Kolpack: When will NDSU start planning for FBS football? About 10 years ago

As sure as the snow finally melted, and that end point was getting to be debatable, the preseason Division I football polls are beginning to surface across the country. Predictably, around the Football Championship Subdivision, North Dakota State is getting the favorite’s nod.

There were a couple of notable departures this year in James Madison and Sam Houston State, which have declared their FBS moves. Those two are no longer walking the talk of leaving the FCS; they are gone.

Which begs the question, of course, when is NDSU going to begin discussions of moving up?

The answer: What do you think the athletic department has been doing for the last 10 years? I’m convinced the Mountain West Conference could make a call on a Sunday night asking if NDSU would be interested in an affiliate membership for football and the Bison would have a response on the commissioner’s desk by 8 a.m. Monday.

There’s really nothing left to discuss. Whether intentionally or not, NDSU has already done its homework.

The three main boxes have already been checked: money, facilities and tradition.

I wasn’t convinced the funding would be there and when former president Dean Bresciani told Bison 1660 radio in an interview in May he thought the school was nearing its fundraising ceiling, that was a cause for a minor alarm. Bresciani is well vested in the football program.

Then came a story in The Forum last week on NDSU’s athletic scholarship endowment, which is approaching $71 million. A good chunk of that has come in the last five-or-so years, said athletic director Matt Larsen.

Larsen said that fund has not been a focus of the athletic department with facilities getting the primary attention.

Think about that: NDSU got to almost $71 million without an all-out effort. There’s money out there. In contrast, at least five Missouri Valley Football Conference schools have athletic scholarship endowments between $2 million and $10 million.

A concerted effort to get the scholarship endowment to $125 million that would fund all university athletic scholarships doesn’t seem out of the question. NDSU will find the funds to feed the football beast. It always has.

That brings us to facilities and if they are FBS worthy. The $50 million Nodak Insurance Football Performance Complex currently under construction will be Power-Five level and if compared to the five indoor complexes in the FBS Mountain West would be the gold standard. Granted, in the Mountain West, schools like San Diego State and Hawaii don’t need indoor practice space.

Game day venues are a different story.

We’ve beat on the improving-the-Fargodome drum 1,000 times and I’m not about to throw another punch. It needs an update, we know. At some point, the power players whoever wins mayor, City Commission, Fargo Dome Authority need to do something, hopefully sooner than later.

At almost 19,000, the dome is big enough for Group of Five FBS football. NDSU would have finished eighth in a 13-team Mountain West in attendance last year, with three others just a few thousand ahead of the Bison.

The Mountain West as a whole averaged around 23,000 fans per game in the last few years. Is a new stadium in Fargo needed? Not now and not for a while.

When an opportunity for James Madison came to jump to FBS and the Sun Belt Conference, the Dukes did it quickly. The decision felt like it took one weekend. There was no messing around because most likely the school was planning for it for years.

NDSU, whether consciously or not, has been doing the same. The problem, of course, is geography and that is an issue money, facilities and tradition cannot solve.