The FCS Dynasty Is Moving Up: Inside North Dakota State’s FBS Leap and Statement First Win

FARGO, N.D. — Past the large pirate ship anchored in the indoor pool in the middle of the local Holiday Inn and steps away from the makeshift casino area lined with slot machines, North Dakota State coach Tim Polasek walked into his first weekly radio show of the season and was greeted like a conquering hero.

Nearly every table in the lounge area, which was advertising mystery shots for $2.50 apiece, was occupied. Roughly 50 people—a healthy mix of retirees and working alumni from around town in various shades of green and gold—impressed the athletic department staffers with their cheering and clapping at full throttle every few minutes. The Bison logo was inescapable, from the giant screens urging donations to the school’s new fund supporting revenue sharing to the official craft beer on tap, part of the $9 burger, fries and beer combo seemingly everyone ordered.

The cheers for Polasek, the most visible representative of the team, received a little extra oomph because he reinforces the new reality for the program.

North Dakota State, as great of a dynasty college football has seen after winning 10 FCS national championships in a 15-year stretch, has finally reached the highest level of the sport. On Saturday, Mountain West logos dotting the Fargodome became tangible touchpoints for legions of supporters excitedly realizing the long-awaited dream.

After years of previously tormenting FBS teams as an upset-minded underdog from the level below, the Bison are now a peer after a whirlwind seven-month stretch leading into an opener unlike any they’ve had previously.

“We’ve already got a national brand. But the opportunity that’s in front of us, I just hope everybody sees the same opportunity and the growth for the school, the region, and for Fargo specifically. Because this could be explosive,” Polasek told the crowd, eventually making parallels to what Boise State accomplished stepping up in competition over the years. “All we need to do now is win.”

The first unofficial victory of game week came in the coach’s closing remarks with an offer, gladly accepted by the throngs in attendance, to buy a round toasting the move to FBS ahead of Saturday’s contest against Jacksonville State. The final tab is modest, roughly $125 Polasek recounts the next day, but underscores the connection in the moment between an excited fan base and someone who has coached at the school across three different stints since 2006.

An actual win, he knows, will be much harder to come by despite an illustrious history built on so many of them.

It is impossible to escape reminders of what the standard is for the Bison even if they are so numerous they fade into the background. A well-worn Division II national championship inscription at Dacotah Field, the team’s former outdoor stadium, is tucked away so unassumingly that construction equipment nearly covers up the entire thing. Outside the NDSU football offices in the upper levels of the Fargodome, FCS title trophies are so tightly packed together in a row they look like dominoes ready to tip over. If you turn the corner too fast, you may miss the Dakota Marker trophy—awarded to the winner of the team’s rivalry with South Dakota State—shoehorned into the lobby. Four championship rings sit neatly in a case on an end table, while 22 more are lined up on a single shelf in the head coach’s office.

A little more than 24 hours before facing off with the Gamecocks, however, such formidable relics are far from top of mind as the team goes through their final walkthrough to focus on the here and now.

Polasek, just a few minutes removed from meeting with the CBS Sports Network crew broadcasting the game and still in a suit before practice, checks a notebook on the escalator ride down to field level filled with various coaching points he will remind the team about. Any concerns about new quarterback Nathan Hayes, who has taken snaps in 18 games but will start for the first time, have eased over the prior two days of practice after significant work in the two-minute drill. The defense is talkative on the way from the locker room, excited at the prospect of containing dual-threat quarterback Caden Creel. Senior kicker Drew Klein, put on scholarship prior to the season, was booming kickoffs in addition to an impressive consistency between the uprights the final weeks of camp.

Yet Polasek and his coaching staff are no different from fellow FBS coaches, all confronting the unknowns that come from having not taken the field in a live game with this year’s team. The Bison were still a little unsure of how they’d match up against a program which has won nine games in four consecutive seasons and has played for the Conference USA title in the last two (winning once).

North Dakota State coach Tim Polasek is 27–3 with the Bison after Saturday’s win over Jacksonville State. | Ron Chenoy/USA Today Sports

“I think from our perspective, there’s no difference playing FBS, which, truthfully, I don’t think there should be,” says senior receiver Mekhi Collins, recalling a five-point loss in the 2024 opener to Colorado, which featured eventual Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter. “You might see a couple of faster guys at the skill positions, but a lot of the positions it’s about the same strength-wise, speed-wise. I feel like a lot of the guys on our team could go to any other [FBS] place and play the exact same as they are now.”

“When you follow the path that we’ve had set in stone since the early 2000s, even before winning national championships, it works. So you’re gonna trust your preparation,” says veteran defensive tackle Logan Larson before notching a half-sack on Saturday. “We’re used to it and that’s what we want to play. We all want to play at the highest level and none of us are just going to shy away from that.”

The commitment to preparation extends department wide for a move that has been decades in the making, which allowed the relatively snap decision.

Athletic director Matt Larsen worked on the school’s first feasibility study in 2013 as a part-time consultant before he took his current job. He has been the driving force behind more than $120 million in facilities upgrades in the last decade. Scholarships and, now, NIL and revenue-sharing cash have risen steadily in the past few years, even inching ahead of some FBS teams across the Midwest.

Accepting an invite to the Mountain West and finally pulling the trigger on a long-discussed FBS move though, has still exceeded all expectations. The weekend after the 2025 football season, the department raised $25 million after just four conversations with donors in Arizona in anticipation of the jump. A waiver to play in a bowl game as soon as this season and potentially compete in the conference title game added to the retention of several key players on the 2026 team. Polasek notes future recruiting has reached a point where he believes the program will start winning the battles they narrowly lose with some Power 4 teams.

It helps to sell a history of winning with the promise of doing so on the highest level.

FBS football in the great state of North Dakota.

You helped us get here.
Now let’s make some noise. pic.twitter.com/f6LnYkYiSX
— NDSU Football (@NDSUfootball) August 29, 2026

“I’ve always said, if North Dakota State were located in the South, we would have been FBS probably seven or eight years ago,” Larsen says. “I think the Mountain West if you talk to them, they realize it’s less about TV markets and all that stuff, but the brand is really important. They recognized that in us and it’s not just a flash in the pan here. What we did in 15 years, I don’t think will ever be duplicated at any level. The consistency year in and year out, the culture, I think our legacy was we were good for FCS. I think we helped elevate the Missouri Valley Football conference.

“Our fan base, they feel as if we have something to prove, like we belong here [in FBS] and we’re a good football program. I’m excited for our team, but really excited for our fan base because they’ve been side by side throughout this whole thing.”

Such zeal is evident on Saturday, as Larsen is far from the only one beaming with pride in the parking lots immediately west of the Fargodome. There is a buzz in the air, not simply down to the amount of easily available beer, brats or burgers, but because the days before a historic kickoff have finally become slow-moving hours.

North Dakota State fans developed an impressive external reputation from their near-annual trips en masse to Frisco, Texas, to play in the FCS title game, but in their home environment, they are something to behold. Aided by overcast skies and rare upper-80-degree temperatures, tailgating has been elevated to an art form featuring numerous setups which cost six figures to assemble for usage across just a few weekends a season.

Converted school buses, both shortened and standard size, have been repainted in green and occupy large stretches of space. Multiple ambulances have been repurposed into showpiece tailgates, complete with flat-screen TVs and coolers. Smokers shaped like bison are commonplace, and you can sometimes hear part of the six-hour pregame radio show over the yells of people getting thrown off mechanical bulls. You have to take care in avoiding any number of games practiced by children and children at heart in the small sections between parking spaces, from NDSU-themed cornhole setups to massive Jenga towers hovering precariously on tables.

Ubiquitous trailers are also found all over, with one proudly displaying a signed mural of the 2016 championship game—notably a 37–10 win over then-FCS foe Jacksonville State.

Greetings from… Fargo. pic.twitter.com/lxi8r00egg
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) August 29, 2026

Around the corner, one family member of a Gamecocks player even pulls aside new North Dakota State school president Marshall Stewart to remark how it is all “SEC level” as he makes his first rounds across the area. The Alabama natives are not wrong, nor does the recent Missouri and Kansas State administrator disagree. The only difference might be the slightly different scale.

Even then, it’s still a sight to behold. One school official notes there is an estimated 40,000 or so who will be on hand outside the Fargodome, which will later seat 18,573 at the stadium for the game. That would make the easily walkable stretch the sixth-biggest city in the state.

They are there not just to enjoy the immense revelry which comes from the first football game of the season, but to witness something historic.

vibes are downright immaculate pic.twitter.com/PyFRo5Y0Ju
— NDSU Football (@NDSUfootball) August 29, 2026

“To see this scene, it’s impressive. I think by moving back up one more level, it’s really bringing this back again because it got to the point where the excitement was gone. By halftime most times the game was over. Now, what’s going to happen, nobody knows. But it’s exciting and new,” says former quarterback Terry Hanson, who helped the school win its first national title in 1965. “I think the FBS [move] is absolutely a fantastic thing to grow this school.”

“It was the right time to go,” notes Kevin Hanson, the president of Gate City Bank which is a prominent supporter of the athletics program. “I think there’s a pride in what the university does and recognizing what it can do to the university and the community. There’s an excitement of being on that next stage and seeing what the team can do. New conference, new challenges and new trips to go on.”

That’s palpable as numerous others express interest in forthcoming Bison games against UNLV in Las Vegas or at Hawai’i in mid-November, to say nothing of new teams venturing to the windswept plains this year like Northern Illinois and Wyoming. Traditional local rivals, like South Dakota State or North Dakota, can be satiated in other sports housed in the Summit League.

Still, the leap to FBS has come with some dose of humility in knowing that three- or four-touchdown leads at halftime are unlikely even if similar goals remain.

NDSU takes the field as an FBS team for the first time. pic.twitter.com/iN1h3HeNrI
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) August 29, 2026

“Our standard has been we want to compete for championships and that always starts with our conference. I’ve told the people in the Mountain West, our hope is we want to come in and be competitive right away. We want to add value right away to the league,” Larsen says. “Now who knows—is it going to be easy? No. Are we going to take some lumps? Probably. But over the long haul, you look at our history since the 1960s, we’ve had three losing seasons. So there’s just an expectation. To say we’re going to win a national championship at the FBS level, that’s a pretty tall order. But we’d love to be the top Group of 6 team that gets a chance. And you give us a chance, you never know.”

Count Larsen’s new boss, Stewart, as a believer—not just in the power of NDSU football, but as someone who believes this is not the school’s last move amid a turbulent time in college athletics.

On the field for North Dakota State, things didn’t deviate much from the ideal script supporters could conjure before kickoff in what ended up as a one-sided 33–7 affair.

The strong-armed, 6'3" Hayes looked next in line to join the budding NFL quarterback factory by completing all four of his passes on the opening drive en route to an efficient 160-yard, two-score effort with an interception. He poetically found Fargo native and sophomore tight end Reis Kessel for the first-ever FBS touchdown by the team over the outstretched hand of a defender and helped open up the box for a ground game which largely powered the team to 20 first downs and dominance in time of possession.

The first drive of our FBS era ends with a ....

𝙏𝙊𝙐𝘾𝙃𝘿𝙊𝙒𝙉, 𝘽𝙄𝙎𝙊𝙉! pic.twitter.com/CrE8AeGz7w
— NDSU Football (@NDSUfootball) August 29, 2026

The Bison defense was typically stout as well, limiting its opponents to just two third down conversions and holding one of the CUSA favorites scoreless in the second half to turn a previously close affair into a runaway. The Gamecocks managed their fewest rushing and passing yards since moving to the FBS level themselves, dating back to their 2021 announcement, leading to head coach Charles Kelly decrying it was “a good, old-fashioned butt whipping” afterward. Many of the fans who decamped back outside to the tailgates seemed to agree, long before defensive end Blake Schiltz recovered an errant snap in the end zone as part of a third quarter when the home team stretched its lead by double digits despite not throwing a single pass.

As emotional as Polasek was thinking about what the Jacksonville State game represented, including on the walk into the Fargodome with thousands of adoring fans cheering the team on, the coach remained dialed in and relatively stoic until the final moments. That is of no surprise to those who know him well. The same guy who turned to tree logging to make ends meet early in his career was always going to be one barking out instructions right up to the second the scoreboards confirmed win No. 1 as an FBS member.

Afterward, from the postgame interview to the hugs with former players and into the locker room though, things were much more free-flowing and adhering to the celebration of a special moment. Polasek will have no trouble remembering it all either, receiving a game ball from Larsen to raucous applause by his players that was not contained by any set of double doors in the building.

Only one way to celebrate our 1st FBS victory
--- like we always have 🤘
Thankful to share it with Bison Nation in the @fargodome! pic.twitter.com/7h2vOxIZIv
— NDSU Football (@NDSUfootball) August 30, 2026

“I guess this is the first one that makes sense to me. It’s a huge move up and it’s a challenge,” the coach says of the football later, just before popping a bottle of Dom Pérignon back in the office which his athletic director has been saving eight months for just such an occasion. “There’s so many unknowns, you wonder, How is this really going to go? But in my mind, I have a hard time not believing in the Bison. As long as we keep preparing and practicing well, hopefully we can be on the winning side more than the losing one.”

It will take some time to figure out just how much North Dakota State will do on either side of such a line at the FBS level. As the Bison move into the rest of the 2026 campaign, however, they can rest a little bit easier with a win on their first try. That excitement won’t dissipate anytime soon.

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