In May 2016, the athletic directors of Colorado and North Dakota State signed an agreement for a football game between their programs to be played on a Saturday some eight-plus years later. Accordingly, CU would pay NDSU $700,000 to come to Folsom Field.
Instead, the Buffalos and Bison will finally meet in a nationally televised prime-time game on Thursday, so as to accommodate ESPN. If college football schedule-making was done via crystal ball, this is probably not the matchup CU would have wanted to open the sophomore season of the Deion Sanders experiment, considering how things fell apart in Year 1. (Oddsmakers have the Buffs as 9.5-point favorites in the game.)
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Much has changed in the time since the opponents first signed on the dotted line—a combined five new head coaches between the schools and a new conference for CU, which left the Pac-12 for the Big 12—though some key things remain the same. The signatories of the game agreement, AD’s Rick George and Matt Larsen, are still employed at CU and NDSU, respectively. North Dakota State continues to be one of the top FCS football programs in the country, with a history of ruining the non-conference home schedules of their bigger, richer hosts. The Bison have won five out of their last six road games against FBS opponents, including a 23-21 stunner against a No. 13-ranked Iowa team in 2016. And this success, in turn, has made the school’s spoiler opportunities increasingly hard to come by.
In a phone interview, Larsen said despite this, CU made no attempt to wiggle its way out of this year’s home opener. “I have a ton of respect for them for that,” said Larsen, who estimates about 7,000 NDSU faithful will make the 900-mile trek from Fargo, N.D. to Boulder, Colo.
Back in 2016, NDSU was already struggling to find willing FBS schools to pay them away-game guarantees, having just come off of three straight FCS championships. The fans in Fargo were clamoring for the school to apply for membership in college football’s top division, a possibility that was accounted for in the terms of the CU game. According to a copy of the contract, obtained through a public records request, NDSU would have had its pay doubled to $1.4 million in the event it had joined the FBS prior to the contest.
That didn’t happen and, from a financial perspective, the game has only decreased in value: The $700,000 commitment eight years ago has the buying power of $534,622 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator.
On the other hand, there was no conceivable expectation that NDSU’s opposing head coach would be someone with the star power of Sanders, who was then coaching high school players in Texas.
“So, it is not an additional $700,000, but it is [added] national exposure,” Larsen said, a tradeoff he is happy to take. (Earlier this year, CU agreed to bump up NDSU’s pay to $740,000, to offset the visitors’ additional costs incurred with the game moving to its Thursday slot.)
Unless NDSU were to jump up a subdivision, Thursday’s game could be one of the last of its kind for the program. The team’s next scheduled FBS game is a 2028 contest at Oregon, which was contracted in 2015 and originally supposed to be played in 2020. (NDSU will receive $650,000 for that one.)
For financial reasons, more and more FCS schools have decided to play two FBS away games each year, which has further reduced the pool of opponents. And with the College Football Playoff expanding to a 12-team format this season, there is greater incentive for Power conference members to schedule competitive early-season games against each other, rather to try to go undefeated playing non-FBS opponents.
“I hope it doesn’t get to the point where some of these FBS schools just decide not to play FCS,” said Larsen.
By many metrics, even those beyond the field, North Dakota State has already closed the subdivisional gap.
For the 2023 fiscal year, NDSU reported $6.4 million in total operating football revenues, which was greater than at least 20 FBS schools, including Connecticut and Houston. That same fiscal year, the Bison earned more on football ticket sales ($3.72 million) than 42% of FBS public schools, according to Sportico’s college sports finance database.
The school has spent $110 million on athletic facility projects over the last 12 years, including a $54 million football practice venue that was opened in 2022. Larsen notes that unlike most FCS programs, his school “fully funds” Alston and cost-of-attendance monies for its athletes.
“I think our football team on any given Saturday can match up and hold their own, but there is a lot more to it than that,” Larsen said. “If we were to transition to FBS now, I don’t know if any of us know what the rules of engagement are. There are probably a lot more questions than answers. I think we have said all along we want to play at the highest possible level we can—that makes sense.”
Larsen often refers to the Bison as an FBS program wearing FCS clothes, and there’s a case to be made that the game of affordable fashion makes the most sense going forward.
“I feel better where we are today than a majority of [FBS] programs outside your Power Four conferences,” Larsen said.
In recent years, North Dakota State has increasingly relied on playing “destination games” in neutral venues against other FCS schools for its opener. Last year, the Bison opened their season playing Eastern Washington at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Next year, it will open its slate with back-to-back games against the Citadel in Charleston, S.C., and Tennessee State in Nashville.
Meanwhile, NDSU’s next opening is just three years away, in 2027, a blink-of-an-eye in the chronometry of scheduling out football games. So far, there have been no FBS takers.
“Philosophically, we want to play those games,” Larsen said. “Our deputy AD, he literally will reach out to every FBS program that has a common open date to inquire, and it has just been a challenge. So, if any readers are interested, we are definitely open.”
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