Berry Tramel: South Dakota State Jackrabbits have Mike Gundy scared to death in season opener
- Aug 28, 2024 Updated 1 hr ago
Berry Tramel
Sports ColumnistSouth Dakota State football coach Jimmy Rogers says his Jackrabbits long ago shed the concept of moral victories.
Wonder if the Jackrabbits would reconsider? Mike Gundy sounds like he’d make a deal right now.
OSU hosts South Dakota State on Saturday, and the Cowboys are mere 9½-point favorites over the Division I-AA Jackrabbits. If things go well for Gundy’s squad Saturday, it might be a bigger favorite next week over Arkansas of the mighty Southeastern Conference.
South Dakota State is not your typical Football Championship Subdivision (I-AA) team. The Jacks have won back-to-back I-AA national championships and have supplanted arch-rival North Dakota State as the standard-bearer of small-college football.
“We’ve given up moral victories here for a long time,” said Jackrabbits coach Jimmy Rogers. “We’re going there for a reason. We’re going to compete. If we’re going to claim we’re one of the best in the country, here’s an opportunity to showcase that. The players wouldn’t expect me to say it any different.”
Gundy seems sufficiently scared. Not scared as in quaking in his boots. But scared as in who-the-hell-scheduled-this-game-on-me? Scared as in these-guys-are-good.
Gundy even sacrificed his fan base in the name of an advantage, scheduling this game at 1 p.m., hoping the August heat might wilt the Jackrabbits, who have been practicing in mild temperatures in Brookings, South Dakota.
“This team can play competitively in the Power Four conferences,” Gundy said. “They’re very competitive in the manner and way they’ve won games. They know what they’re doing.”
That sort of mirrors Gundy’s analysis of Brigham Young joining the Big 12. He called the Cougars a power-conference program that just happened to not be in a power conference.
South Dakota State has won back-to-back I-AA national championships and have supplanted arch-rival North Dakota State as the standard-bearer of small-college football.
Richard W. Rodriguez, AP file photo
When South Dakota State has ventured into the big-boy weeds, the Jackrabbits have acquitted themselves quite well, notably a 7-3 loss at Iowa in 2022. Those Hawkeyes finished 8-5 and beat Kentucky 21-0 in the Music City Bowl.
“Every win on the national stage is huge for the university, because it’s national branding,” Rogers said. “If we can win this game, you’re beating one of the elite programs in college football. I think it’s huge.
“Are we worried about whether this is going to stand in history? We’re worried about winning the game, because that’s what we’re attempting to do.”
Over the years, OSU football has been pushed by lower-division opponents.
Missouri State took the Cowboys to overtime in 1995. In Gundy’s first game as OSU’s head coach, Montana State took the Cowboys to the wire before losing 15-10 in 2004. The 2021 OSU team that beat Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl and finished seventh in The Associated Press poll opened the season with a 23-16 squeaker over Missouri State. Central Arkansas played the Cowboys to a 27-13 game just last September.
But those frights occurred AFTER the game began. Gundy’s fear over South Dakota State has been building since he realized who his school had scheduled. And that anxiety exploded last January 7, when the Jackrabbits routed Montana 23-3 in the national championship game to complete a 15-0 season and extend their winning streak to 29.
North Dakota State had won nine of the previous I-AA national titles, but the Bison have been supplanted by the Jackrabbits as king of the Dakotas and thus the entire division.
“Credit to North Dakota State,” Rogers said. “They’ve lit a fire with the success that they’ve had. We’ve been able to somewhat replicate some of what they’ve been able to do. We’ve got a long ways to go before we start putting ourselves in that realm.
Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy fear over South Dakota State has been building since he realized who his school had scheduled as its season opener.
Mike Simons, Tulsa World Archive
“But as of the last couple of years, we’ve been extremely competitive, and we don’t see that slowing down anytime soon.”
John Stiegelmeier built the South Dakota State program. He returned to his alma mater in 1988 and spent nine seasons as an assistant coach before taking over the program. His Jackrabbits didn’t make the I-AA playoffs his first 12 seasons as head coach.
But Stiegelmeier was planting deep roots. The Jackrabbits became playoff regulars, going 12 times in Stiegelmeier’s final 14 seasons, with at least one postseason victory in nine of those playoffs.
In 2022, South Dakota State won the national title with a 45-21 victory over North Dakota State, and Stiegelmeier retired, handing over the reins to Rogers, a fellow Jackrabbit graduate and his longtime defensive coordinator.
Rogers sounds a lot like Gundy when talking about pride in the program’s culture.
Rogers says that of South Dakota State’s 85 scholarship players (not all of them full rides), 77 had no other Division I offers.
“We find the right fit,” Rogers said. “We find the right people we want to coach. We’re not always in the transfer portal.
South Dakota State Jimmy Rogers says multiple Jackrabbits have been approached, against the tampering rules, by higher-level schools but have turned down “six-figure” offers to transfer.
Stephen Hawkins, AP file photo
“There’s players everywhere. You gotta find ‘em. Gotta find the right ones that love football. Gotta show ‘em you care about ‘em.”
Rogers says multiple Jackrabbits have been approached, against the tampering rules, by higher-level schools but have turned down “six-figure” offers to transfer. That includes star quarterback Matt Gronowski, who won the 2023 Walter Payton Award, Division I-AA’s Heisman, and is back to lead the Jacks.
“We’ve been blessed here,” Rogers said. “But ultimately, players have lived out every word of what we said their experience would be.”
And now that experience brings the Jackrabbits to Stillwater, where Mike Gundy is scared to death and is quite willing to let South Dakota State return home with a moral victory.
