South Dakota State wins first football championship; routs North Dakota State in FCS title game
FRISCO, Texas – Jackrabbits. By a mile.
For the first time ever, South Dakota State is the national champion, and for the first time ever, North Dakota State has been defeated in the FCS title game at Toyota Stadium.
SDSU blew the doors off their rivals on Sunday, a 45-21 win in front of a crowd of 18,023. It was about a 50/50 split of green and blue, and the fans in blue were treated to nothing short of the most memorable day and impressive performance in the 123-year history of Jackrabbit football.
The Bison are still the 9-time champs. They’ll be back. So will the Jacks.
But for all the progress SDSU has made in recent years, for how far they’d come since jumping to Division I in 2004, the lack of a national championship trophy left a great big gaping hole in the program.
That hole has been filled. If the Jacks never win another title, and things being what they are that seems unlikely, what they accomplished in 2022/23, their 14-win journey that began in August against the Iowa Hawkeyes and ended in January with their second win over the Kings of FCS in one season, can never be taken away from them. When the team arrives back in Brookings, they can put the Dakota Marker and the National Championship trophy on display, right next to each other, a permanent symbol of the most significant accomplishment in the history of South Dakota team sports.
There were, if you were willing to look past NDSU’s 9-0 history in Frisco, some reasons to believe a dominant SDSU win might be forthcoming. The Jacks already beat them once, in Fargo, without Tucker Kraft, the future NFL tight end. After a slow start in that game, they dominated the second half.
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And since then, the Bison only lost key players to injuries and the transfer portal, none bigger than All-American fullback Hunter Luepke, arguably their best player. This time NDSU wouldn’t have the Fargodome to fall back on. They wouldn’t have Luepke.
And let’s face it, they probably didn’t have the same sense of urgency. Not to say NDSU didn’t want to win this. Of course they did. They shed tears in the aftermath just like any team would that came so close to glory only to fall short. But NDSU has been here so many times. They’ll surely be back.
For SDSU, this was an opportunity they could not squander. The No. 1 seed, as healthy as they’ve been all year, with a possible 1st-round draft pick having spurned big money from bigger programs to leave. They’ll have more chances to win it all, but the stars might never align like they did this year. The Jacks had to walk through that door, finally. But they didn’t just walk through. They kicked it down and set it on fire.
SDSU struck first on an Isaiah Davis 16-yard touchdown run. NDSU answered quickly to tie it 7-7, but then SDSU took over. A 32-yard scamper by Amar Johnson, and after a Bison fumble, an 18-yard touchdown pass from Mark Gronowski to Jaxon Janke to make it 21-7. It was the first time in 10 national championships that NDSU ever trailed by more than a touchdown, but SDSU was just getting started.
On 3rd and short Gronowski faked a quarterback run and dumped a pass off to H-back Mike Morgan, who ran 44 yards for a touchdown.
28-7.
Again the Bison answered, but you could already feel it getting away from them. The Jacks added a field goal before half to make it 31-14 at the break, and they were getting the ball to start the second.
They wasted no time, with Gronowski breaking off a 51-yard scoring run to make it 38-14.
Ballgame.
It was complete and utter domination. The Jacks finish the year with 14 consecutive wins, 14-0 against FCS competition. It’s their first time beating NDSU in the playoffs, and their fourth straight win over the Bison overall.
It was a treat for the entirety of the Dakotas to see these two teams finally square off in Frisco, but it’s almost certainly not the last. Chances are the Bison will strike back in this rivalry sooner than later.
But for now, there’s only one FCS champion, and it’s the Jackrabbits.
UP NEXT
North Dakota State opens the 2023 season on Sept. 2 in Minneapolis, one of the school’s largest alumni bases, against perennial FCS playoff team Eastern Washington.
South Dakota State still hopes to fill an open slot on its 2023 schedule for Labor Day weekend. As of now, the first set game is Sept. 9 at home against 2021 national runner-up Montana State, which the Jackrabbits beat in this season’s national semifinal game.
Contributing: The Associated Press