Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m really glad the FCS championship game got to own the spotlight on a Monday night instead of competing with the NFL on a Sunday like it usually has.

In today’s SI:AM:

🦬 Bison make it double digits
☝️ Honoring Dikembe Mutombo
🏀 Tennessee’s latest transfer success

Quite the crowded trophy case

The average sports fan doesn’t pay much attention to FCS-level football, but anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of college football knows one thing about the FCS game: the North Dakota State Bison are the kings of the subdivision. The result of Monday’s FCS national championship game should come as no surprise, then, as the Bison held on to beat the Montana State Bobcats, 35–32.

North Dakota State jumped out to a 21–3 halftime lead before Montana State scored on its first two possessions of the second half to make it 21–18. It was 28–25 in favor of the Bison when NDSU got the ball with 7:33 left to play and embarked on a nine-play, 66-yard drive capped by a three-yard CharMar Brown touchdown run that took five minutes off the clock and essentially iced the game. 

The win gave NDSU a stunning 10th FCS championship and 18th title overall (including five Division II titles and three in the short-lived NCAA College Division). Those totals aren’t completely out of line with what other programs have accomplished. The Yale Bulldogs hold the record for most football national championships with 18 (all between 1874 and 1927), followed by Alabama with 16. Among small colleges, the Mount Union Purple Raiders hold the record for Division III titles with 13, all in the last 31 years. 

There are plenty of programs in other sports with more titles than the Bison. The Oklahoma State Cowboys wrestling team is tied for the NCAA record with 34 championships (between 1928 and 2006), a record it shares with the Kenyon Owls, who have won 34 Division III men’s swimming and diving titles (including an incredible 31 straight from 1980 to 2010). The North Carolina Tar Heels hold the record for most championships by any Division I women’s program with 22 women’s soccer titles. 

But with all due respect to the Kenyon swim team, North Dakota State’s current run is the greatest in any major North American college or pro sport. The Bison have won 10 of the last 14 FCS championships and have advanced at least as far as the FCS quarterfinals in every playoff since 2010, the third season in which they were eligible for the postseason after moving up from Division II in 2004. They’re 51–5 in playoff games as an FCS program. And they’ve maintained that success through several changes in leadership. Tim Polasek is now the fourth coach to lead North Dakota State to an FCS title, joining Matt Entz, Chris Klieman and Craig Bohl. 

The only professional teams that can come close to equalling the Bison’s current dynasty are ancient history. The Montreal Canadiens won 15 Stanley Cups between 1956 and ’79, a run that began when the NHL had just six teams, and the Boston Celtics, who won 11 titles from ’57 to ’69, during which time the NBA expanded from eight teams to 14. What’s more impressive? Dominating the early days of professional sports or ruling a subdivision of nearly 130 schools at a time when college sports are taken more seriously than ever? 

It may be tempting to dismiss FCS football as a sort of junior varsity competition. Sure, the Bison play in the 19,000-seat Fargodome and the national championship game is held annually at a 20,000-seat soccer stadium in suburban Dallas that also hosts one of the FBS’s less prominent bowl games (the Frisco Bowl). But make no mistake: This is big-time football. FCS schools regularly beat FBS programs in early-season non-conference matchups. And in an era when more and more schools are seeking to make the jump to FBS in search of bigger TV contracts, FCS teams are stepping their game up. North Dakota State’s playoff victories during this run of dominance include wins over current FBS programs like Sam Houston State, Coastal Carolina, Jacksonville State and James Madison. The FCS level doesn’t have the glitz and glamour of power-conference FBS football, and it certainly doesn’t have the concentration of future NFL talent, but it’s still a highly competitive division populated by schools that prioritize their football programs just as much as the big FBS programs do. 

Plenty of schools in so-called “big-time” college football could learn something about winning from the guys in Fargo. They’ve been doing it better than anyone else for more than a decade. 

Mutumbo
The late Dikembe Mutombo is the recipient of SI's 2024 Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. | Kevin D. Liles/Sports Illustrated

The best of Sports Illustrated

The top five…

… things I saw yesterday:
5. Mina Kimes’s embarrassing live TV blooper.
4. A pair of jaw-dropping saves by Devils goalie Jacob Markstrom in the third period of New Jersey’s win over the Kraken.
3. Back-to-back clutch threes by Anthony Edwards in the Timberwolves’ win over the Clippers.
2. North Dakota State’s walk-off punt to win the national championship. (I understand that Montana State was betting on blocking the kick but I think it still would have been smarter to put someone back to field the punt and get one last play off from scrimmage.)
1. Coby White’s game-sealing poster dunk over Victor Wembanyama.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | North Dakota State’s Dynasty Is the Greatest in Sports.