North Dakota State University football fans are still basking in the glow of the program’s 18th National Championship, one that seemed anything but certain early in the year. NDSU took the field this season believing that a title was a possibility; it always is at NDSU, but the sheer number of question marks had Bison fans wondering what this team’s ceiling really was.
The team showed it on a chilly night in Frisco, Texas.
Senior quarterback Cam Miller threw for 199 yards, and ran for 126 more, as the Bison notched their 10 th FCS Championship in the last 14 years with a 35-32 win over the tournament’s top seed, unbeaten Montana State. This was not that dominant, run-it-down-your-throat, Bison team that the world has come to know in the Division 1 era. This year’s heroics, all season long, required more of a passing game than usual. But when the pass game was needed, it responded, largely in part to one guy you saw coming, and one you didn’t.
Miller was phenomenal, completing 19 of his 22 passes, for 2 touchdowns through the air to go along with his two rushing scores. One of them, a 64-yard sprint, gave NDSU a 14-0 lead in the first quarter and stunned the Bobcats en route to a 21-3 halftime lead. And then there was junior receiver Bryce Lance. He had a “game for the ages” with nine catches for 107 yards, and a scintillating deep grab, complete with a full-extension dive, that set NDSU up for an early 4 th -quarter touchdown that proved to be the difference. NDSU’s defense, which had seen its share of uneven play this season, was outstanding, holding the nation’s top offense 103 rushing yards below its average. When “Code Green” was needed, Grant Olson’s bunch rose to the challenge with key stops against FCS Player of The Year Tommy Mellott.
Miller was named the game’s Most Outstanding Player after rushing 18 times for 121 yards and two touchdowns to go along with his scintillating night in the passing game. NDSU finished the season 14-2 overall, with Montana State finishing 15-1.
A DYNASTY DEFINED
The season that started in Boulder, Colorado, against an offensive juggernaut finished the year taking on another, but the Bison got impressive growth from a new head coach and many new starters en route to the title.
In this sterling 14-year run, NDSU’s dominance cannot be overstated. These kinds of runs simply do not happen. It’s too hard and the landscape is too complicated. Competition always evens the playing field, and other than South Dakota State’s back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023, no other team has come close to anything resembling a dynasty in the FCS.
NDSU’s record since 2011 is 186-21. That’s a winning percentage of .899. That means nine out of every 10 games played by the Bison in the last 14 years have been wins. These numbers are hard to comprehend. There have been four coaches, two athletic directors and hundreds of players. Still the Bison tradition has not just remained, it has grown. And while many of the top FCS programs have moved up to the FBS division, the level of football played in the Dakotas and Montana has steadily improved.
The rising tide from Fargo has lifted all the regional boats. This year, schools from those three states made up the entire top four playoff seeds. And the universities of Montana and North Dakota have been regulars in the FCS rankings, as well.
NCAA.com writer Stan Becton has ranked this year’s national championship as the fourth-best of the 10 NDSU title seasons, behind only 2019 (16-0), 2014 (15-1) and 2013 (15-
0).
FIVE FACTORS
The storylines and heroes of this season are too numerous to mention. A book could be written about this NDSU season, and it very well might. But here are five factors that played major roles in NDSU’s championship season.
1. Cam Miller. There was no more valuable player to this team than the senior quarterback from Solon, Iowa. In fact, Miller may have been the most necessary
player to his team of any of the NDSU title squads. The national championship game was evidence of that. Miller accounted for 320 of the team’s 401 yards, while throwing just 3 incompletions in 22 passes (and, by the way, only one of those incompletions was truly his fault). He nearly engineered an upset of Big 12 Colorado, in game one, and the team’s only other loss was at South Dakota where Miller basically had the game won in the final minutes. He leaves the program as NDSU’s all-time total offense leader and broke Carson Wentz’s single-season records for completions (228) and passing yards (3,111). He was a finalist for the Payton Award, given to the most outstanding player in FCS football and barring a historic season from MSU’s Mellott, would likely have won it. His record, as a starter, at NDSU is 46-11. Miller’s future, at the next level, is uncertain, although he has hired an agent and a training academy to prepare him for shot at the NFL.
2. Tim Polasek. Polasek had never been a head coach, at any level, before taking the job before the 2024 season. But his fiery and passionate style also blended with a deep understanding of who his team was and what it needed at every step. His background, in offense, at the FCS and major college level, was certainly a valuable asset in building a program, but his ability to recruit and retain talent, both players and coaches, is impossible to ignore. From day one, Polasek carried a remarkable balance of being a players’ coach but the undisputed leader of the team. He took over at NDSU late in last year’s recruiting season and managed to keep the class generally intact. He somehow got an All-American offensive lineman (Grey Zabel) to turn down hundreds of thousands of dollars in the transfer portal to stay in Fargo for one more year. He also found a way to get first-year coordinators on both offense and defense to grow and excel on the fly. Polasek will have many opportunities to move up to the FBS level, and they will likely come quickly from savvy athletic directors that take the time to research what Polasek really did this season.
3. The Defense. NDSU’s costliest injury happened before the season began, as All-America safety Cole Wisniewski’s foot injury took longer than expected to heal. He would have been a major influence in a young Bison secondary, but by the time he got close to returning, it was learned that he was going to transfer to Texas Tech for the 2025 season, thanks to a six-figure Name Image and Likeness (NIL) deal awaiting in Lubbock. That left young safeties like Darius Givance and Ryan Jones to be thrown into the deep end. There were stumbles along the way (season finale at South Dakota) but NDSU’s tackling improved significantly as the season went on, as first-year coordinator Grant Olson (who could have had his own section here) shaped the unit into one of the best in the conference. This was not that typical Top 10 defensive unit that NDSU boasted early in the dynasty run, but there may not have been a group that improved as much as this one did in a single season. We knew the offense would be strong for NDSU this season, but midway through the year it was hard to believe this group would be able to do what it did in the first half of the national championship game; hold Montana State to three points.
4. Bryce Lance. Coming into the 2024 season, the junior wideout from Marshall, Minnesota had one catch. One. For a total of 7 yards. But Lance ended the season with 75 receptions (two short of Warren Holloway’s single-season record), a school-record 17 touchdown catches and 1,071 yards. He was brilliant in the playoffs, with a remarkable one hand touchdown catch against South Dakota State, and the earlier-mentioned diving catch to set up a touchdown in the title game. Many of his nine catches against Montana State came at critical times. Lance might have come into the season known as Trey Lance’s little brother, but he will leave NDSU as potentially the most decorated receiver in school history. Lance recently announced that he would be staying at NDSU for his senior year, rather than grab big money in the transfer portal or pursue an NFL future. Lance is rumored to have received an offer close to $1 million from an FBS program.
5. Jake Landry. NDSU’s first-year offensive coordinator came to Fargo after serving as the offensive coordinator at newly-minted FCS program St. Thomas the previous two seasons. Under his leadership, Miller reached heights not seen before as quarterback, three new offensive line starters became major forces in the NDSU trenches, and a newcomer at running back (CharMar Brown) became the FCS Freshman Of The Year. The receiving corps had suffered multiple losses through the transfer portal in the offseason, and there was much work to be done to get the passing game to the level it attained. If the defense needed to become something great, the offense needed to start the year great and get better from there. And it did. NDSU was Top 10 in the FCS in multiple categories and became a team that was equally confident running the ball or
throwing it. His play calling was masterful when it mattered most. In the championship game, his variety and creativity were on full display, as the Bobcats were unable to lock into any expectations of what was coming next.
LOOKING AHEAD TO 2025
NDSU appears to have dodged most of the bullets in the early transfer portal window. At the time this article was written, NDSU had no new entries into the portal following the title game win. What’s more, NDSU has landed Texas Tech defensive back Jaylon Peoples, who played in six games over the last two seasons and will have two years of eligibility. The Bison will have to replace several seniors on both the offensive and defensive lines, and of course a gaping hole at quarterback. There have been no announced changes to the coaching staff. NDSU will again look to maximize its resources as it attempts to extend its dynasty.
According to the website Sportico.com, as dominant as NDSU has been on the field, its budget looks significantly more average. The school spent $6.4 million on football in fiscal 2023, which ranked 26 th in FCS, according to data submitted to the Department of Education. Montana State, by contrast, was No. 1 at $8.9 million. NDSU’s 2025 schedule includes the usual conference games, along with nonconference road games at The Citadel on August 30th and Tennessee State on September 6th. NDSU’s two home nonconference games are the home opener against Southeast Missouri State on September 13th and the regular season finale against the University of St. Thomas on November 22nd.
