stop pointing your finger to why it’s taken this long to schedule and shake hands with a fan from “the other” school. Forget the politics because at the end of the day, it’s just football.

After 6 p.m., September 19, it will be another four years before NDSU and UND storm out of the FargoDome tunnel. So enjoy this one, Bison Nation.

Although it was challenging to piece together the proper narrative to frame this game, I believe it will pay dividends. All we ask is for you to enjoy. Enjoy looking back on the past victories and defeats, jubilations and humiliations as we build up to the return of North Dakota’s Super Bowl.

sincerely,

Joe Kerlin

Why can’t We be

Friends FROM paul bougie CONTACT ME 701-478-7768 paulbougie@spotlightmediafargo.com

READING RECOMMENDATION: If you're near an audio-playing device, click play on "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC.

C

an’t we all just get along?

It’s pretty simple.

As we embark on another exciting season of Bison football, we will once again set up our home away from homes in the West Parking Lot of the FargoDome.

There will be new tents, trailers and buses that we will want to see.

And as new friends come to our temporary Saturday homes, we welcome them. I encourage all of you to offer a beverage in a plastic tailgating approved cup (get yours at oneherd.com).

We, as Bison fans, welcome in families and fans from the visiting schools we are playing. Heck, it’s our duty to show them a good time. We are social, we are fun and we all have a common bond of college football. But ultimately, we have an endless passion for

our university and our studentathletes. Let’s not forget, it’s the students that are out on the field busting their tails that got us together in the first place.

Take a moment to remember who we are, and when “That Team From The North” fans stop by our homes in the West Parking Lot, be who we are, the most welcoming and respectful fans in the nation.

Sure there might be a few good nature ribs back and forth, but it’s all in jest. It’s all just a game, right?

Let’s us all raise our glasses and toast to all of our studentathletes, for whatever school they represent!

Go Bison,

Paul Bougie

BISON SHOTS

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BISON SHOTS

BISON SHOTS THE ROCKY ROAD Rocky Hager took over as head coach of the Bison football team in 1987. He would coach the Bison for ten years and win two Division II national championships. When he left after the 1996 season, he was the all-time winningest coach in Bison history with a record of 91-25-1.

Check out BISONILLUSTRATED.COM 19

DEAN BRESCIANI

North Dakota State University president Dean Bresciani joins us to talk about the status of the university and the new features coming to NDSU.

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DEAN BRESCIANI

ANOTHER STEP

FORWARD Photo by Andrew Jason Interview by Joe Kerlin

BISON ILLUSTRATED: What are some of the goals you have reached that you set for NDSU when you arrived five years ago?

DEAN BRESCIANI: “I had one over-

arching goal when I started, and it’s what drew me to NDSU from Texas A&M University. I saw an opportunity for NDSU to more effectively serve our citizens and do so in a way that would have an observable, measurable and nothing less than history-making impact on the economy and quality of life for the entire state. That would require improving not just our institutional performance through direct activities but also changing perceptions of North Dakota throughout the rest of the nation. Here are some measures of what’s happened since then: “A substantial escalation of our research productivity has had an incredible direct impact on our state economy and has led to NDSU becoming (by a wide margin) not just the top-ranked university in our state but the five-state

area of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

“Steadily growing enrollments have led to NDSU now being the school of choice for full-time North Dakota high school graduates and the same for full-time out-of-state high school graduates –all of whom are entering with the highest average GPAs and ACT scores in the state.

“Broad and positive — if not glowing — national media coverage on everything from NDSU’s rising national academic rank to our exceptionally successful overall athletic program and top-ranked college town environment.

“Those seem to make the case that we’re accomplishing what we set out to do.”

BI: What are some goals you still want to see accomplished?

DB: “North Dakota now has, for the first

time in state history, a truly top-tier flagship university drawing more head23

DEAN BRESCIANI

turning attention on a national level than our state has ever experienced.

But NDSU can and must do more. Our statewide business leaders tell me that they are desperate for more of the type of graduates we are producing. They recognize that our state on its own can’t currently, much less in the future, fill their vacant jobs. So business leaders are particularly reliant on NDSU’s growing national reputation to not just educate the future workforce of North Dakota, but, at both undergraduate and graduate levels and because of our growing national visibility, draw them here from out-of-state. We also need to be a part of drawing more business diversification to our state through our R&D and targeting enrollment growth in majors that support those economic drivers.”

BI: What will the new STEM building

allow NDSU students and faculty to do that they couldn't do already?

DB: “Prior to the STEM building, and

in spite of our academic and scholarly success, the last fully state-funded building at NDSU was in the early ‘70s.

That means that our ‘newest’ learning environments are 40 or more years old. The STEM building is anticipated to circulate more than 4,000 students a day through what will be one of the most contemporary and cutting-edge learning environments in the state.

That will have a game-changing impact on the educational experience of most students at NDSU, while also providing the opportunity to ‘decompress’ the intense use of older facilities. That decompression, in combination with the state’s new higher education funding formula which visionary state legislators put in to place, will mean we finally 24

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have both the opportunity and resources to do something about our troubling deferred maintenance conditions.”

the overwhelming majority of feedback I receive is to leave history in the past and stay forward-focused.”

BI: Over the past four years, NDSU has

BI: Do you think it's important for the

climbed the top research institution rankings while the NDSU Athletics' brand has become nationally recognized. Is that a coincidence or are the two related?

DB: “Nothing going on at NDSU is by

coincidence. I’m told that a big part of why I was brought to NDSU was my experience and involvement in strategic planning and senior level leadership at a number of our aspirational peer institutions. By then putting together a senior leadership team at NDSU that both shares a vision of our role and responsibility to the citizens we serve, and their expertise in achieving those goals within the cultural context of a student-focused, land grant, research university – we have been able to purposefully create and combine the factors that have resulted in our new national visibility and recognition.

Athletic competitiveness across all sports, and better capitalizing on the visibility it provides, has certainly been a part of our broader success.”

BI: What were you told of the NDSU-

UND football rivalry when you arrived in 2010?

DB: “NDSU’s incredibly successful

transition and relatively unparalleled overall success at the D-I level, in combination with its still-growing academic and scholarly success, had, by the time I arrived, already differentially changed things. I’m often reminded that’s even more so the case today, and

state to see this football game played between the two largest institutions in North Dakota?

DB: “Every game is important to us.

Four-time NCAA Division I National Champions overlook no game, regardless of whom they are playing.”

BI: Can you explain what the NCAA Division I Presidential Forum is?

What's its mission?

DB: “Because of the already existing and

still-growing demands that are endemic to competitive D-I athletic programs, the NCAA has become increasingly concerned with the pressures put on major institutions, and in particular Division I student athletes — that too often result in questionable outcomes.

They’ve taken the historic step of creating a forum at the highest level.

Each Division I league in the nation was asked to select a representative, and the NCAA brought them together to discuss the involved issues and start developing solutions. That the task is terribly important goes without saying, but I was impressed by the level of consensus that leaders of our nation’s best institutions shared on both the problems and potential solutions. Worth note: this was also the first time in history that North Dakota has had a representative on any senior NCAA committee, and it represented an important recognition of where NDSU’s program and league affiliations are at and an opportunity for us to have a voice in this incredibly important national conversation.”

ANATOMY OF A RIVALRY

QUESTION:

HOW DO YOU

LIVEN UP A 121-YEAR-OLD

FOOTBALL RIVALRY? 28

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ANATOMY OF A RIVALRY

ANSWER:

PUT IT ON A 12-YEAR HIATUS, INTRODUCE TWO NEW GENERATIONS OF ATHLETES AND FANS AND PLAY IT ON THE DIVISION I LEVEL. 29

NDSU DOMINATION

ANATOMY OF A

RIVALRY

By Joe Kerlin Photos courtesy of UND Athletics and NDSU Athletics

CHAPTER 1

RIVALRY TIMELINE

NDSU DOMINATION

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1981

NDSU 31 UND 7 FARGO, ND

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1982

NDSU 10 UND 3 GRAND FORKS, ND

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1983

NDSU 23 UND 6 FARGO, ND

NDSU DIVISION II NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

NDSU DOMINATION

T

o be fair, picking up the NDSUUND football rivalry after the first 78 games were played in the series seems a bit unfair. And it could be. But when you take into account how high the stakes were when approaching the 1980s, combined with the quality of broadcasting showing the famous bouts on the football field, it only makes sense to dissect the rivalry after the 1980 game when UND beat NDSU 38-20 in Grand Forks. It should be noted that the rivalry game was big even back in 1965 when NDSU won its first Pecan Bowl.

According to NDSU’s attendance records, that season NDSU hosted the Fighting Sioux – as they were once called – 11,500 people were in attendance. It was the first time in recorded history the rivalry would be seen by more than 10,000 people. And since 1970, only twice were there fewer than 10,000 North Dakotans in the seats to watch its state’s two perennial college football powers battle it out for bragging rights

NDSU’s defense swarms a UND ball carrier in the 1985 game.

NDSU held a 9-1 advantage against UND in the 1980s.

from Fargo to Grand Forks to Beach to Williston. The two times when attendance stayed under five digits was in Grand Forks, when both games were stricken by blood-chilling cold weather and NDSU domination.

Alas, to recap the first 78 games in the historic NDSU-UND football rivalry:

NDSU won three championships while UND had none. NDSU had 15 North Central Conference championships while UND claimed 16. To go along with capturing one more conference title than the Bison, UND had a 22 game lead in the series, 52-30-3.

Nobody epitomized knowing your

DON MORTON

FORMER NDSU FOOTBALL COACH Morton was the head coach of the Bison for six seasons and finished with a 57-15 record. He led the Bison to the playoffs each of his last four years, including three Division II championship game appearances. He coached NDSU to its first Division II championship in 1983. He would later take a job at Tulsa in 1985 and eventually spend three seasons at Wisconsin.

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NDSU DOMINATION

Quarterback Mark Nellermoe led the Bison with three second-half touchdowns and the Bison prevailed against the No. 1-ranked Fighting Sioux, 31-7. It would be the beginning of the longest winning streak the Bison would experience against UND. For the next decade, the Bison would leave the field victorious against their in-state rival and so began a new era of Bison football.

Jeff Bentrim sticks the football over the goal line for another NDSU touchdown against UND in 1985. NDSU would win 49-0 in the regular season finale.

opponent more than NDSU and UND. They were both among the nine institutions that were charter members of the now-defunct North Central Conference. The two were also among the five that remained with the conference into the 2000s.

RIVALRY TIMELINE

Before the 1981 season, Don Morton and the Bison had lost two straight games to UND and were losing momentum in the state. Since the inception of the Division II playoffs, NDSU had played four postseason games compared to UND’s two, but

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1984

NDSU 14 UND 3 GRAND FORKS, ND

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UND had made the playoffs more recently in 1979. The pressure was on Morton to live up to the high expectations set by his predecessors Darrell Mudra, Ron Erhardt and Jim Wacker.

“It was made very clear to me before the game that if we had lost, I was done,” Morton said. “No coach could survive losing three games in a row to UND. The athletic director was a very good friend of mine (Ade Sponberg), but it was very clear that this was what you’d call a ‘must-win’ game.”

W

1985

“For us it was Sioux week, for them it was Bison week. It was just a very special week of preparation,” said Morton. “At the time, whenever we had the home game, whenever we hosted the Sioux, our Team Maker membership would do really well that year because everybody wanted to make sure they had tickets to the game.”

Interest was mounting as the Bison would win five championships over their 12-game winning streak against UND. Today, we recall the stretch as “The Decade of the Bison,” and it seemed UND was getting worse and worse with a record of 32-32, spanning from 1981-86. But the fans couldn’t get enough.

W

1986

NDSU 49 UND 0

NDSU 62 UND 13

NDSU DIVISION II NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

NDSU DIVISION II NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

FARGO, ND

GRAND FORKS, ND

NDSU DOMINATION

“It was just a big event,” explained Morton.

“It was a big event in North Dakota, in the state and in the region.”

Former WDAZ sports director Pat Sweeney immersed himself in the rivalry when he started covering UND sports in 1982. For the first 11 years, he thought he’d never see UND defeat its rival.

“I remember I was there in Fargo in ’85, the 49-0 game, and I was doing sideline (reporting) and I just remember thinking, ‘What’s going to happen?’ And the next day Pat Behrns (UND head coach) resigned as the coach,” Sweeney said. “I got along great with Pat and I think he did the right thing. For him to continue would’ve been difficult.

I don’t know if the AD had in mind to make a change. He may well have.”

The 1985 game was the biggest shutout in the rivalry’s 91-year history, and just when UND thought it couldn’t get any worse, Jeff Bentrim and the potent Bison veer attack came to Grand Forks for one last time in 1986.

Bentrim had one of his best games as a Bison, scoring three touchdowns and

Tim Prinsen was an All-American offensive lineman for UND from 199396. He would also win two Grey Cups in the Canadian Football League. shattering Walter Payton’s Division II career touchdown record (64) as the Bison rolled, 63-10.

It was a difficult introduction to the rivalry for first-year UND head coach Roger Thomas, but it’s one he’ll never forget.

“It was hard,” Thomas said. “Just because the team was at that point mismatched… I don’t want to throw

anybody under the bus, but the Bison teams continued to get better, and the era between that and the late ‘80s when UND wasn’t as powerful.”

As the Bison enjoyed success against their in-state rival and at the highest level of Division II competition, Thomas knew he’d have to employ a new culture and, more importantly, the same culture he was a part of while he was an assistant at UND from 1978-79.

ROGER THOMAS

FORMER UND AD/FOOTBALL COACH The former University of North Dakota offensive coordinator, head coach and athletic director was tied to the university from 1978-79, and 1986-2005. When Thomas left his athletic director position at UND, he became commissioner of the North Central Conference for four years. He compiled a 90-48-2 record during his 13-year stint as head coach with UND.

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RETURN OF THE SIOUX

ANATOMY OF A

RIVALRY CHAPTER 2

RIVALRY TIMELINE

RETURN OF THE SIOUX

36

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1987

NDSU 42 UND 10 FARGO, ND

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1988

NDSU 34 UND 27 GRAND FORKS, ND

NDSU DIVISION II NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

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1989

NDSU 21 UND 0 FARGO, ND

RETURN OF THE SIOUX

I

t’s not out of the ordinary to hear Roger Thomas’s name spoken around Bison Nation in the same sentence as an expletive and a facial expression signifying disgust. He was the leader, the mystique and the catalyst behind the UND football revival starting in the late '80s.

To this day, Thomas gets nasty looks while he’s in Fargo. He told the story about him and his wife coming to Fargo to wander around the mall when all of a sudden Thomas’s eyes caught the face of a Bison fan wearing a national championship jacket.

“I walked by him and he kind of grumbled at me, and kind of gave me a dirty look,” Thomas said trying not to laugh. “I was like, ‘C’mon, man.’ But it lives. It was fun to be the enemy because they were so good, and I still respect them, and it was fun to be the enemy and to take the UND program, which was kind of down and out at the time, and get it back.”

Educated in the North Central Conference at Augustana, Thomas shared the sidelines with Bison legends Don Morton and Jim Wacker early in his career at his alma mater, but as his career path started to take shape, their success would become the goal chased

by Thomas when he took over the reins at UND in 1986.

“The games in that era, in the late ‘80s, were pretty tough because the Bison were loaded with the (Tony) Satters and everybody else,” Thomas said. “We really needed to recruit some kids to try and play at that level, which was the top level in the county.

Heck, they were very, very good.”

Thomas knew he needed to raise the talent level at UND to compete with the unstoppable machine that was the Bison veer offense.

NDSU had the horses, starting with Jeff Bentrim and Chris Simdorn, and then later it turned into Arden Beachy, Rob Hyland and Kevin Feeney. Thomas turned to his defense, knowing they were the key to containing the Bison ground-and-pound assault.

In 1988, Thomas hired former UND running back and ‘85 graduate Dale Lennon to coach the defensive line.

Lennon had roots in North Dakota. He

Shannon Burnell is the second all-time leading rusher in UND history.

He played from 199093 and was 1-3 all-time against the Bison.

understood North Dakota football and had been a freshman on the 1979 team, the last UND team to make the playoffs.

“Our challenge was two things,” Thomas explained. “We needed to have a scheme that gave us a chance to defend the option and the other thing was better players.”

Thomas gives credit to coach Lennon and Bubba Schweigert for recognizing UND’s weakness in the interior line.

DALE LENNON

FORMER UND FOOTBALL COACH Lennon may be the best coach in UND history, considering he was 90-24 in nine seasons from 1999-2007 and won the NCAA Division II national championship in 2001. The Knox, N.D., native played running back for UND from 1979-83. He’s now in his eighth season as the head coach for Southern Illinois.

37

RETURN OF THE SIOUX

“We always had trouble finding them,” Thomas said when explaining the reasons UND switched to a 3-4 formation on defense, which has three linemen and four linebackers.

was a good sign,” remembered WDAZ’s Pat Sweeney. “But there was still, to me, there was still that cloud hanging overhead. Until they beat them that was never going to go away.”

With four athletic linebackers running behind the line away from the trenches, the more plays they were free to make. This also changed their practice philosophy, Thomas said. With the quick striking offenses beating UND to the edge with more speed, they worked tirelessly on pursuit drills, which helped instill simple geometry into defenders and helped them take the quickest angle to a ball carrier.

Sweeney happened to be calling the NDSU-UND game on statewide television with Ed Schultz in 1993. UND fans remember it as the Mike Mooney game. One play, from one of Lennon’s athletic linebackers who was told he was too small to play at NDSU, changed the course of history in not only the NDSU-UND rivalry, but changed the course of UND football history forever.

“We had to get our football team to go run down those good athletes, to take good angles to go catch that guy and use the sidelines as your friend if the play went wide,” Thomas said. “It was really an evolution of football defense, regardless of the 4-3 or the 3-4.”

UND was getting better and their record was starting to prove it. They would finish over .500 in 1991 and 1992, and in 1993, they qualified for the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. But more importantly, earlier that season, the night before Halloween at Memorial Stadium, they proved they belonged on the same field as NDSU. Following a seven-point loss in 1991 and a one-point loss in 1992, UND was at the doorstep, on the fringe of snapping their 12-year losing streak to NDSU.

RIVALRY TIMELINE

“The games were getting closer and that

38

There’s still mystery surrounding the play, said Sweeney, who then admitted none of the four cameras they had on the field picked up exactly what happened when Mooney went into the pile to bring down NDSU running back Jason Miller. Sweeney said he’ll never forget Mooney streaking down the sideline to give UND a lead late in the fourth quarter.

“I still say that Mike Mooney strip and return for a touchdown was the most important play in modern UND football history because it was so surprising and it just changed everything that led to the victory, and UND was no longer a bridesmaid,” Sweeney said.

“It was a stolen ball that I still believe wasn’t the right call,” chuckled former NDSU head football coach Rocky Hager, who believed Miller’s forward progress had been stopped before Mooney’s infamous strip-and-score. “I

W

1990

NDSU 42 UND 14 GRAND FORKS, ND

NDSU DIVISION II NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

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1991

NDSU 35 UND 28 FARGO, ND

just don’t think he (the official) made the right judgment.”

As NDSU loathed in its first defeat to UND since 1980, on the other side of the field, jubilation stormed the field.

The monkey was off UND’s back. After two years of coming up short, they finally defeated their in-state rival, reclaiming the Nickel Trophy and changing the trajectory of the program with a 22-21 victory.

“There are so many stories that go along with that game and what went on in Grand Forks that night is just crazy,” Thomas said about the postgame celebration after his first win over NDSU. “Dave Gunther, the old basketball coach, told me, and he was a great friend. He said, ‘Roger, that’s great you won, but you’re nothing until you beat them in Fargo.’”

In their first game in the FargoDome the following year, UND defeated NDSU in front of a crowd of 18,760, many of who were leaving by the time the fourth quarter rolled around, according to Sweeney. Thomas would never lose a game in the FargoDome. He was 3-0.

Thomas left coaching after the 1998 season to become UND’s athletic director and he handed the keys to the still up-and-coming football program to the defensive genius of Lennon. The Knox, N.D., native would bring UND its first national championship in 2001 and posted a 4-1 record against the Bison, including the last matchup between the rivals in 2003 with a 28-21 overtime victory.

W

1992

NDSU 20 UND 19 GRAND FORKS, ND

GROWING UP IN THE RIVALRY

ANATOMY OF A

RIVALRY CHAPTER 3

RIVALRY TIMELINE

GROWING UP IN THE RIVALRY

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1993

UND 22 NDSU 21 GRAND FORKS, ND

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1994

UND 34 NDSU 13 FARGO, ND

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1994

UND 14 NDSU 7 GRAND FORKS, ND

NCAA DIVISION II QUARTERFINAL

GROWING UP IN THE RIVALRY

“It was a game that defined ya. Everything, all the work you put in, it motivated ya; it inspired ya. It made you better.”

- Dale Lennon

I

f anything proves that rivalries aren’t spawned out of thin air, it’s Dale Lennon’s quote about the importance of this one game. Back then, the rivalry wasn’t tangible; it wasn’t conceived from online message boards or Twitter. It wasn’t bought or sold. It was inherited from one generation of football players to the next. The anticipation of the rivalry game was built over time, culminating in one large explosion once every year and then pondered and rehashed for the next 364 days.

It becomes a part of life for more than the players. Everybody in the region with ties to either university owned it.

And it was their duty to pass it along to the next generation wearing either shade of green, Castleton or Kelly.

For Lennon and fans, the NDSU-UND football rivalry is a personal one. It becomes more than a silly game when it never lets you down. You know every fall there will be a matchup where you can put the past games aside, put your personal and professional life on the

back burner and enjoy your state’s Super Bowl played out on the college gridiron.

Rocky Hager grew up in Harvey, N.D., a town of 1,700 that’s about a three-hour drive from both Fargo and Grand Forks. He was born into farm life, tending to his livestock’s needs and Jim Kleinsasser is a always having a UND legend and tormented Bison fans for fascination with years before having a long football. When career in the NFL. he was in junior high, his aunt started dating that Hager would always look forward a men’s basketball player from NDSU to watching or listening to every and from then on, Hager knew where season. And he said he was always his allegiance stood when it came to disappointed when his responsibilities the biggest football game played in the with the horses took precedence the state. weekend of the NDSU and UND game.

“I learned about the intensity of the rivalry,” Hager said. “I learned the ‘Hail the Bison’ song before I was in high school. I had strong knowledge of it and we raised horses so there was a strong affiliation with the animal sciences at NDSU. It was a place I would’ve liked to work at when I was very young.”

Hager would eventually play football at Minot State for four years in the mid70s, but when his favorite school came knocking when he was looking for his first coaching job, he wasn’t going to miss it. He spent a year on the NDSU staff as a graduate assistant.

The NDSU-UND football game was one

Hager’s first job with NDSU was in 1979, ironically, it was also the first time

ROCKY HAGER

FORMER NDSU FOOTBALL COACH The Harvey, N.D., native coached NDSU from 1985-1996 and won two NCAA Division II championships in 1988 and 1990. His coaching record with the Bison was 91-25-1 and lost in the NCAA Division II quarterfinals four times. Hager is currently the assistant coach at The College of New Jersey.

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he and Roger Thomas were on opposing sidelines during an NDSU-UND football game.

The relationship between these two legendary coaches is something the media skewed as passionate hate, but it was more civil than what fans were led to believe.

NDSU in the 1990s. Sheri (Kleinsasser) Stockmoe was a post player for Gene Roebuck from 1991-1995.

in the 1999 NFL Draft by the Minnesota Vikings, and he would spend 13 seasons in Minneapolis.

“I connected with him through the Augustana connection,” Hager said. “I would label Roger as a friend.”

Although Kleinsasser said that where his sister played ultimately didn’t factor into his decision to play at UND, he knew everything about the rivalry. His small hometown of Carrington, N.D., would have the rivalry game on television every year, and he said everybody would get together to watch the games.

Thomas played running back and quarterback for Augustana in the 1960s and then coached his alma mater until 1976. Hager arrived later in 1981 and left after the 1984 season to become the defensive coordinator at NDSU.

Kleinsasser decided to play at UND because he felt his talent would translate more on the offensive side of the ball. He said NDSU wanted him to play defense so he made the choice to follow in his sister’s footsteps and the rest was history.

The quasi-face of UND wasn’t the only star from the rivalry to find decade-long success in the NFL. NDSU’s Phil Hansen didn’t get his first introduction to the rivalry until his freshman season in 1986.

It quickly dawned on the Oakes native that it was a bigger deal than he initially thought when he was growing up a little more than 100 miles from Fargo.

“I’m not close friends with him by any stretch,” Thomas said. “But we did talk every so often, especially after that (rivalry) week. We might give each other a call … Some of it was social and just chatting, kind of laughing at the crazy things that are said about the rivalry and stuff.”

It was an unfortunate miss for the Bison.

Hager said the last time they spoke was when he called Thomas to congratulate him on his induction into the University of North Dakota Hall of Fame last year.

One player that helped springboard Thomas to the Hall of Fame was tight end Jim Kleinsasser.

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The Kleinsasser family had already sent one kid to UND to play on the women’s basketball team, which at the time was building its own rivalry with the

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1995

UND 21 NDSU 7 GRAND FORKS, ND

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He played for UND from 1995-1998 and was named first team All-North Central Conference three times. The Kleinsasser light seemed to shine the brightest when he’d play NDSU. Painfully, Bison fans remember UND making the trip to the FargoDome in 1998. UND rolled to victory 39-25 with Kleinsasser catching eight passes for 169 yards, three touchdowns and caused thousands of headaches in the NDSU home crowd.

“Every once in a while people will pull up that clip and say, ‘What? You used to be able to run this fast?’” Kleinsasser chuckled. “Well, yeah, a few moons ago I could. That was a fun game at that time, too.”

Kleinsasser would be drafted 44th overall

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1995

NDSU 41 UND 10 GRAND FORKS, ND

NCAA DIVISION II FIRST ROUND

“We probably downplayed it to the media, saying this game this week is always the most important, but it’s always in the back of your mind,” Hansen said. “We were kind of prepped and taught that you don’t want to live with having lost to the Sioux, and that’s the mentality we were ingrained with as a freshman.”

The engraving by the upperclassmen stuck with Hansen’s class that included legendary quarterback Chris Simdorn and running back Tony Satter. Not only would that Bison class win three national championships, but it never lost a game to UND. And it wasn’t just another win, they were blowouts. From 1986 to 1990, the Bison outscored UND 201-64, including a shutout in 1989.

The tough times would eventually get better for Thomas’s UND teams. Both Thomas and Lennon were able to hold onto the thin layer of hope and managed to hype every NDSU-UND matchup to keep the rivalry tradition fueled with passion.

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1996

UND 33 NDSU 19 FARGO, ND

NORTH DAKOTA’S SUPER BOWL

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1997

NDSU 31 UND 10 GRAND FORKS, ND

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1998

UND 39 NDSU 25 FARGO, ND

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1999

UND 13 NDSU 10 GRAND FORKS, ND

NORTH DAKOTA’S SUPER BOWL

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ating back to the first game in 1894, the biggest football game every year in North Dakota was the NDSU-UND matchup. Barring any playoff run, the game became the measuring stick for each school every season. It was natural, said Morton, explaining the uniqueness of college football, for having geographical rivalries created by universities only a handful of minutes apart. He compared the importance of having an Ohio State-Michigan and USC-UCLA-like rivalry game on the schedule every season.

“It becomes a very special type of game,” Morton said. “To win it is the height of happiness, and to lose it is the depths of despair. That’s the way it should be.”

UND found themselves on the losing end for many years during the peak of the rivalry through the 1980s and ‘90s. But Roger Thomas’s approach to that one game every season never changed throughout his career, even when NDSU would come in as heavy favorites.

“The age old cliché is that the best team doesn’t always win,” Thomas said. “If they fumble a bunch of times or whatever it might be, maybe, you’d always pray for the upset at that point.

And on the opposite side, when you’re the good team, you’re praying that your

In 1994, UND beat NDSU for the second-straight time in the regular season, 34-13, in Fargo. Beating the Bison at home was a sign of momentum shifting in the rivalry. guys don’t take the game lightly.”

The 1981 NDSU victory over No. 1-ranked UND is just the beginning of the list when it comes to notable upsets in the rivalry. In fact, Dale Lennon claims that game alone changed the trajectory of both programs saying, “When you have a game that you can point at and say that was a significant point indicates, too, how intense that rivalry was and how much was put into one game.”

Now, as a defensive coordinator in 1993, Lennon preached the underdog mentality to his defense going into the game against NDSU. The philosophy worked. UND enjoyed the upset and

grabbed momentum of the rivalry game until the Bison returned the favor in the 1995 playoffs in Grand Forks.

The 13th-ranked Bison knocked off seventh-ranked UND in the first round of the Division II playoff at Memorial Stadium in a 41-10 route. This time it was freshman quarterback Kevin Feeney who left his stamp on the rivalry.

At this time, there was little doubt the players and coaches were living and dying with the result of the games against one another, but joining them were both team’s fan bases, remembers Jim Kleinsasser. It was more than bragging rights for them. It was about

PHIL HANSEN

FORMER NDSU FOOTBALL PLAYER The Oakes, N.D., native was drafted in the second round by the Buffalo Bills in 1991 and spent 11 seasons with the team. He played for the Bison from 1986-1990 and is tied for the career record in sacks. He was a part of three national championships in 1986, 1988 and 1990.

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deciding the rightful owner of the Nickel Trophy.

Established in 1938 as the trophy awarded to whichever team won the annual rivalry game, the Nickel Trophy became the most legendary 75-pound of aluminum alloy in the Dakotas.

“It seemed liked every year leading up to that game, the Nickel Trophy at some point would be stolen from the one school,” Kleinsasser said. “It just kind of enveloped both campuses student-wise.

You go into classes and people were talking about it. It was just a frenzy week and it was pretty exciting.”

Losing the game would turn into a yearlong curse for the players and coaches who would have to answer questions about why they didn’t win. Whether coaches were on recruiting trips or players were at social gatherings, you’d want to be on the side that had gotten the best of the rival team that year to avoid eating crow.

The game itself was so personal for North Dakota native, Lennon, he jumped at the opportunity to join the UND staff in 1988 after NDSU had won seven straight games in the rivalry.

“You wanted to correct the ship and get that feeling of having the better football team,” Lennon said. “Trust me, it was a 365-day-a-year type of deal. I don’t think there was a day I woke up and didn’t think about it.”

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The nicheness of the rivalry within the

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grand landscape of college football caused it to become a sort of a quasispectacle around the nation. The growing popularity of the matchup reached its apex when NFL Films sent a camera crew to Fargo, Grand Forks Rocky Hager leads his team onto the field at and even the small Memorial Stadium for the 1994 playoff game.

NDSU would lose 14-7. town of Mayville to capture the essence of the North Dakota hell,” Hager said. But those 364 quickly Super Bowl played on the frozen plains turned into 14 when NDSU went back of the upper Midwest. up to Grand Forks during the first round of the playoffs and upset the In 1995, “Football America” featured favored Fighting Sioux in 1995. “It’s fun. a 10-minute segment about the week It’s part of the spirit and camaraderie leading up to the NDSU-UND rivalry and it gets pretty intense in more than football game for its 95-minute long a way or two.”

TV movie. The late Steve Sabol from NFL Films was the movie’s executive Today, Hager is the assistant football producer and featured interviews with coach at The College of New Jersey and Rocky Hager and Roger Thomas on the his adversary, Thomas, is the athletic practice field, fans at a small diner in director at the University of Mary in Mayville and footage of the 21-7 UND Bismarck. And every now and then, victory. Today, the clip still lives on Thomas said he’ll run into either an YouTube with more than 15,000 views.

NDSU or UND fan wanting to talk about the games played almost 20 One of the stars of the program was years ago, “Everybody seems to have a Rocky Hager. With his fiery attitude, favorite in the game.” youthful energy and three-game losing streak to UND in his back pocket, his UND had grabbed the upper hand over passion for the rivalry was transparent NDSU by the late 90s and early 2000s to the thousands watching at home. winning the last five of six matchups.

Then, as quickly as UND’s success “I made a statement on ‘Football came, the pageantry and passion of the America’ that if you win the game, it’s annual NDSU-UND football game was good. But if you lose, it’s 364 days of gone.

JIM KLEINSASSER FORMER UND FOOTBALL PLAYER

Kleinsasser played for UND and was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 1999, and he never left. The Carrington, N.D., native played for UND from 1995-1998 and was a four-time first team All-North Central Conference. Kleinsasser became the only Division II football player selected as Gannett News Service All-American in 1998. He played 13 seasons with the Vikings and scored six touchdowns.

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2000

NDSU 16 UND 13 FARGO, ND

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2001

UND 19 NDSU 7 GRAND FORKS, ND

UND DIVISION II NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

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2002

UND 12 NDSU 6 FARGO, ND

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he college athletic landscape is forever changing and evolving as institutions are strategically positioning themselves for a better today and promising future.

This reality struck the proudest and strongest Division II league, the North Central Conference, in the early 2000s.

Major waves began striking the NCC when Morningside College, one of the NCC’s charter members, jumped ship to NAIA for all of its athletics in 2002, and the next year, Northern Colorado announced its much-anticipated jump to Division I after the 2002-03 season.

Next was NDSU and South Dakota State University.

“Those rumblings of that Division I had been going on in conference meetings for a couple of years,” then UND athletic director Roger Thomas said about the NCC. Thomas also said Fred Oien, athletic director of South Dakota State, and NDSU athletic director Gene Taylor advocated for the conference to make a push to Division I. “I remember Joe Chapman (NDSU President, 1999-2009) and the president from Northern Colorado (Hank Brown) were particularly interested in talking to the league about going,” Taylor said.

“And when that was shut down, we each individually started looking at it.”

NDSU’s Gunar Gossard rushes UND quarterback Kevin Klancher in the 1994 quarterfinal playoff game.

UND would beat NDSU twice that season.

Taylor became the athletic director at NDSU in the summer of 2001. After going six months without an AD, Taylor made it his mission when he arrived to have a comprehensive study and internal assessment of NDSU Athletics.

NDSU made it official Aug. 30, 2002.

They were to leave the North Central Conference and Division II after the 2003-04 season and start the five-year transition processes to Division I for all sports.

“They were a Division I program in the way they did things, but they didn’t know they were,” Taylor said in a 2014 interview about his research on NDSU before coming to Fargo. “So when I came in and that was one of the changes with President Chapman, I knew it was going to be a lot easier than what everyone thought because the support mechanisms were already at a high-level, above any other Division II programs.”

Meanwhile, the NCC was going through one of its largest turnover of schools since its conception in 1922. It lost three of its five remaining charter members in a span of two years and lost one of its strongest members in Northern Colorado. The conference introduced the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 2004, but it was dangling on to hope.

So, was it a no-brainer then to make the transition for NDSU? “It was,” said Taylor.

After NDSU and SDSU took the plunge toward Division I, effective starting the 2004 season, UND had a decision to make: Do we follow in their footsteps or do we stay at the same level and continue the success? This turned out

GENE TAYLOR

FORMER NDSU ATHLETIC DIRECTOR Taylor is known for guiding North Dakota State University into the Division I era. He was the athletic director at NDSU for 13 years and last year Taylor accepted the deputy director of athletics at the University of Iowa. In his final year with NDSU, the football team won its third straight FCS championship and the men’s basketball team advanced to its second NCAA Tournament.

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to be a much more difficult question to answer in Grand Forks than in Fargo.

UND’s hockey program was flourishing in Division I with national championships in 1997 and 2000, but could it afford to move the rest of its 17 programs to the Division I level?

Dale Lennon, who became the head coach of the football team in 1999 after Thomas moved to the athletic director position, said he was asked for his input on whether or not UND should go Division I. “I just said that we can’t let NDSU go without us going with them.”

“I think what happened is you had some people at the University of North Dakota (that) weren’t all that familiar with the UND-NDSU rivalry and they just didn’t see the big picture,” Lennon said. “Especially at the Division II level of what was happening on the national scale and how Division II was in the process of becoming more and more watered down. And UND failed to see that and that’s why they didn’t make the transition, which at that time too, I just did not think it was the right decision for us. We should be making sure we didn’t lose that connection with North Dakota State.”

RIVALRY TIMELINE

“It gets pretty complicated because it ties into all the things that were going on with UND at that time,” Thomas explained. “I will say that it was a school’s decision to not make the move to the next level and whether you agreed or disagreed with the school’s decision you were going to live with it.”

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In the summer of 1999, Dr. Charles Kupchella became the 10th president at UND. Before arriving in Grand Forks, Kupchella served as Provost and Professor of Biology at Southeast Missouri State University beginning in 1993.

In 1991, Southeast Missouri made the transition to Division I athletics in the Ohio Valley Conference and what could go wrong went wrong.

The men’s basketball team had two winning seasons in its first nine years in Division I and fired its head coach Ron Shumate in 1997 amid an NCAA investigation. Later, it was discovered that the university and its athletic department were paying its basketball players. The basketball team was placed on probation for three years and their average men’s basketball attendance dropped by nearly 2,000 from 1991-97.

The football team struggled, too. They went 33-67 from 1991-1999 and failed to finish better than fourth in the Ohio Valley.

The trepidation felt by UND’s leaders, starting with Kupchella, could have been a symptom of past failures at previous schools. UND was thriving at the Division II level just as Southeast Missouri State had a decade before.

But once the transition was made to Division I, the success in athletics didn’t translate. To this day, Southeast Missouri is climbing its way back to relevancy and was voted to finish sixth in the Ohio Valley for football this season.

“People then thought that the difference between Division II and 1-AA (FCS) was this humongous gap and it just wasn’t that big of a gap,” Lennon said.

“The perception was, this Division II program would never be able to compete at the Division I level and that was just a false perception.”

Past failures at other schools to successfully make a smooth transition could have been a part of the equation, but there were other tangible challenges facing UND in the early 2000s.

Beginning with the “Fighting Sioux” nickname controversy that swirled around UND athletics like the plague.

You include an array of new facilities with the construction of the Ralph Engelstad Arena, Alerus Center and Betty Engelstad Sports Center; revenue wasn’t going into the athletic department like it did when UND athletics were played on campus.

“There were a lot of sidebars going on and the school was trying to keep their arms around everything that was happening,” Thomas said about the turmoil in Grand Forks nearly 15 years ago.

UND would remain in Division II athletics thus breaking one of the longest rivalries in college football.

NDSU and UND wouldn’t play on the gridiron for the foreseeable future.

CHARLES KUPCHELLLA FORMER UND PRESIDENT

In 1999, Kupchella became the 10th president in UND history, and in 2008, he decided to retire. Kupchella was president when the Ralph Engelstad Arena was constructed with the help of a $100 million donation by Ralph Engelstad himself. Today, Kupchella is an author and lives with his wife Adele in Pennsylvania.

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2003

UND 28 NDSU 21 (OT) GRAND FORKS, ND

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eciding who’s to blame for the NDSU-UND football game not returning sooner has been a polarizing debate to say the least.

Reasons have been given on both sides, but an absolute answer has not, and probably never will be, ascertained.

In 2003, North Dakota’s two most prominent institutions were at the same crossroad and went different directions, leaving more questions than answers in their respective paths as to why they didn’t link up until 12 years down the road.

At the time of NDSU making its transition to Division I, there was a clear-cut answer as to why UND didn’t schedule NDSU. “The reasons were at that time, UND would have been penalized under the D-II playoff system for playing a D-I team,” former WDAZ sports director Pat Sweeney said.

UND learned its lesson from North Alabama in 2003 when the Lions went undefeated in the regular season but were seeded behind one-loss UND in the D-II playoffs because one of their victories came against Jacksonville State, a member of the Division I-AA Ohio Valley Conference. North Alabama would eventually meet with UND in the semifinals, a game UND would win 2922 at the Alerus Center.

A Herd of Bison, including the great Joe Toth, bring down a UND running back in the 1994 quarterfinal. The Herd only allowed two touchdowns, but were still defeated.

“Before we made our announcement (to move Division I), Roger (Thomas) and I had talked about, in general, just the decision to go to Division I or not, how that would impact not only the football game but all the sports,” former NDSU athletic director Gene Taylor said. “Then I think once we finally announced it, Roger and I talked for a while more and he basically called and said, ‘We don’t see us playing you guys any longer.’”

It was an unfortunate way to end the rivalry, but in the end, both programs felt like they were doing what they thought was best, said Sweeney. He also recalled what then-UND head coach Dale Lennon said after UND made its announcement to remain at the Division II level. “I would love to play NDSU. I played them as a player, assistant coach and head coach. Believe me, nobody likes to play them more than I do, and nobody likes beating them more than I do,” Lennon said at the podium. “I’ve looked at this every different way, and it would not be to our benefit to play them.”

UND would decline football games in 2004 and 2005 while NDSU was filling out its schedule during its transition to Division I. In fact, UND wouldn’t schedule a game in any sport against NDSU until the spring of 2010 when the two baseball teams met at a neutral site in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis.

With its in-state rival out of the question for scheduling, Taylor was put in a bind trying to fill out schedules for each NDSU program that was competing without a conference affiliation.

It’s hard to remember a rough period in the Division I transition for NDSU, but the football team had a stint in the Great West Football Conference for football from 2004-2007. Soccer was in the United Soccer Conference in 2006, and wrestling, men’s and women’s track and field, softball, baseball, men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball were all independent from the fall of 2004 through the spring of 2007. The only exception was the wrestling team who entered the Western Wrestling Conference during the 2006-07 season.

DEAN BRESCiANI NDSU PRESIDENT

In May 2010, Bresciani was named the 14th president of NDSU. He spent time as vice president for student affairs and a professor in the department of educational administration at Texas A&M University from 2004-2010.

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Many theorized the stress of scheduling for an independent program that ultimately weighed into the decision as to whether NDSU should schedule UND when UND entered Division I. The thought was that Taylor was returning the favor, or lack thereof, to UND. But new athletic director Brian Faison claimed scheduling NDSU wasn’t at the top of their agenda when he arrived in the spring of 2008.

“There wasn’t any intensity to it or speed to it at the time,” Faison said about scheduling NDSU. In 2008, UND started playing football in the Great West, a league Taylor helped establish in 2004. Taylor’s mission was to give NDSU a home for its football program while it was going through its five-year transition. NDSU announced in March of 2007 that it would ultimately split for the Missouri Valley Football Conference in 2008 and finally give its other programs conference affiliation in the Summit League.

The plan, or so it seemed, was for UND to spend the next few years in the Great West as NDSU had and then look for a conference that had an automatic qualifier for postseason play like the Summit League and MVFC. But another obstacle would emerge for UND during the its transition.

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“The thing that complicated things for the University of North Dakota was the nickname controversy that was going on,” Lennon said. Lennon

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jumped ship for the Southern Illinois University head coaching job after the 2007 football season. “In fact, that was probably as bad of timing as the school could possibly have. To be going through this transition and to also be dealing with this emotional conflict of losing your nickname.”

Earlier in 2005, the NCAA banned the usage of American Indian mascots, deeming “at least” 18 schools on the list of schools with “hostile or abusive” nicknames. UND’s “Fighting Sioux” nickname was on the list. This prompted tribal resolutions, lawsuits, state law, a public vote and turmoil during a delicate decision-making time for UND. (They announced they were going Division I a year later).

While UND was a full-time member of the Great West, Tom Douple, commissioner of the Summit League, made it clear in April 2009 that UND wouldn’t be considered for its membership unless it abolished the nickname. One year later, voters chose to remove the nickname and on August 15, 2011, the nickname was retired.

After the challenge of overcoming the nickname debacle, everything seemed on track for UND to join the Summit League and begin playing its former in-state rival in at least the majority of their sports. Then a sudden twist came on Oct. 29, 2010.

“I will never forget it,” WDAY sports director Dom Izzo said. “It was a Friday afternoon, we got the email that the

Summit League visit had been canceled and two days later, the Big Sky announced that they were taking UND into the league.”

Why? “Football,” Faison said. “What he (Douple) couldn’t do is offer a home for football and the Missouri Valley at that time didn’t indicate any interest in expansion.”

Then, on November 3, the University of South Dakota, who was making the transition along the same timeline as UND and had reportedly agreed to join the Big Sky along with UND, changed its mind.

Lennon couldn’t believe the phone call he received.

“I was actually contacted by the Missouri Valley Football Conference and was asked, ‘Well, do you think the University of South Dakota would be interested in the Missouri Valley (Football) Conference?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure they would be very interested.’ The next day, UND accepted, and the following day, the University of South Dakota declined (the Big Sky) and took the Missouri Valley and Summit League deal instead.”

UND was on an island belonging to the Big Sky which was composed of institutions in California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Colorado and Arizona. They finally joined the

RANDY HEDBERG NDSU QUARTERBACKS COACH

Hedberg is entering his second season as the quarterbacks coach at NDSU. The Parshall, N.D., native coached quarterbacks and wide receivers at UND from 1996-98. He then became the head coach at St. Cloud State for nine years and defeated the Bison in their last Division II meeting in 2003, 33-30 in overtime.

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conference in 2012, and their football team has gone 8-16 in conference play since.

With UND unable to realign with former North Central Conference opponents, the attention of the public turned back to resuming the NDSUUND rivalry as a non-conference matchup.

In April 2011, the two sides nearly closed a home-and-home deal in 2015 and 2017, but talks fell through.

“My last year or two, we started talking about playing the game and I had thrown out some scenarios to Brian, none of which he considered,” Taylor said. The 2011 proposal was sent back to Taylor, which he countered with a single-game offer in 2015 played in Fargo.

“I don’t know what he was thinking in terms of how he felt, why he wouldn’t say, ‘Yes’ before, but I felt we honestly, in a little bit of the bargaining, we had a little bit of the advantage in terms of the negotiations,” Taylor said, now the deputy director for intercollegiate athletics at the University of Iowa. “We were selling out all of our home games.

We’d been able to get teams into Fargo that were new teams and we were able to maintain.”

Faison declined Taylor’s offer and proposed moving the aforementioned 2017 game in Grand Forks to a later date in 2018, 2019 or 2020.

“It’s hard because the Alerus Center

only seats 10,000, and NDSU games are now drawing around 19,000 for home games so I don’t know if they (UND) can host a game,” Izzo said, giving his take on the negotiations. “I don’t know if that means they should never have a game up there, but it’s going to be awfully hard, and NDSU is in the captain seat. They can dictate if you want to play the game. And UND has no other option here. They have to play at NDSU.” The final proposal sent by Taylor before his departure was finalized. NDSUUND would renew its football rivalry in 2015 and 2019 - with both games played in the FargoDome and UND guaranteed $125,000 for the first game and $140,000 for the second - plus 500 tickets and the option to bring cheerleaders and band. “(UND) Coach (Bubba) Schweigert called me up,” Lennon said, “And he said, ‘Okay, what do you think about this agreement?’”

I told him it’s not really a great agreement for the University of North Dakota, but I said, ‘Grab it.’”

On, Aug. 22, 2014, the two games were officially scheduled, 22 days after Taylor left his AD position at NDSU to join the athletic administrative staff at Iowa.

Interim NDSU athletic director Prakash Mathew said in the official NDSU press release, “Gene worked hard to find a solution that would be agreeable to both schools. I am happy that Gene’s offer has come to fruition.”

The 12-year hiatus was scheduled to be lifted. Through the reclassification of North Dakota’s two largest institutions, conference realignment drama and years of back and forth between the administrations on both sides, a plan to resume the football game was accomplished.

“I’m so thankful they’re playing,” said Thomas, now the athletic director at the University of Mary in Bismarck.

“For North Dakota, a state with no pro teams, I always thought this is it.

This is the Super Bowl and for literally everybody to enjoy.”

For now, NDSU’s current athletic director Matt Larsen and UND’s Faison haven’t discussed the future. But maybe that’s okay. As both schools lay the foundation of their future at the Division I level, the two schools will continue to push forward doing what they believe is best for their respective programs.

As Lennon said, the NCC, once the defining power and jewel of Division II, is gone. The peak of the NDSU-UND rivalry is gone. The Nickel Trophy is gone. But for one day this September, fans across North Dakota, in Kelly green or Bison yellow, can stop pointing their finger, relive a once defining game for each program and experience something only North Dakota can offer: a re-installment of Division II’s oldest and most revered rivalry.

ROBERT KELLEY UND PRESIDENT

Kelley became the 11th president of UND in the summer of 2008.

Before coming up north, Kelley was the dean of the College of Health Sciences and professor of medical education and public health at the University of Wyoming. Among his prestigious titles, Kelley was also a teacher at the University of California, Berkeley. He will retire from his position at UND in January 2016.

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MATT LARSEN

or Matt Larsen’s office to get We invade NDSU athletic direct ics going forward and to see some answers about NDSU athlet UND that we don’t know about. if there are future plans to play landscape of college football.

Also, he gives us his take on the 62

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MATT LARSEN

TALKS FOOTBALL Interview by Joe Kerlin Photo by J. Alan Paul Photography

BISON ILLUSTRATED: So

something's happening at NDSU this fall that hasn't happened in 12 years. When did you first learn about the NDSU-UND football rivalry?

MATT LARSEN: “As part of my

research of the position (athletic director), I did a lot of research online, Googling as many obscure things and everyday things regarding NDSU and one of the things I came across was a documentary or film done about the NDSU-UND Rivalry ("When They Were Kings"). It was back in the Division II era and it really highlighted football and women’s basketball, specifically. They talked about those two rivalries, and it was some really good information because it was really my first look in on how spirited the rivalry was in the Division II days. Once you get onto campus and you talk to alumni and you talk to fans, you talk to people in really the older generation who were a part of it. They went to those games as kids and they went as adults and they went as parents and what that rivalry meant to them. You really get a good flavor of what, again, is two really good fan bases and so not surprising when you have two state institutions who play each other regularly.”

BI: So the game’s return was

already put into place when you got here. Is there anything in the works for a game after 2019?

ML: “When I first started, the two-game contract was already

in place. UND coming here in '15 and then coming back in '19.

Really beyond that, there haven’t been any discussions about any additional games. You and I have both talked about how important scheduling is, and it’s important for us to have six home games here every year for our fan base, ticket revenue and what it means for the community. It also sets up our football program for as much success as possible.”

BI: Had Gene Taylor ever

mentioned the UND rivalry to you before you took the job?

ML: “He hasn’t specifically. I’ve heard a little bit about it, not necessarily from Gene, but what transpired after NDSU made the transition to go to Division I, and I think at the time, people at UND, whether it was the fan base or whoever it was, they didn’t agree. I fall on the side of each institution has to do what’s best for it at the time and what the institution thinks is best, and I think that’s what NDSU did and I’m sure that’s what UND did at the same time, too. They did what they thought was best for its institution and we had to do what we thought was best. So, was there some bad blood? Was there maybe some misunderstandings?

Potentially, but I think ultimately each program had to do what’s best for their program.”

BI: So it sounds like the Nickel

trophy won't makes its return.

Do you have anything else planned for the game?

ML: “Really for us, it’s a nonconference game. One of the

MATT LARSEN

things and talking with Coach Klieman, because of the success we’ve had especially most recently in the past four years, every single week is the Super Bowl for every single team we’re playing. They want to be the ones to knock off the number one team.

They want to beat the Bison."

BI: Former UND head coach and

current Southern Illinois head coach Dale Lennon expressed the importance of a football program having a rivalry game. Do you share the same philosophy?

ML: “Yes. I think rivalries are what makes college football strong, and a lot of it usually comes from conference foes, specifically. So we’ve developed some pretty good rivalries with UNI and South Dakota State and some of the other schools within the Missouri Valley Football Conference. Illinois State coming off last year and when you know you’re going to play year in and year out your fan bases are into it. They buy into the rivalry and the contest and keeping track of who wins and loses."

BI: What would need to happen for the UND game to be played every year?

ML: “I think you’d have to be in the same conference. Again, scheduling is so important and so for us to play one game, one team every year, they’d have to be in our conference.”

BI: Speaking of scheduling, how does the Big Ten eliminating FCS games affect NDSU’s scheduling?

ML: “It affects us on a couple of levels.

I think first and foremost it affects us because when we look at FBS games, one, we think it’s important philosophically for the program.

Two, we want to play teams in our region if we can. With the Big Ten not scheduling anymore, it really takes most teams in our region, out of the mix. The other thing is it takes 14 teams out of possibly playing FBS games so when you have the Patriot League and Northeast Conference at the FCS level that have now upped 64

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their scholarships and play FBS games.

So you’re adding for FCS teams that can play, you’re taking away FBS teams, the pool of FCS games shrink, and so it’s difficult enough now for people to return our calls to FCS opponents. So now when you shrink the pool, if they can play another school versus playing North Dakota State, I think they’re going to take the other school."

BI: Do you feel like the conference

realignment will start to settle down now with the teams at the top finally settling into their new conferences?

ML: “I don’t. I think we may have one more because, with all the autonomy legislation that’s come out, I think you’re seeing a great separation. There was always a separation between the 10 FBS conferences, the Power 5 and the next five. I think with some of the autonomy legislation, you’re going to see a great gap there so I think there’s going to be some decision making at that next five level as to do you keep trying to chase the Texases of the world, or do you try to find a different level, a different niche? I think there’s going to be some, there’s going to continue to be a couple more adjustments within the next couple of years.”

BI: Do you ever see

the Missouri Valley expanding to gobble up more teams in the region?

ML: “I would never ever say that anything is possible or impossible. Because I think we’ve seen in college athletics how much change and conference realignment and other things have happened in the last couple of years. So I think there’s always potential for that, but I think right now, if you talked to the Missouri Valley, you talk to the institutions of the Missouri Valley Football Conference, we’re very content with the number of teams we have right now. It’s a good balance. It’s a tough conference from top to bottom, week in and week out. This year you look at

the Top 25 and we have six teams in the Top 25 of the 10 in the conference."

BI: What does it mean for NDSU

to be in such a prestigious football conference?

ML: “I’ll tell ya, if you ask Coach Klieman, he’ll tell you that week in and week out, there are no weeks off in the Missouri Valley. All eight weeks you’re going up against a really tough opponent, you have to prepare. There are no marshmallows in this league.

But on the flipside, it’s also a really good thing. It helps in recruiting to recruit kids who are going to be able to play in the best FCS conference in the country and also the ability to, if you don’t win the Missouri Valley as the champion, you have a really good chance at getting an at-large bid (into the playoffs). By playing in a really difficult conference, you have the ability, if you don’t win it, you’re going to get in."

BRIAN FAISON

It's apparent that what's happening at NDSU Athletics is special, with the amount of success they've experienced in a short time at the Division I level. But what's going on with our neighbors to the north? The University of North Dakota has been participating in Division I athletics since 2008 and we sat down with their athletic director, Brian Faison, to get caught up on all the happenings at UND. As the old expression goes: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Here's our attempt to do just that.

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WHAT’S UP WITH UND Interview by Joe Kerlin Photo by J. Alan Paul Photography

BISON ILLUSTRATED: What was

the first step you took with the Division I transition when you came in?

BRIAN FAISON: “They (UND) made

the commitments and they did the paperwork that had to be done with the NCAA at the time.

Then, the heavy lifting had to be done with the NCAA in terms of process. Now, that’s changed dramatically from what NDSU went through and what we went through. Now, it’s very different.

You got your exploratory years.

You get a couple of years of getting your scheduling up, but you don’t count in terms of scheduling purposes for teams and mainly at the end of the day, you go through a site visitation from an NCAA committee that’s made up of faculty reps, athletic directors and presidents. They come in and you have to review all these materials and all the different performance parts of your program to see if you’re actually operating on a Division I level. So everything from compliance to scheduling to budget to Title IX, all those kinds of issues. It was a very involved process and we had staff that were really great at drilling down on detail because really that’s it at the end of the day. You have to be doing it, but you have to be able to spell it out and lay it out. There was a lot of policy development and obviously, I had never been in a Division II program, so when I got here, theoretically, we were operating Division I that year.”

BI: How would you say it’s been a successful transition for this program?

BF: “I think we do an excellent

job of compliance with the NCAA rules and regulations.

Academically, our studentathletes are off the chart. We got the highest, every semester I’ve been here we’ve been fortunate to hit a new GPA record every year for teams. Last spring we had an average of 3.25 for 420 student athletes, 18 teams had a 3.0 or better, we actually had 66 kids with a 4.0 … Another important thing for me is community service; I think particularly in a community like Grand Forks, you want to give back. You do because you want them to be part of what you’re doing, but you need to give back. We had over 9,000 volunteer hours last year, which is far and away the most in our conference, the Big Sky. We’re proud of that as well and in certain sports we’ve been able to be competitive and step up in other sports. We still have a way to go, but you can see it coming.”

BI: Where are some areas UND

still needs to get better at to make this transition a complete success?

BF: “I would argue nobody

is ever there. You want to constantly strive to position your program so you can compete for championships, you want to get to postseason play, you want to continue to get to postseason play on a consistent basis, while graduating, while making sure you’re engaging in the community.

I think for all programs you’re

BRIAN FAISON

always in a state of trying to get better, trying to improve. And we’ve had some good advances in facilities here on campus and just off campus, too. Our partnership with the parks and rec here in town with the Choice Wellness Center for tennis, it’s as good of a facility as anybody in the league. It’s great … The Alerus Center is great for football. The Betty is great, and there will be some major improvements over there this coming year. We have a new sound system so you can actually understand what’s being said, and we’re going to get video boards in there the year after this. So that’s coming up.

And, of course, the Ralph (Engelstad Arena) is unbelievable.”

BI: So pretty soon there won’t be any traces of UND ever being a Division II school?

BF: “Well, I don’t think there is now,

but you obviously need to continue to earn your stripes.”

BI: When did you know the “Fighting Sioux” nickname had to go?

BF: “It’s been an issue for long before I

got here, and it has ebbed and flowed in terms of the intensity in trying to deal with it. Certainly, within a couple months of me being here, the NCAA was very clear. And at that point, that’s not a battle, unfortunately, that you can win. So the decision had to be made and we were looking for a conference for a permanent home at the Division I level, and that was a point of resistance and concern. The NCAA was very clear that we were not coming off the hostile and abusive list until the situation was addressed.

It was pretty quick in the process, certainly by December or January of my first year.”

BI: What happened with the Summit League? It looked like you guys were going to be in it.

BF: “Football. Tom (Douple, Summit

League commissioner) did everything he could and obviously there was a lot of attraction at the time for us with the Summit League. What he (Douple) couldn’t do is offer a home for football and the Missouri Valley at

that time didn’t indicate any interest in expansion; of course they did 48 hours later with South Dakota.”

BI: Advantages of the Big Sky? BF: “Number one, I think you have

automatic qualifiers … automatic qualifiers are so important, and you have it in every sport the Big Sky competes in so that was important at any institution. Great staff, the conference has a revenue share which is unique in FCS and that’s always a plus. But the big thing was the sports matched up with the institutions.”

BI: Has the Big Sky discussed it at

all in terms of everybody going with COA?

BF: “There’s been conversations, but

not a whole lot, surprisingly, not a whole lot of conversation. It would not surprise me, not too far down the road there was some stronger conversation about a couple sports. Truthfully, it has not come up in a significant way.”

BI: How did your alumni and booster react when the football game against NDSU was announced?

BF: “I think the most important

group for me were the former football student-athletes. And that was one of the things that ultimately swayed me at the end because they really wanted to see this game played again … It was really interesting talking to guys, and it was very much a strong consensus that said, ‘Let’s get it started again. We need to be playing that game again.’ And it was so great, and their memories win or lose, were so intense about it. You just want to be able to do it again.”

BI: Was your head football coach

Bubba Schweigert one of the guys leading the way?

BF: “He might have been. Bubba might have been.”

BI: Have you looked at into cost-ofattendance for the entire athletic department, not just the men’s and women’s hockey programs?

BF: “It’s a cost issue at this point. Plus, (it’s a) competitive advantage in terms of recruiting. The issue for both men’s and women’s hockey is you have Big Ten teams that are doing it, and there is a recruiting advantage for them, a perceived recruiting advantage. So for both of those programs it was.

‘We have got to do this to protect the enterprise.’ And from an equity perspective, women’s hockey made perfect sense. Plus, they actually have more Big Ten schools in their league than we do on the men’s side.”

BRIAN FAISON UND ATHLETIC DIRECTOR • Graduate of the University of Missouri (1972) • Beginning his seventh year at UND • Helped secure membership to Big Sky Conference for 14 UND teams • Secured men’s and women’s swimming and baseball in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) • Leadership role in the formation of the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) for men's and women's hockey • Special assistant to the president (2004-08) and director of athletics (1999-04) at New Mexico State University • National director of development for the National Children’s Cancer Society (1995-99) • Director of athletics at Indiana State University (1988-95) • Assistant athletics director for development at the University of Louisville (1984-88) • Assistant athletics director for promotions and fundraising at Illinois State University (1979-84) • Assistant manager for athletics public relations (1978-79) and assistant director for alumni activities (1974-78) at the University of Missouri

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NDSU FOOTBALL

QUICK HITS

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NDSU FOOTBALL OFFENSIVE STAR WATCH

DEFENSIVE STAR WATCH

UND FOOTBALL

QUICK HITS

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UND FOOTBALL OFFENSIVE STAR WATCH

DEFENSIVE STAR WATCH

FINDING THE NICKEL

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FINDING THE

NICKEL A

By Joe Kerlin Photos by Paul Flessland

s the unified symbol of statewide dominance in North Dakota, the Nickel Trophy is 75 pounds of pride, glory and bragging rights. Since UND won the last custody battle in 2003, there have been a select few who have laid their eyes on this chunk of aluminum alloy. The mystery of its whereabouts led us to Grand Forks to finally catch a glimpse of history.

Walking into the Hyslop Sports Center in Grand Forks is like striding into a time machine. The double doors are old and heavy, the tile and walls are worn and battered. It reminded me of pacing in the dark hallways of the Bison Sports Arena, minus the crashing of weights coming from the ceiling and gigantic “Snorty” logo painted on the far north wall. Arriving with the title of “NDSU magazine guy” can be intimidating because you’re not only walking into the administrative offices of an instate rival, you’re walking on their turf, their history and their tradition.

We’d come for the afternoon in hopes of snapping a photo of the famous Nickel Trophy, which no one in our party, consisting of me, a photographer and a sales rep, had seen.

Frankly, it seems like not very many people from NDSU have seen the Nickel Trophy since UND won the last game 28-21 in an overtime thriller in 2003. This majestic piece of football lore in North Dakota has been in Grand Forks, causing a detached Bison fan base to lose an emotional connectivity to the symbol of victory.

Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the sentiment around Bison Nation. Today, they’re more worried about a browner trophy the football team has earned in Frisco the past four years.

But back before the FCS championships and national attention, before NDSU was ESPN’s darling and before the Missouri Valley Football Conference, the Nickel had been the goal. No matter your record or what happened a week or month prior, obtaining the Nickel was NDSU’s “Granddaddy of Them All.”

FINDING THE NICKEL

the closet door. He left the light off as he peeked his head in, scanning the small closet filled with clutter. “It’s not in here,” Magill said with a look of confusion. “What’s not in here?” I inquired, trying to sound concerned that they’d misplaced the Nickel Trophy prior to our visit. He retorted with a quick grumble, “The stand.”

The longest winning streak by both schools is 12.

UND’s run was from 1953-64 and NDSU’s was from 1981-92.

Discouraged, my fantasy of the Nickel Trophy being held captive in a random closet in the heart of UND territory wasn’t true.

“I made a statement on ‘Football America’ that if you win the game, it’s good. But if you lose the game, it’s 364 days of hell,” Rocky Hager said, recalling his time in the rivalry 19 years after his departure from NDSU. “Because everybody asks you if you’re going to get them this year and all that type of stuff. It’s fun. It’s part of the spirit and camaraderie, and it gets pretty intense in more than a way or two.”

Imagine 365 days of stress, battling for an oversized replica of the buffalo nickel, spanning 22 inches in diameter and two inches thick. The meaning behind bringing back the Nickel to your university has gotten coaches fired. From Pat Behrns in the ‘80s to Bob Babich in the early 2000s, your job and your livelihood were in the hands of winning that particular game.

The Nickel was introduced to the annual NDSU-UND football game in 1938 when NDSU edged UND 17-13 in Fargo. The trophy is 250 times larger than its inspiration, the buffalo nickel, also known as the Indian Head nickel.

Sculpted by James Earle Fraser, the 78

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buffalo nickel was produced from 1913 to 1938.

We were finally inside the waiting area of the UND Athletic office when Associate Athletic Director and Chief Financial Officer Randy Magill and New Media Editor Matt Schill met our team. We were instructed to walk through the Hyslop corridors to the gymnasium, ground zero for many great battles between the UND and NDSU women’s basketball teams.

Our photographer and sales rep went with Schill to set up the backdrop for the photo, and I followed Magill out of the gymnasium, deeper inside the Hyslop, near a back room. At the intersection of two long hallways, in the corner of the administrative office wing, we came to a small room. It was an unoccupied office filled with miscellaneous pieces of equipment, some clothing and old UND gear. At the end of the room was a door. Was the Nickel hiding in this abandoned closet the whole time?

The 50-something Magill pressed his glasses against his face and opened

Magill led me out of the corner supply room and back to the gymnasium. We kept walking until we reached the east end of the gymnasium, where the garage door was open with sunshine forcing its way through onto the rubber sport-court material on the surface of the gym. We walked to his light blue Oldsmobile with North Carolina plates. Had the Nickel been inside Magill’s car this whole time and why no North Dakota plates? My anticipation was hitting its climax until small talk about golf and the beginning of football camp softened the tension between eager journalist and buttoned-up administrator.

You see, Magill moved to Grand Forks last December to become the UND Athletics’ CFO. He had been at UND for less than a year and he apparently knew the whereabouts of the 77-year-old Nickel. Or at least I thought he did. Remember, this is the same trophy that has been stolen back and forth between NDSU and UND and they were letting someone who was working at UNC-Wilmington less than a year ago hold it while a staff of journalists from Fargo were in town?

The situation seemed off.

“I forgot my keys,” Magill said once we reached the car. He was fishing around his pocket the entire walk out of the Hyslop and had me dangling on a cliff of expectations about to take my first real-life look at the Nickel.

FINDING THE NICKEL

As the temptation built, I followed back into the Hyslop to wait for Magill as he retrieved his keys. While inside, our photographer and Schill were constructing the backdrop. I went to look for a replacement stand for the Nickel to lean on while we took pictures. I retrieved a wooden box the UND athletes left out from an agility workout and carried it over to the corner where the photos would be taken. This side task had pulled me away from Magill for less than two minutes. But once I placed the box on the ground next to our photographer’s feet, I looked up and saw a struggling Magill carrying the 75-pound Nickel through the east garage of the Hyslop before placing it on the ground to roll it over.

How in the devil did he sneak around me? I needed to confirm where the Nickel had come from. Did he suddenly find his keys in his pockets and retrieve the trophy from his car without me knowing? Was it even in his car? Was this all a misdirection plan to confuse me so I couldn’t

20 FACTS ABOUT THE

NICKEL

FINDING THE NICKEL

1. Weighs 75 pounds 2. Introduced in 1938 3. Two inches thick; 22 inches in diameter 4. UND and NDSU have each enjoyed a 12game winning streak 5. UND leads 62-45-3 all-time 6. UND leads 35-30 Nickel-winning record 7. UND won last three games 8. Last game was October 18, 2003; UND won 28-21 in Grand Forks 9. Blue Key service fraternity on each campus awards the Nickel trophy 10. Bison on one side and Indian head on the other 11. UND graduate Robert Kunkel came up with the idea for the trophy 12. Design inspiration from U.S. buffalo nickel

13. Buffalo nickel was first introduced in 1913 and discontinued the same year the trophy was introduced into the rivalry in 1938 14. Original designer of the buffalo nickel was James Earle Fraser 15. Nickel Trophy hasn’t left Grand Forks since 2008 after it traveled around for UND’s 125th Anniversary 16. In 1997, NDSU students stole the trophy and took pictures at the Grand Canyon and Niagara falls 17. A year later, UND students got the Memorial Union security codes and took the trophy back 18. First meeting in 1938: NDSU 17 UND 13 19. 250 times bigger than a five-cent piece 20. The Nickel has been present for every game since its introduction to the rivalry

FINDING THE NICKEL

confirm where the Nickel was coming from? The Nickel was certainly too heavy for him to retrieve safely by himself.

NDSU’s winning coin face shows a Bison

He didn’t want me to know where it came from. I had failed. UND had won.

It was 2003 all over again.

I scurried over to him to lend a hand in rolling the beast nickel next to the set.

There it was. The 75-pound aluminum alloy oversized 5-cent piece laying in front of me with the Sioux Indian head staring me in the face, smelling like a cup of spare change you’d leave in your car’s cup holder.

Magill said he’s one of the five people who know the whereabouts of the Nickel at all times. This group of trust, or email thread, is the only collection of individuals who can answer the question: where is the Nickel?

UND’s winning coin face shows an Indian head

“It doesn’t stay in one place for too long,” Magill said. How long had it been in his trunk? Of course, I couldn’t confirm it was in there at all, but I knew it wouldn’t be there for long.

The most notable act of thievery came when NDSU students dressed as UND janitors, broke into the football offices and stole the Nickel. Thus began a countrywide tour for the Nickel that included trips to Niagara Falls and Mount Rushmore.

As we shot photos of the trophy – taking a little more time with the Bison side exposed – athletes and young coaches would approach us, take out their smartphones and snap a picture of the chunk of history UND had the everlasting rights to. Who knows when it would see the light of day again?

“They held it up in front of Mount Rushmore and took a picture of it and sent it to me saying, ‘Hey, we have the Nickel and we’re here in front of Mount Rushmore with it,’” remembers Thomas, chuckling over the phone.

As quickly as it appeared, the Nickel was rolled away, outside the Hyslop and into, at least I think, Magill’s car.

The secrecy of the Nickels whereabouts is no surprise. The history of the Nickel being stolen from the safeguard of each university is a long and comical one.

“I know my office door in the stadium took a beating in this era due to some people from NDSU coming up to Grand Forks,” said former UND football coach and athletic director Roger Thomas.

“They would break in and look around trying to steal the Nickel back. They’d jimmy open the door in my office numerous times, and it looked pretty rough around the lock.”

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But one astonishing fact about the Nickel hijinks that’s lost within the annals of its theft stories is the fact the Nickel never missed a game. Even more notable, the Nickel was never defaced nor destroyed.

“That tells you something about the quality of the rivalry as well,” said Thomas. “There was the utmost respect from program-to-program despite all the trash talk and everything. That piece of history remained, and wasn’t lost or wasn’t melted down or thrown away. I think everybody on both sides should be proud that that’s a neat piece of history in this thing.”

Through its 65-year history, the trophy has been passed back and forth 23 times

with UND leading the trophy series 35-30, including wins in the last three contests.

UND and the Bison will not compete for the rights of the Nickel, as the trophy has been retired along with the memories of the North Central Conference and each institution’s Division II football days.

NDSU’s Blue Key Chapter President Jon Lipp said, “There’s a general lack of interest in producing a new trophy” for this year’s game because “the complexity of such an arrangement between organizations, athletic departments and the like.”

And maybe that’s the right call. Let this piece of history live in the past and the stories of it being stolen back and forth from the universities be buried with it, only to come out for a story during dinner parties.

As for the actual Nickel itself? Well, we know it’s still out there. Whether it’s in the trunk of a light blue Oldsmobile or a random supply closet within the depths of the old Hyslop, the 75-pound piece of heritage and tradition is still out there, waiting for the next opportunity to be oo’d and aah’d while on display at some UND alumni party.

BRIAN SHAWN

THE CALL LIFETIME OF A

Interview by Joe Kerlin Photo by J. Alan Paul Photography

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BRIAN SHAWN

B

rian Shawn is entering his fourth season as the play-byplay man for the TV side of Bison football coverage. This University of North Dakota graduate spent his college and early professional career in the heart of North Dakota sports, and the NDSU-UND football games were always a game he was looking forward to. We caught up with Shawn inside the FargoDome press box and asked him to give us his two cents on the football game this September and what he remembers most of the longest football rivalry on the prairie.

THE INTERVIEW BISON ILLUSTRATED: How many games have you done?

Brian Shawn: “This is my fourth season so maybe 25.”

BI: Will this be your biggest game?

BS: “Yeah, it will be the biggest game. No doubt. The games against South Dakota State and some of those have been big, too, but nothing like this.”

BI: Do you have your introduction ready for the game?

BS: “You know, I’ve been thinking about them in my head.

I don’t have them yet. I’m going to have to write them down because I don’t want to screw up the one chance I have of talking about this game for the first time. This is only going to happen once, and I’m in a unique position (laughs). I get to be on the television set and talking about it in front of the entire state and that’s an unbelievably cool feeling for me. Overwhelming and almost scary at times. There are times where I think about it all the time, and I’m like, when this game happens it’s going to be an unbelievable feeling.”

BI: Did you have any ties to either side of this rivalry before going to UND? BS: “You know, I didn’t. I grew up in the Twin Cities. Even down there, though, you still know about the rivalry. You still know it’s a big deal. People around the entire region know North Dakota-North Dakota State is a big deal because both programs have had a lot of success, in particular as Division II programs back in those days and not only

were they playing for spots in the playoffs, but they were playing for bragging rights in their state.

Any time there’s any trophy on the line like there was back then it was a big deal. It was a big deal to the communities, even some families that were divided. It was interesting to see that dynamic.”

BI: When was your first taste of the rivalry?

BS: “1997 game that was in Fargo. Good football game. I’ll never forget how crazy it was in here. Our car actually broke down on the way back from Fargo to Grand Forks so that’s actually what I remember most about that day. But I remember the atmosphere being pretty special and I mean that’s really the first time I’ve got to see the FargoDome as just this huge atmosphere and stadium, and that was really fun to see because I had not been part of anything like that before I witnessed that game for the first time.”

BI: Was there a moment during your trip down to Fargo where you first realized this was a big game for both sides?

BS: “I don’t know if it was anything where I saw hatred, but you could definitely tell you got the eye from Bison fans if you were wearing UND clothing. That ‘You’re in our town now.’ But the passion was there for both fan bases. The passion was always there for NDSU. It’s always been about football at NDSU, and UND hasn’t quite had the following consistently throughout the years like NDSU has, and I think that’s indicative of how many national championships each school has won.”

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BI: You were in the student media at the time so could you sense a different vibe around the team when NDSU week came?

BS: “I think there were always questions. Back then, Roger Thomas handed the reins over to Dale Lennon a little bit and Dale was always very outspoken about the rivalry because he was a North Dakota guy, and he was a part of those games as an assistant coach for many years so you could tell it was a different week for Dale. It felt personal to me for him. His first game at the Dome when he was with Southern Illinois, I asked him about that and he said, ‘I felt like it was going to be the same way when I brought Southern Illinois back for this game. I felt like it was going to feel like the UND games, and it didn’t. It didn’t feel the same to me. It didn’t have the same feel like I thought it would for me coming back in this building and playing NDSU. When you’re wearing UND compared to Southern Illinois, it’s a different feel.’ I remember him telling me that, and that’s when I thought, you know, it was a special deal back then because you have people that were a part of this game for a long time.”

BI: Did you know in 2003 that it was going to be the last game against these teams for a while?

BS: “We had an inkling it was going to be the last one for awhile. I think that’s why there was so much attention paid to it because with NDSU going up and UND staying down. At that time, UND didn’t want to play NDSU because they felt like it would hurt their playoff ability as a Division II program. So we kind of knew that was going to be the end for a while. We didn’t know how long that was going to be, and unfortunately, I think UND waited too long to make that move. Had they made that move at the same time, and you can go back and look at it and hindsight is a lot easier to see now. Roger Thomas thought he was doing the best thing for his school, Gene Taylor thought he was doing the best thing for his school and frankly, Joe Champman was the one here at NDSU who wanted to move up. Unfortunately, I think the animosity started there.”

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BI: Animosity between whom?

BS: “I would say it was more the presidents. Joe Chapman, there were some conversations, I think between Charles Kupchella and Joe Chapman that, it never got the same after that.

After NDSU went, those two, I don’t know, it did not seem like there was just some animosity between those two. I don’t know what it was. UND at the time still had Division I hockey so I think a lot of their focus was still on that program and they were having a lot of success at Division II for the first time in a long time for football and even basketball and some other sports. I don’t think they wanted to give that up for a shot at Division I athletics because they weren’t sure how it was going to work with everything that was changing in the landscape of college athletics.”

BI: So what’s taken so long to set up a nonconference game?

BS: “Well, to me, it had to make sense for NDSU. To me, I think UND wants the game, and I can see why. It’s the chance for them to play a national power. It’s their in-state rival. Their head coach (Bubba Schweigert) is from North Dakota. He clearly wants to play the game. NDSU, I don’t think they have much to gain from this game, and the only reason I say that is when you’re looking at recruiting battles against NDSU and UND, they’ve pretty much won them all in the past five years.”

BI: So were you surprised they finally compromised?

BS: “I wasn’t when UND was willing to say, ‘We’ll play two in Fargo.’ I can see why NDSU wouldn’t want to go

to Grand Forks because they have nothing to gain from going to Grand Forks because they can’t get tickets.

Their fan base would have a hard time getting in, and it’s not a big enough stadium for 11,000 people. Here you can squeeze another 7,000 in. I think for the guarantee that UND was willing to come to Fargo it was a no-brainer.

NDSU had to do it because to get people to agree to a nonconference game, and you’re talking about getting opponents to Fargo. It’s not easy to get opponents to come to Fargo, because they know how good NDSU is in this building.

They know, not only are you playing against a team that is so good and has won so many games over the past five years, it’s also physically what they do to you. Physically, teams don’t want to take that pounding. If you even look at teams records after they play NDSU, the next week it’s not very good because physically they’re just so whipped from having to go up against a team like NDSU.” BI: They play again in 2019, but do you see anything being scheduled after that?

BS: “As long as UND is willing to come down here. The reason being is that for NDSU it just doesn’t make sense to go up there. If they’re going to go on the road and play somebody, they should go on the road and play somebody so their fans can travel and actually get tickets in a bigger venue. To me if you play it every four years, and you play it at the Viking stadium that would be a fun solution. Play it at a neutral ground.

Maybe that’ll happen some day. I don’t know.”

PAT SWEENEY

BACK IN THE

SADDLE

Interview by Joe Kerlin Photo by Paul Flessland

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I

t took Pat Sweeney 12 years to witness the University of North Dakota football team defeat North Dakota State University. He’s seen it all when it comes to the in-state rivalry between UND-NDSU. Now working in the UND public relations department, Sweeney will be the new play-by-play man for UND football broadcasts. And, after 11 years, he will again call a UND-NDSU football game.

PAT SWEENEY

THE INTERVIEW Bison Illustrated: In 2003, did you know that would be the last time the two teams would play for a while?

Pat Sweeney: “We knew, yes.

This was the last game until we didn’t know when. I don’t think we thought it would take this long, but we did know this was it, and I remember doing the game with Steve Hallstrom and he said during the overtime I think, ‘It’s as if the teams were trying to tell the Football Gods, ‘Okay if this is the way it’s going to be, you know, we’re going to give you a heck of a game here.’ It was a great one to go out on and it left everybody wanting more.”

BI: NDSU dominated much of the series in the 1980s. Was it still a big deal for both schools?

PS: “Oh, it was big. The games were packed and always on TV, but as NDSU got better and pretty powerful with some of those teams, it was tough for UND fans to sit and watch. I remember I was there in Fargo in ’85, the 49-0 game, and I was doing sideline, and I just remember thinking: what’s going to happen? And the next day Pat Behrns resigned as the coach.

I got along great with Pat, and I think he did the right thing for him to continue would’ve been difficult. I don’t know if the AD had in mind to make a change, he may well have. From the moment Pat resigned it was obvious that Roger (Thomas) was the people’s choice because he had been here when they had some good seasons in the ‘70s, and he came from the Toronto, the CFL. He started in ‘86 and it took him to ‘93 to beat NDSU, but the two years before ‘93 he came so very close and I remember the

first time he did that and I just thought UND fans have to be happy to just come close and it was obvious after the game that Roger didn’t feel that way. He wasn’t here for moral victories and he said so. He said, ‘I’m just not into that’ and he took those hard.”

BI: After 1990 did you see the momentum shifting to the UND side?

PS: “Well I mean the games were getting closer, and that was a good sign. But there was still, to me, there was still that cloud hanging over the head and until they beat them that was never going to go away. Back then they would ask me, the media, to pick the winner in the Grand Forks Herald and one year I said, I’m just going to keep picking NDSU until UND beats them. You think back to that game and I still say that Mike Mooney strip and return for a touchdown was the most important play in modern UND football history because it was so surprising and it just changed everything that led to the victory and UND was no longer a bridesmaid.”

BI: Do you remember the broadcast when that happened?

PS: “I was calling the game, Ed (Schultz) was on color. Jason Miller is carrying the ball and it looked like he was gonna get a decent gain and all of a sudden here’s Mooney running the other way. I couldn’t see the strip. We were wondering what happened.

And he’s going the other way, and I was in such a state of shock I remember saying something like, ‘Mooney takes it in for a touchdown. I don’t believe it!’”

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BI: You said that was the defining play so how did you treat it on the broadcast?

PS: “It was the momentum-changer because you got to remember those NDSU teams didn’t make that many mistakes to hurt themselves. You look back at it and you think, yeah, it probably took a play like that. UND needed a break and they never got it years previous. If we had, back then I think we had a total of four cameras covering the game. We didn’t have a camera on the far side. If we had a reverse angle we probably would’ve seen it. I think we had two replay angles recording, but you couldn’t see and that adds to the mystery of this whole thing.

You couldn’t see a fumble, couldn’t see clearly. He just runs into a pile, Mooney comes out of the pile with the ball and goes toward the north end zone for a touchdown. So there’s a lot of mythology (laughs), legend to that play.”

BI: What was the press box like after commercial break?

PS: “You got to understand we were separated so I couldn’t see. I mean the walls went right up to the window so I couldn’t see what anyone else was doing. Ed had to go down to the field for the post game. You know we were just saying it was just a monumental win for UND, and he went down to interview Roger and I can still see the goalposts coming down and he’s trying to talk to Roger and the fans are on the field, it’s bedlam … It was getting dark.

There were no lights there, and with the TV timeouts, just enough light for our cameras to still pick up what was going on. I think we lost Ed in the crowd trying to interview some players and the camera had trouble finding him. It was total craziness. How many years in the making. People were ready to explode and they did.”

BI: How did you capture that moment in the broadcast PS: “I think what I said was, ‘13 is now UND’s lucky number. For the first time in 13 years it can be said the Sioux have beaten the Bison,’ and I think that’s all I said. I just shut up and let pictures reveal all this celebration. I wasn’t one to talk over the crowd. I’m from the Herb 92

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Carneal Ray Scott school of, ‘You’re on TV, you don’t have to talk all the time.’

There was nothing I could say.”

BI: You were the UND guy and Ed and everyone else were in Fargo. Did you ever hear trash talk about that?

PS: “Well it depended on where you were (laughs). When we were in Fargo, yeah, someone would heckle you from the stands. What can you do? I never engaged them. I mean it’s the rivalry, people are going to say stuff to you and I never paid any attention to it.”

BI: Were you ever scared? Like this can’t be good to be here?

PS: “Oh no, I honestly can’t remember one. I went to the car and went back to the station. You know, I’m Irish, and I don’t drink so I’m not involved in that stuff.”

BI: Did that win by UND rejuvenate any of the rivalry and the UND program?

PS: “Absolutely … The worm turned there and let me say something. I’m not predicting UND will beat them this year, but the thing is how huge would that be for UND if that happened and it’s a totally different circumstance now because they aren’t in the same conference and its not a regular thing,

but it’ll still be big. But I just think that I go back to that game in ‘93, and I think that set the stage and got the ball rolling for UND to win it all in 2001. Without that play Mooney made, who knows what happens.”

BI: What was your reaction when they announced the revival?

PS: “I was glad. I mean there’s an old show business saying, ‘Give the people what they want,’ and I think a lot of people want to see this. They are playing each other in just about every other sport so why not football? I mean, I know a lot of people like to go back and forth and take the rivalry seriously, ‘You said this and they said that.’ I mean, come on. Just move on. I mean, each school had a reason for what they did back then, whatever year that was, but I’ll tell you something else. I’m glad the story that I saw in the Grand Forks Herald quoted Bubba (Schwweigert) saying he didn’t care that a lot of people were upset UND didn’t get a home game in this series, and Bubba’s quote was something like, ‘I told Faison that I don’t care. Let’s get these teams on the field again. Let’s revive this rivalry. If we have to play them twice down there, fine. We will play them anytime, anywhere.’ And that was very big of Bubba because he could’ve easily said, ‘No, forget it.’”

MATT OLIEN

MATT OLIEN

21 QUESTIONS with the producer of “When They Were Kings”

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Interview by Joe Kerlin Photo courtesy of Kensie Wallner

"When They Were Kings: The NDSU-UND Rivalry" is a 90-minute documentary highlighting the historic rivalry between North Dakota's two most prominent universities.

We gave Prairie Public producer Matt Olien a call to play 21 questions about his 2012 film.

MATT OLIEN

BISON ILLUSTRATED: Give people who haven’t seen the documentary a quick outline.

Matt Olien: “The football (portion) starts in 1981, and it goes through 2003, which was the last time the football team played. And the basketball (portion) essentially starts in the mid80s when both teams got good and it concludes around the early 2000s.”

BI: When did this project first get assigned to you?

MO: “I think my boss, Bob Dambach, and I started talking about it in 2008, and then it took three years to assemble all the interviews.”

BI: How did you decide whom to interview?

MO: “You have to find all the

people you want to interview, and I don’t know how many people we interviewed (30), but it was a lot. You need, obviously, the main people. You need Roger Thomas; you need Rocky Hager, Don Morton. These kind of people, you can’t do it without them.”

BI: How did the storyline develop for you?

MO: “I did have the people I wanted

in mind. I had the games I wanted in mind. When you’re close to it, it almost kind of writes itself, and then you go out and get the interviews and the sound bites you need. But sometimes, they’ll say things in the sound bites you don’t expect.”

BI: What about the footage of the old game?

MO: “WDAY TV gave me all of it.

Obviously we credited them with all the footage and intended it to be the broadcast footage. That’s what you want. You want Ed Schultz and Pat Sweeney and these guys doing the play-by-play. That adds more excitement rather than just showing footage with natural sound.”

BI: Any pushback from either school about the making of this documentary?

MO: “No push back.”

BI: How long did it take to get to Rocky Hager?

MO: “(In) 2009, we flew

to Boston on a different assignment and while I was there I was able to interview Rocky Hager, who at the time was coaching Northeastern who I think doesn’t even have a football program anymore.”

BI: Was Rocky

compliant at the time?

MO: “Rocky’s interview

was very blunt. He’d been away from it for a long time, but I don’t know if we caught him on a good day in his office in Boston. But he was great. He remembered everything. (He) was still upset they lost in ‘93. It just never dies. It’s kind of cool that it never dies so I was able to kind of edit Rocky and Roger back and forth having this point and counterpoint about scholarships and this and that. And how Roger wanted to ring his neck a couple times (laughs).”

BI: Were there some Rocky comments you had to leave out?

MO: “Oh no, no, no, I just mean he

gave us a great interview. Some people when you interview them, they can recall everything, some kind of move on from them. Let me give you an example. I would say when we went over the women’s basketball team Amy Ruley and Gene Roebuck were a little more reserved in their comments compared to Rocky and Roger. With Rocky and Roger, you get this sense of this rivalry, and not that you don’t with Amy and Gene, but they don’t quite, their interviews don’t shoot from the hip as much I think as much as Rocky and Roger’s do (laughs). I’m not sure

why. They were still good interviews.

It’s just different.”

BI: Were you there as all these events in the rivalry were happening?

MO: “Oh yeah, I went to UND,

graduated in 1987. That’s when UND was horrible at football. The Bison were awesome, and eventually when Roger Thomas got there things started to shift slowly but surely.”

BI: What was it like to be there in 1993 when UND won?

MO: “They should’ve beat NDSU in

’92. They threw an interception at the end of the game. And in ’93 they finally beat NDSU, which stopped the 12-game losing streak, and that was an insane day. They were carrying the goalpost around all this kind of stuff.

That was really the impetus for UND getting better at football.”

BI: Looking back now, what do you think of NDSU going Division I?

MO: “I think what’s unfortunate now

looking back, is that UND did not go Division I when NDSU did. I think that was a major mistake by the hierarchy.

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MATT OLIEN

If I can speak bluntly about that because at the time, what I recall was when NDSU went Division I, (UND) said, ‘Why are they doing this? They can’t even beat us in football anymore.’

And give NDSU credit. They had the right athletic director and the right coach at the time to make it happen.”

BI: Is it shocking to you that it has

taken them this long to schedule this game?

MO: “No, because there was a lot

of bad blood when this went down.

I think NDSU people, I think again, you find this a lot on online, there’s a lot of vitriol out there. I have kind of moved on from it. Especially doing the documentary, I got to know some of these NDSU people. The women’s basketball players, great people.

Jeff Bentrim, I went up to Calgary to interview Jeff. He was a great quarterback. It’s just, just because they went to NDSU and I went to UND doesn’t mean they’re evil people (laughs). It’s so dumb people get so wrapped up in this and the nickname and everything else. But I do think there was bad blood at the time toward Roger Thomas by NDSU and toward Dale Lennon because there was this kind of skewering done by NDSU about ‘What are you doing?’ And, in the end, NDSU did the right thing. They had a forward-looking vision.”

BI: Why do you think it took this long for the game to happen?

MO: “It doesn’t surprise me because

once NDSU got into Division I and got locked into the new conference, it was hard for them to find a place on the schedule for UND, and I don’t think there was a lot of willingness by NDSU to schedule UND because why did they have to do it? Instead, they went out and scheduled the (University of Minnesota) Gophers at least three times. Beat them at least twice. Now their big nonconference game tends to be Kansas State or an Iowa or Minnesota or somebody like that.”

BI: Why do you think it’s finally back?

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MO: “I think a lot of pressure was put

on both schools by people within the state to play this game, and now you’re going to see it.”

BI: Do you think your documentary played a part?

MO: “No, I don’t think so. A lot of

people saw it, I heard a lot of good comments, but I don’t think us doing a documentary got the athletic directors to do it. I’m not going to be so bold as to say something like that.”

BI: What kind of effect did it have on the audience?

MO: “I think it did get people looking

back to the old days and realizing how awesome that game was every year. Once a year, in November or whenever that game was played, the state of North Dakota stopped and watched that football game, and the women’s basketball stuff became huge. I mean they would fill up both arenas, which was unusual for women’s basketball at the time. If you look at the documentary, you realize how awesome the rivalry was and what a big deal it was.”

BI: Do you think it will get the rivalry will get that big again?

MO: “I don’t think it’s ever going to be that way again because A) they’re not in the same conference anymore, and B) UND’s football program is so far below NDSU’s right now.”

BI: What was your reaction when

they announced the game was coming back?

MO: “I was happy. I’m not going to go

to the game. It’ll be on TV. I think it’s going to be a mismatch. I don’t see any way UND stays in that game for four quarters.”

BI: Do you think there was any closure as far as any animosity between the two administrative staffs after this game was announced?

MO: “Yeah, I think that might be done

now. I think the people that engineered the Division I move for NDSU have moved on, (Craig) Bohl and Taylor. So I think there’s a new regime in. I think they’re more willing to play this game.

I’ll tell you when this rivalry will get good again: when UND actually makes the playoffs in football and they play NDSU. Then you’ll see what it was like.

They have met in the playoffs before back in the ‘90s. If that ever happens then that’s going to be wild. But that has to happen first. Then they might start playing every year.”

BI: Where does this film rank among

the documentaries you’ve done?

MO: “I’ve done about 11 or 12 documentaries for Prairie Public. This is, along with the one I did on Class B basketball, are the two I care the most about. I mean, I’ve done a lot of other documentaries, but I think those two generate a lot of chitchat from people because I think the NDSU-UND game means something to people.”

BEIL FAMILY

STORIES RIVALRY

T H E

By Pace Maier | Photos by J. Alan Paul

F R O M

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Falling for THE ENEMY With a relationship that started during the later years of the NDSU-UND rivalry, two track stars from both universities found love within the rivalry.

RORY BEIL

Rory Beil ran track for UND from 1988-91 and holds several sprinting records.

Dawn (Koehn) Beil was an All-American sprinter for NDSU from 1990-93.

R

ory and Dawn Beil were flirting with fire when they first met.

Rory, who graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1992, was on the track team, and Dawn was a superstar at the Division II level for North Dakota State’s women’s track team.

A NDSU student-athlete and a UND student-athlete dating, did the two of them actually think love would work its magic and the two of them would last forever?

Rory sure did.

DAWN BEIL “January of 1992, I called her, made her an acquaintance, but we had yet to (be) introduced face-toface,” the UND hurdler/sprinter said. “Then there was an indoor meet at NDSU that following weekend or two, and then we actually got a chance to meet each other face-to-face.”

The two of them were meeting each other right in the middle of a blood bath between NDSU and UND. Not only were the two football teams beating up on each other, there was even a track and field rivalry. Running,

BEIL FAMILY

sprinting, jumping, you name it, NDSU was dominant on the track.

Bison individuals were competing for conference championships, and the team was trying to capture conference titles. But UND, even though they still had a solid track and field squad, Rory said, they weren’t contending for conference titles like their rival was.

But as a fan, Rory loved to attend the NDSU-UND basketball and football games, and Dawn and he would attend them together once they started dating.

And then a secret came out about the Bison track star.

At the women’s basketball games that the two would go to, Dawn would sit on the UND side of the bleachers, while her boyfriend at the time would have his face painted with UND green.

“When Prairie Public did a show called ‘When They Were Kings’ they show a picture of a UND fan at the Bison game with his face all painted, and it was me,” Rory Beil said.

Rory was into the rivalry, but Dawn not so much.

“After we got married, I tried to like bait her when there would be a big football game or basketball game,” Rory said. “And if she didn’t know people 10 4

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personally, she didn’t get into it as much she wanted the Bison to win.”

But when the rivalry ended in 2003, “it was disappointing,” they both said at the same time.

And later this month UND will travel to Fargo and take on the Bison and maybe, just maybe, it’ll feel like the rivalry is restored.

Dawn said she’s been hearing that the public is excited about the game because the environment between the two teams is a step above any other.

Rory and Dawn are both track coaches at Fargo Davies High School and own a flag that is split diagonally with NDSU on one side and UND on the other.

And Rory said the 2015 game feels like the games when he was back in college.

“You know UND, right now has nothing to lose,” Rory said. “They are kind of back to where it was when I was in college. NDSU had won a bunch of national championships, (and) UND is trying to show that they are in that same league and respectable.”

DAHLEN FAMILY

By Pace Maier | Photos by J. Alan Paul

One Family.

STORIES Two Universities.

RIVALRY

F R O M

T H E

a p r ic eles s in - s tate r ivalry.

Once Andy Dahlen graduated from the University of North Dakota, his son followed his footsteps two decades later. It would make sense for Andy's two daughters, Katie and Kayla, to follow his footsteps. Instead, they did the unthinkable and enrolled at an in-state rival, North Dakota State University.

1977-80 ANDY

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2001-05 Tyler

DAHLEN FAMILY

F

or Tyler Dahlen, attending UND was an automatic yes. But not without NDSU football coaches knocking on the front door of his house first.

Tyler Dahlen said it was a "nobrainer" decision considering his father, Andy Dahlen, played football for UND and Tyler grew up wearing the green and white every Saturday in the fall.

"I grew up a Sioux fan, (and) it was kind of a thing," Tyler Dahlen, the former UND linebacker from 2001-05 said. "You know, I was always going to be a Sioux player. I was recruited by both schools, but it was a pretty easy decision."

Not to mention that Tyler Dahlen and his father boast a record of 6-1 against the Bison, with Tyler adding his last win to the win column in 2003.

The last time UND and NDSU played was an instant classic in 2003, with UND preventing the Bison immaculate comeback in the fourth quarter and gaining everlasting rights Nickel Trophy that has been in Grand Forks ever since.

That season, Tyler Dahlen played in all 14 games and finished with 41 tackles, including eight tackles for loss, which would tie him for third on the team. With a fourth-and-one on

2003-07 Kayla

NDSU's 16-yard-line, the Bison were down by seven in overtime and were in desperate need of a first down to keep the game alive. UND head coach Dale Lennon sent in his goalline package to stuff the Bison run, but that meant Tyler Dahlen would be out of the game. He watched from the sidelines as fellow linebackers Digger Anderson and Eric Halstenson stuffed Rod Malone before he reached the line of scrimmage. Tyler Dahlen, the UND sidelines and the Alerus Center crowd erupted in victory.

Tyler Dahlen has always known the importance of the UND-NDSU rivalry splitting his childhood between Grand Forks and Fargo.

2003-07 Katie

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“It’s nothing like any other game that you could ever imagine,” the physical therapist at Sanford said. “The intensity is ten times greater than any other game, and you kind of always have it marked on your calendar even though, technically, you’re taking it game by game.”

The year 2003 couldn’t seem to get any better for Tyler Dahlen after all the football success he and his team had endured, but then, his two sister’s Katie and Kayla (Dahlen) threw him a dead duck like a quarterback would after getting wallopped by a pass rusher.

Katie and Kayla Dahlen attended NDSU and played women’s basketball from 2003-2007. The family was split. Two student-athletes attending UND and two other student-athletes accepting scholarships from the rival school.

“I’d be sitting in the student section and I’d be watching my sisters play and I’d be cheering for them, but I still wanted UND to win. It's kind of a different scenario or circumstance,” Tyler Dahlen said with a laugh.

But he was serious, he would never wear any NDSU clothing. And if his sisters bought him anything? “He would burn it. I’m not kidding. It would be in the fire,” Kayla Dahlen said.

Andy Dahlen wanted his daughters to attend UND, but they never received an offer from their fathers’ alma mater, and they both wanted a package deal so NDSU was the destination with the pharmacy program acting as the dealbreaker for Kayla. “(We) didn’t do (a lot) of recruiting visits,” Katie Dahlen said. “We really liked the atmosphere and we knew they were a good school.”

But in the end, the two chose the university that their brother and father both grew up wanting to beat.

However, Andy Dahlen, the principal at Fargo North High School, had to learn how to wear the two rival schools’ colors.

“It was in my heart that my girls would go to UND as well,” Andy Dahlen, a member of the UND Hall of Fame, who 10 8

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played on the football team from 19761980, said. “They got a nice offer there (NDSU), and so they decided to go there and had a great experience and played four years there. I had to wear some Bison colors for just four years, but you support your family wherever they are playing.”

Katie and Kayla Dahlen were 2-2 against UND their freshman season, and when the Bison women’s basketball team traveled north to play UND, the two never received any heckling from the rowdy fans because their brother was a three-time letter winner on the football team and was, clearly, pretty well-known and had the respect of UND fans.

“I remember playing against UND up in Grand Forks and I could hear the football players in the front row, the UND ones, saying, 'Those are Dahlen’s sisters, no one can talk to them, no one can heckle them,' like they were really kind of cool about it. So instead of bashing us, they left us alone,” Kayla Dahlen, now a pharmacist at CVS said.

But the heckling doesn’t stop at home or at the cabin when the families are together.

Andy and Tyler Dahlen try to trick Katie Dahlen’s 3-year-old son Kellen

into thinking UND is better than NDSU. “Once he (Kellen) gets around Tyler and Dad, they try to convince him to be a Sioux fan, and then he’ll come up and say 'Go Sioux' and we’re like ‘No,’ and he’s like, ‘Grandpa and Tyler are Sioux fans,’ so then he’s really confused,” Katie Dahlen said with a laugh.

Odds are odds, and the sister's are outnumbered 3-2 with Tyler, Andy’s wife, Renee, being UND graduates. But after Katie Dahlen was done playing, she evened the score by marrying former NDSU quarterback, Steve Walker. With Kayla Dahlen expecting her second child in September, consequently around the same time the NDSU-UND football rivalry returns, the power shift to NDSU will be complete.

But at the lake cabin, a UND flag hangs outside instead of an NDSU greenand-yellow flag.

The only love for the Bison comes on a floor mat showing NDSU on one-half and UND on the other. Clearly, Katie and Kayla need to do some more green and yellow shopping.

CHEATHAM BROTHERS

STORIES RIVALRY

By Pace Maier | Photos by NDSU and UND Athletics

F R O M

T H E

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BROTHERLY LOVE

James and Jerome Cheatham played college football 75 miles away from each other. They played for institutions that were bonded by one of the longest-sustaining rivalries in college football. The trash talk between the two during their playing days was always on the field, but now, as they head back to North Dakota this September, the trash talk will continue in the stands.

JAMES

JEROME CHEATHAM Jerome Cheatham played for NDSU from 1993-96 before an injury ended his career.

James Cheatham played safety for UND from 199295. His record against his younger brother was 4-1.

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hen the University of North Dakota’s All-American linebacker Mike Mooney stripped the football away from North Dakota State University’s Jason Miller to end an unforgettable 12-game losing streak, James Cheatham was standing on the sidelines remembering what was said before the iconic game.

“I can just remember going into that game knowing that this was our game. We had a good scheme and we had great players,” the former

JAMES CHEATHAM UND free safety said. “Mooney, being the great linebacker he was, he wasn’t the biggest guy, but he was definitely the smartest, tough-nosed, an opportunist if you will. And a great example of him being smart and having the presence of mind to see an opportunity that actually really changed the face of the game, but also changed the face of what the upcoming relationship would be between NDSU and UND football.”

After playing for UND from 1992-96, it was James Cheatham that held the upper hand over his brother Jerome Cheatham, who played for NDSU from 1993-97. James Cheatham

CHEATHAM BROTHERS

claimed superiority over his little brother with a 4-1 record against NDSU. One of the reasons Jerome Cheatham attended NDSU was because he wanted to win and felt that the Bison had a winning culture with five Division II national championships.

Cheatham was known more for his kick returning ability but knew when to lay the wood from his cornerback position.

They Bison may have had the titles, but when James Cheatham and the green-and-white played the Bison, younger brother and the green-andyellow couldn’t keep up.

While James Cheatham was having a successful career and making the first-team All-North Central Conference from 1994-96, Jerome Cheatham was just trying to stay healthy and get on the field.

“In 1994, I was a redshirt sophomore.

I started the last 2-3 games that year,” former NDSU cornerback Jerome Cheatham said. “Then, in 1997, about a week and a half before our first game when I was a senior, I tore my Achilles. I didn’t play my senior year (and) I was already done with school and so I just finished my grad school and I didn’t come back. I could’ve medical redshirted, but I decided not to.”

“There’s no way to anticipate it when you’re actually involved in it,” Jerome Cheatham said. “I could tell you that our practices were intense, and I’m not sure if I would capture the level of intensity and focus that you had going into that week.”

Many videos, books, photos and articles about the rivalry attempted to capture the intensity that ensued when UND clashed against NDSU. It lived up to its title as the biggest rivalry in Division II.

With both Cheathams on defense, the two rarely shared the field at the same time. But James Cheatham said he did have a chance to tackle his brother during one UND-NDSU game.

“To know that the entire state comes to a standstill to really watch that game, and I say that lightly about coming to a standstill, but as a player you really felt like the entire state was watching,” James Cheatham said.

“He was returning a kickoff and I was on the kickoff team, and he was being tackled kind of off the field and I just nudged him a little bit,” James Cheatham chuckled.

The population of North Dakota sits at 739,482, with half the state split in half with loyalties to UND and the other half cheering for NDSU, which does lead to a fair share of trash talk.

Jerome Cheatham was exposed to the UND-NDSU rivalry when he was a senior in high school and James Cheatham was playing for UND. Jerome Cheatham would watch his older brother play, and all he could do was wait until the next year when he would have a chance to be a part of the in-state rivalry.

While the fans were chirping at the players during warm-ups and throughout the game, James and Jerome Cheatham had their own unique moments during every meeting between the two teams.

James Cheatham said during warmups he and his brother would run down to their opponent’s end zone

and just breathe in the atmosphere during a matchup between the two rival schools.

“My parents have pictures of us standing in one another’s end zones,” said James Cheatham, whose 12 pass breakups ranks second in singleseason history at UND. “When you think about it, how many times in a normal game do you see another player from the other team and moreor-less your rival walk to the other teams end zone, while other players are around and no one said too much about it because we were brothers.

I’m sure they accepted it, but it was unique in that aspect.”

And when the two brothers come back for the first game in 12 years between the rival schools, there will be more trash talk throughout the stands between the two.

It’ll be the first time James Cheatham has been back to North Dakota since he graduated in 1996, Jerome Cheatham said.

“It’s going to be special for a number of reasons,” James Cheatham said.

“I haven’t been back and then to go back to this game and I’m going back with my brother so there’s going to be a lot of trash talking among us and whoever is around us. So, yeah, it’ll feel like another game to whoever’s around us in the stands.”

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FOES TURNED PROS

STORIES FOES turned pros RIVALRY

F R O M

T H E

Ryan Smith and Weston Dressler may share the same position on the football field for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, but the two won’t be on the same page come September 19 when their alma maters, NDSU and UND, respectively, play for the first time in 12 years.

By Joe Kerlin | Photos courtesy of the Saskatchewan Roughriders

RYAN SMITH

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WESTON DRESSLER

RYAN SMITH Ryan Smith is playing in his second season for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Weston Dressler has logged eight years with Saskatchewan and went to training camp in 2014 with the Kansas City Chiefs.

F

ormer North Dakota State wide receiver Ryan Smith never got the opportunity to play the University of North Dakota during his four years in Fargo.

But no one in the Bison locker room understood more about the long rivalry tradition between the schools than Smith.

Smith had been an NDSU ball boy as a kid growing up in Wahpeton, N.D. He witnessed first-hand the battles that would unfold on the FargoDome carpet between his beloved Bison and their annual foe from Grand Forks.

“Honestly, I just remember it being, like, what a normal game would be at, but amp it up by 10 or 12 times that,” Smith said. “You could see

WESTON DRESSLER the fire in the players’ eyes that this game means something, even though, this is back in the NCC days.”

Smith says he was just a little kid when the two teams met on a yearly basis and he might have been exaggerating, but his hyperbolic language is evidence of how the rivalry between the two schools was instilled in him at an early age.

The second-year Saskatchewan wide receiver was one of the most verbal guys in the locker room when the subject of NDSU playing UND would arise. “I wish we would’ve played UND, but when you’re from North Dakota it’s different because you know the battles that went on and the trash talk that went on,” Smith said.

FOES TURNED PROS

When Smith was 13 years old, NDSU started its transition to Division I, leaving behind the North Central Conference and UND. That same year, an 18-year-old freshman arrived on UND’s campus. He was a North Dakota boy, like Smith, and was undersized, but could fly like the wind.

Dressler played for UND from 2004-07 and holds records in receptions, yards and touchdowns.

At 5 feet 8 inches, Weston Dressler made an impact as soon as he arrived in Grand Forks. The Bismarck native was the first UND football player to receive playing time as a true freshman since Jimmy Kleinsasser.

On top of that, he received first-team All-NCC honors when he led UND with 1,071 all-purpose yards.

Dressler was a breakout star in the state of North Dakota, and the young Smith started to take notice.

“I mean, growing up in North Dakota, he’s a pretty big deal,” Smith said remembering seeing Dressler as a kid.

“With a similar body type, me and him, if I could have been as successful as him, I know I’m going somewhere.”

In four years at UND, Dressler set 19 school records in receiving and returning. He was a two-time Harlon Hill candidate as the best player in Division II (the Division II equivalent of the Heisman Trophy).

Dressler would go undrafted in 2008 but would quickly sign and make

Smith played for NDSU from 2010-14 and won three national championships.

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the team with the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League.

Smith would eventually live his childhood dream of becoming a football player for the Bison and star as a true freshman in 2010, just like Dressler. He would win three FCS national championships with the Bison and play an eclectic slot receiver role for four years.

On April 18, 2014, Smith signed his first professional contract with the Roughriders. But he wouldn’t get a chance to meet the player he always strived to be until Dressler returned to Saskatchewan after being cut by the Kansas City Chiefs.

“He’s a great player,” Smith said. “I enjoy playing with him and learning from him.”

Smith says he and Dressler like to talk trash to one another during practice, which usually ends when Smith mentions his three national championship rings.

Dressler can play the head-to-head card with UND leading the series against NDSU 62-45-3. But all scores will be settled when the series resumes this September.

“My reaction was, ‘I wish I could play in the game,’” said Smith, laughing. “It’s going to be an electric atmosphere, especially because it’s going to be at the FargoDome.”

Between the smack talk with Dressler about whose school is better, Smith is devising a wager with him. If NDSU wins? “I’m thinking that he’s gotta wear an NDSU shirt for a full week at practice so we’ll see.”

The two will be playing Ottawa the day of the NDSU-UND game and won’t be able to watch it live. But once the game is over, Smith will be quick to check his phone to see if his alma mater welcomes the rivalry game back with a win.

MICROSOFT NICKEL

STORIES NDSU-UND RIVALRY GOES CORPORATE RIVALRY

F R O M

T H E

By Joe Kerlin | Photos By Paul Flessland

A passion for the rivalry has started a new tradition at the local Microsoft office in town. With an annual company football game being played with the winner getting the glory of taking home the Nikcel for their alma mater.

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DOUG BURGUM Doug Burgum was the CEO of Great Plains Software for 18 years and a senior vice president for Microsoft for six and a half years.

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ompany softball outings are a commonality across the nation.

Businesses merge their professional world and relationships with a trait more personal – athleticism.

Mainly performed to create bonds between colleagues outside the office and away from everyday mundane tasks, these company outings are generally tame. But don’t

DON MORTON tell that to Doug Burgum.

Fargo’s most popular entrepreneur took the idea of a corporate softball game to the next level as the Senior Vice President of Microsoft while stationed at the Fargo campus.

Burgum loves his alma mater, NDSU. He’s a 1978 graduate and was on the cheer squad throughout his academic career. But what most people don’t know about the founder and chairman of the Kilbourne Group, is that Burgum was on the freshman football team his first year at NDSU.

MICROSOFT NICKEL

He brought the competitiveness of the gridiron to Microsoft in 2006 when he organized a Fargo campus-wide football game. But this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill flag football game. He pinned the NDSU and University of North Dakota employees against one another.

“We had all these former players, former starters working out there at the company,” Burgum said, who retired from Microsoft in 2007. “We put together three very competitive flag football teams.”

With the help of former NDSU star wide receiver Shane Dettman and UND quarterback Tony Stein acting as captains, three football games were played on the lawn between buildings on the Microsoft campus.

Former NDSU head football coach Don Morton, who is now the site leader of Microsoft’s Fargo campus, was pinned as commissioner. “We thought Don needed to be neutral,” chuckled Burgum, recalling the competitive spirit of the game.

Morton and Burgum admittedly both knew which side the former NDSU coach was secretly rooting for.

Microsoft even adopted their version of the Nickel Trophy. Maybe fivetimes as small as the actual Nickel Trophy played between NDSU and UND from 1938 and 2003, Microsoft’s

wooden version still sits proudly on a bookshelf at the Horizon Building’s entrance.

The NDSU alums won the game all three years it was played with every

Don Morton was the head coach for the Bison from 1979-84 and is currently the site leader for Microsoft.

game decided by less than four points.

“I don’t think there were any ambulance runs,” Burgum said, recalling the competitiveness of each game. “But there were three guys that went to the emergency room with blown out knees or shoulders.”

Burgum explained that the unnecessary injuries resulting from the game probably led Microsoft to discontinue the revival of the annual NDSU-UND flag football game. But he still has the game ball proudly sitting in his office.

During the return of the real NDSUUND game this September, you’ll be hard-pressed not to find Morton and Burgum in their seats. At least this time they won’t have to worry about their employees running to the emergency room.

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SPORTS SCHEDULE

sports SPORTS schedule SCHEDULE

SEPTEMBER september

Sept. 13-15 – Women’s Golf William & Mary Invitational (Kingsmill Resort, Williamsburg, Va.) TBA

Sept. 4 – Women’s Soccer at Utah State (Davies, Calif.) 4 p.m.

Sept. 14-15 – Men’s Golf Omaha Invitational (Arbor Links, Nebraska City, Neb.) TBA

Sept. 4 – Women’s Volleyball vs.

Towson (Fargo) 7 p.m.

Sept. 4 – Men’s Cross Country (Bison Open, Fargo) TBA Sept. 4 – Women’s Cross Country (Bison Open, Fargo) TBA Sept. 5 – Women’s Volleyball vs. Utah Valley (Fargo) 1 p.m.

Sept. 5 – Women’s Volleyball vs.

Milwaukee (Fargo) 7 p.m.

Sept. 6 – Women’s Soccer at Pacific (Stockton, Calif.) 9 p.m.

Sept. 7 – Women’s Golf NDSU Triangular (Fargo CC, Fargo) TBA

Sept. 7 – Men’s Golf NDSU Fall Kickoff Tournament (Fargo CC, Fargo) TBA Sept. 11 – Women’s Volleyball vs. UCF (Minneapolis, Minn.) 4:30 p.m.

Sept. 11 – Women’s Soccer vs. North Dakota (Fargo) 6:30 p.m.

Sept. 12 – Women’s Volleyball at Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minn.) 10 a.m.

Sept. 12 – Women’s Volleyball vs. UC Irvine (Minneapolis, Minn.) 4:30 p.m.

Sept. 12 – Football vs. Weber State (Fargo) 2:30 p.m.

Sept. 13 – Women’s Soccer at Iowa State (Ames, Iowa) 1 p.m.

Sept. 18 – Women’s Volleyball vs. Cal State Fullerton (San Francisco, Calif.)

6 p.m.

Sept. 18 – Women’s Soccer at Northern Arizona (Flagstaff, Ariz.) 8 p.m.

Sept. 19 – Women’s Volleyball vs. Yale (San Francisco, Calif.) 12:30 p.m.

Sept. 19 – Women’s Volleyball at San Francisco (San Francisco, Calif.) 9 p.m.

Sept. 19 – Football vs. North Dakota (Fargo) 2:30 p.m.

Sept. 20 – Women’s Soccer vs. Grand Canyon (Flagstaff, Ariz.) 11 a.m.

SPORTS SCHEDULE

sports SPORTS schedule SCHEDULE Sept. 21-22 – Women’s Golf USD Coyote Invitational (Dakota Dunes GC, Vermillion, S.D.) TBA Sept. 21-22 – Men’s Golf USD Coyote Invitational (Dakota Dunes GC, Vermillion, S.D.) TBA Sept. 25 – Women’s Volleyball vs. Oral Roberts (Fargo) 7 p.m.

Sept. 26 – Women’s Volleyball vs.

Western Illinois (Fargo) 7 p.m.

Sept. 26 – Men’s Cross Country Stanford Invitational (Palo Alto, Calif.)

TBA Sept. 26 – Women’s Cross Country Stanford Invitational (Palo Alto, Calif.)

TBA Sept. 27 – Women’s Soccer vs. UC Riverside (Fargo) 1 p.m.

Sept. 29 – Women’s Volleyball at Denver (Denver, Colo.) 8 p.m.

OCTOBER october Oct. 2 – Women’s Volleyball vs.

South Dakota (Fargo) 7 p.m.

Oct. 2 – Women’s Soccer vs.

Omaha (Fargo) 7 p.m.

Oct. 3 – Women’s Volleyball vs.

Omaha (Fargo) 7 p.m.

Oct. 3 – Men’s Cross Country SDSU Classic (Brookings, S.D.) TBA Oct. 3 – Women’s Cross Country SDSU Classic (Brookings, S.D.) TBA

Oct. 3 – Football at South Dakota State (Brookings, S.D.) 6 p.m Oct. 3-4 – Men’s Golf John Dallio Memorial (Ruffled Feathers, Lermont, Ill.) TBA Oct. 4 – Women’s Soccer vs.

Oral Roberts (Fargo) 1 p.m.

Oct. 5-6 – Women’s Golf Nebraska Chip-N Club Invitational (Lincoln CC, Lincoln, Neb.) TBA

KATHLEEN RUSTAD

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KATHLEEN RUSTAD

WHERE

ARE THEY

NOW?

KATHLEEN RUSTAD: VOLLEYBALL STAR

By Joe Kerlin | Photo by Andrew Jason

CONTINUING THE FAMILY TRADITION Kathleen Rustad is one of seven daughters in the Hegg volleyball dynasty. She’s also one of the five to attend NDSU. But Rustad is only one of an endless amount of Bison volleyball players that are a part of a special NDSU family.

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KATHLEEN RUSTAD

KATHLEEN RUSTAD DIDN’T WANT TO BE A

BISON.

Rustad grew up an hour and 45 minutes away from Fargo in McIntosh, Minn. She dreamed of attending college far away, to start her own journey and for once not follow in the footsteps of her six older sisters.

Nikki (46), Theresa (44), Carrie (42), Stephanie (40), Emily (39) and Meredith (38) all played college volleyball within the city limits of either Fargo or Moorhead. Nikki, Theresa, Carrie and Meredith played at NDSU. Carrie and Meredith would eventually transfer to Minnesota State University-Moorhead where Emily and Stephanie played.

Meredith also had a cup of coffee at Concordia.

“Zaundra (Bina) did a good job of recruiting me,” Rustad said. The truth was she had several offers near the cities in Minnesota and in Wisconsin, but Rustad, being the youngest wanted to finish the Hegg legacy in Fargo.

history with 2,216 career assists. In 2001, Rustad would cap her career with a 30-4 record and the program’s ninth North Central Conference championship.

The choice paid dividends as Rustad earned a spot in the starting lineup as a sophomore and positioned herself as the ninth best passer in school

Rustad concluded the Hegg’s run that begun with Nikki in 1987. Between the three sisters that played at NDSU for 10 years from 1987-92 and 1998-2001, the Bison’s winning percentage was .851

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and they won eight NCC titles.

“You learn a lot more than just the game at NDSU,” Rustad said. “Zaundra taught us integrity. She taught us hard work. She taught us all that and maybe we would’ve learned it somewhere else, but we sure can share it with some pretty important people there. And wherever we go, we aren’t afraid to say where we graduated from.”

Being from a volleyball family that was known for being “cutthroat” in the backyard of their farm in McIntosh, Rustad found her second family. It’s also a group that she sees on an annual basis.

The first weekend in every August, Rustad and Bison volleyball alumni get together for a reunion, no matter what year they graduated. This summer was a golf outing in Hawley, Minn., where Rustad calls home with her husband Bjarne, who works at Olaf Anderson. The Rustad’s have two daughters, Faith (11) and Ingrid (8).

“We’re proud,” the full-time mom said. “We’re proud to be Bison and we’re proud to be on the volleyball team and we make an effort to continue that getting together and reminisce about all the fun stories from college (laughs).”

Rustad said former teammates and NDSU stars Kristen Hille, Rachel Schmieg, Angie Sorteberg and Alanna Hetland were at the golf outing this year.

The close-knit feel of the volleyball team starts early in the players’ careers. Every August, alumni also get together for a meet-and-greet with the current volleyball team. Rustad’s oldest sister, Nikki, hosts a barbecue social for the volleyball team to come enjoy food and company from ex-players that were once in their shoes.

“It’s a kickoff to the season just to let them know ‘Hey, we’re supporting you, we’re excited to see you play’ and they introduced themselves,” Rustad said. “We kind of get to know them and it’s fun to chat with them a little bit and we never had that when we were younger. So we got to know Kari (Thompson) and that helped bridge that together so we’re excited.”

Rustad was born into a family with six older sisters. Although there was trepidation at first, she stumbled herself into an evergrowing Bison family and she couldn’t be happier about not having enough “courage” to go somewhere else.

WALKER’S WORD

WALKER’S WORD

What defines a rivalry?

A trophy? ESPN College Gameday coming to town to talk about the game? Pure hate for the other school?

BY STEVE WALKER

THE “BIG

GAMES”

I

think that a rivalry has two makeups. First, is the mentality of the team. Do the players view this as a rivalry? Secondly, what is the mentality of the fan bases? Do the fans think a game is a rivalry? Depending on who you ask, you could get many different answers to the same question.

I have been following Bison football since moving up to Fargo in 2003 and looking back over the last 12 years, there have been more “big games” than I can possibly list in a 600-word column.

Ask any NDSU player, past or present, “What is the most important game on the schedule?” and I would guess the answer would be “the next one.” That is what makes a winning program and, year after year, the Bison show up each and every week to play the next “big game.”

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That’s not to say that when the schedule comes out, the players don’t look to see when some key games will be, of course, they do. I remember every year when the schedule would come out, my first look was to see when we played South Dakota State and when we played our FBS opponents. After that first look, it was on to prepping for the first week’s game.

When Dakota Marker (South Dakota State) week came, or when we were playing an FBS opponent, my focus didn’t change, but the hype catalyzed by the media and fans for that week does. And one key area of college sports that doesn’t get the credit it deserves is the Sports Information Department.

At NDSU, Bison student-athletes and coaches are lucky to have a great staff that keeps everybody internally informed about not only how to conduct themselves with a hot microphone in their face, but gathering the media on a consistent basis each week.

Ryan Perreault and his team do a great job of keeping players in the know.

I remember when I was playing, Jeff Schwartz was constantly going above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that the media experience was a positive one for student athletes, but also, not distracting us from the task at hand which was going to class and playing football.

Having a great communications staff can really make life easier for a football team because it’s easy to get caught up and buy into the media buzz.

What is the other team saying? How many times can I get into the paper or on the radio as a player? Maybe even on TV? But when it is all said and done, the press clippings and the audio sound bites don’t determine how happy you are with a season. What mattered at the end of every season was the number in the wins column. This can be something that’s difficult to understand for brash 18-to-22-year-old kids. Yet, NDSU has mastered the handling of the media with their student athletes.

Now, looking at the 2015 Bison football season, what games are you going to circle on your calendar? What games are the players looking forward to most? There is certainly no shortage of big games this year, and October 10 is no exception when the Thundering Herd welcomes the University of Northern Iowa to the FargoDome to avenge last year’s lone defeat.

Get ready Bison fans because this year is going to be filled with some Big Games.

Go Bison!

SWANY SAYS

swany says “DRIVE FOR FIVE” STARTS WITH THE MISSOURI VALLEY

C

an North Dakota State win an unprecedented fifth straight national championship? Sure we can. It seems to be the logical step after four-peating, after all.

The expectations are sky-high for a team that has reeled off a videogame like 58-3 record over the last four seasons. Despite losing a bevy of high-profile starters, particularly on the defensive side of the football, the Bison are poised for another championship run, entering 2015 in a familiar place as the top-ranked team in the Football Championship Subdivision.

But first, before Bison Nation flocks to their winter vacation homes in Frisco and north Dallas starts counting the millions of dollars that kick starts their 2016 economic engine, NDSU has to negotiate the gauntlet that is the Missouri Valley Football Conference – the FCS equivalent of the Southeastern Conference, aka, the SEC. You know, that other league that features Alabama, Auburn, LSU, and Georgia, among others. The SEC has eight teams ranked in the FBS preseason Top 25. The MVFC, by comparison, has six teams ranked in preseason FCS Top 25. A record five MVFC teams qualified for the playoffs last season, including national runner-up Illinois State.

The MVFC, top to bottom, could compete, league-to-league, with several FBS conferences, such as the Mid-American Conference, Sun Belt Conference, and Conference USA. In

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BY JOSHUA A. SWANSON *Swanson is a native of Maddock, N.D., a proud NDSU alum and a life-long Bison fan.

2014, Indiana State, who tied for fifth in the MVFC, beat Ball State. Ball State finished 4-4 in the MAC, including a win over East Division champions Bowling Green. It’s no exaggeration when Indiana State coach Mike Sanford told Craig Haley, Senior Editor for STATS FCS (formerly known as The Sports Network), that, “Ball State would have a tough time winning our conference.” They’re not alone in that regard. If you think Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz is on the hot seat now, wait until Illinois State rolls into Iowa City on September 5.

Not to be outdone, Georgia Southern, who played NDSU in consecutive semifinals in 2011 and 2012, was picked

by Sports Illustrated as a team that could crash the New Year’s Six bowl games – meaning the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Fiesta or Peach bowl games. For all you Bison fans bemoaning an FBS move that would relegate NDSU to bowls like the Motor City Bowl, think again. Last year, their inaugural season as an FBS member, the Eagles went 8-0 in the Sun Belt Conference, winning the league title. Despite their Sun Belt dominance, the Eagles, too, would have a tough time running the table in the MVFC. Just how good is the MVFC? All three of NDSU’s losses since 2011 have come against MVFC opponents. Of those losses, two were in the friendly confines of the FargoDome to unranked teams (Youngstown State in 2011 and Indiana State in 2012). The most remarkable fact that gets lost in this record-breaking

SWANY SAYS

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championship run is that NDSU has won their four consecutive national titles while playing in the most brutal conference in the FCS without being dinged for more than one conference loss in any season. The Drive for Five will start with navigating the treacherous road that is the MVFC.

@swany8

The Bison have won four-straight Missouri Valley Football Conference championships, which has proved to be just as hard as winning four-straight FCS titles.

The Bison have navigated that road with an all-wheeldrive defense. For the first time in recent memory, though, it’s the defense facing the biggest question marks. Gone are seven starters, including the national player of the year, all three starting linebackers, and both starting safeties.

While it’s fair to say the NDSU defense is young and untested, talent abounds.

What many see as the team’s biggest question mark could be a dominating force by midseason. The unit is chalk full of playmakers with experience like C.J. Smith, Jordan Champion, Nick DeLuca and Brian Schaetz.

The schedule sets up nicely for “Code Green” to hit its stride with the Bison not playing their first conference game until an October 3 matchup at South Dakota State. And don’t underestimate the motivation that comes with an offseason where the defense has had to hear how they’re the liability standing in the way of a fifth straight championship. Here’s my bet – don’t bet against Code Green.

The offense, on the other hand, is being touted as a juggernaut with the pieces to contend for most potent in school history behind an offensive line that has a combined 104 starts. Carson Wentz came into his own as one of the best quarterbacks in all of college football late in the regular season and into the playoffs, engineering several gamewinning drives, including the epic six

play, 78-yard drive against Illinois State that propelled the Bison to a 29-27 title win. How big time is this guy? YouTube his game-winning 12-yard touchdown pass to RJ Urzendowski in the playoff game against SDSU. While Urzendowski made a remarkable catch, there was only one place for Wentz to put the ball, and he tossed a dime. You’ll see that throw on ESPN’s Jon Gruden’s QB Camp next spring. Throws like that are why ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper Jr. has Wentz pegged as a potential first-round NFL draft pick.

The Bison also have one of the best special teams players in the country in All-American punter Ben LeCompte.

LeCompte will be pulling double duty as punter/place kicker. On top of pinning opposing offenses deep inside their own territory, LeCompte had 31 touchbacks on kickoffs last season. NDSU will rely on

his powerful leg to win the field position battle – an often-overlooked statistic that looms large in the final score. LeCompte is one of the most valuable players on NDSU’s roster, even if he is a punter.

Punting and field position aren’t sexy, but they win football games.

Winning a single national championship is not easy. Winning four consecutive national championships is the product of a program and culture where success breeds success. It’s the sort of program and culture where we can realistically talk of winning a fifth straight. The Bison have all the pieces in place to make another run to Frisco. How far will we go?

Well, here’s a hint. I’ve got my weekend booked come January 9, 2016 – and it’s in a place much warmer than Fargo.

Everyone up for the kickoff, the march is on!

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POP QUIZ

What’s a saying or motto that you live by?

What’s a hidden talent (non-sports related) you have?

Where’s your favorite hang out on campus?

“Success is uncommon, therefore not to be enjoyed by the common man.”

Making wood furniture

Downstairs in the Memorial Union

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Placed second in the nation in Judo

West Dining Center

“Respect the training, honor the commitment, cherish the result.”

I can flare my nose if that counts as a talent.

Union Coffee Shop

“The most important thing is to enjoy your life - to be happy - it’s all that matters.”

- Audrey Hepburn

I like to sing... But usually only in my car, or the shower haha

The Union

My hidden talent is that I love playing the piano

I wouldn’t say this is my favorite hangout spot, but I spent a lot of my time in the library studying with my teammates, which was always entertaining and fun.

Brad Ambrosius

FOOTBALL

Ambrosius made five starts on the defensive side of the ball for the Bison in 2014. The junior defensive end made nine tackles in four playoff games and made MVFC Honor Roll and named one of the Commissioner’s Academic Excellence Award recipients.

King Frazier

FOOTBALL

Frazier played in every game last season and scored four touchdowns. He finished the season with 111 carries, the second most on the team. His longest run of the season was a 33-yard touchdown run in the semifinals of the FCS playoffs against Sam Houston State.

Lauren Miller

SOCCER

In her first two years with the Bison, Miller has been named to first-team All-Summit League twice. The junior forward scored nine goals last season, which gave her a team-high 19 points.

She has scored 19 goals over her first two seasons and has recorded 46 points.

Emily Minnick Last season, Minnick started 30 matches at middle blocker and was second on the team with .239 hitting percentage and 0.72 blocks per set. The Willmar, Minn., native has played in all but four matches in her career.

VOLLEYBALL NATALIE ROTH

GOLF 138

Last season’s Summit League Women’s Golf Newcomer of the Year had a team-best scoring average of 76.71 and played in all 11 events for the Bison.

Roth also finished fourth in the Summit League championships and was named second-team All-Summit League.

B I S O N I L L U S T R A T E D • SE P T E M BE R 2 015

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

- Steve Prefontaine

What song DON’T you want to hear again on a pre-game playlist/in a stadium?

You’re at an all-youcan-eat-buffet, what’s the first thing you’re putting on your plate?

Anything made by or with 2 Chainz

Mashed potatoes and gravy

Any country music... at all

Steak

Any Justin Bieber songs

Probably bacon.

“Bad Blood”

by Taylor Swift

Pizza

If the song “Call Me Maybe” comes on, it’s an automatic next!

I’m always in the mood for sushi, that’s the first thing I’d go for.