\u201cI’m excited. It\u2019s about damn time,\u201d Entz said. \u201cIt probably should\u2019ve happened a couple of years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Entz is now the head coach at Fresno State after spending 2019-2023 as the head coach at NDSU and a year as an assistant at USC. He was an assistant in Fargo for five years before taking over for Chris Klieman.<\/p>\n
Entz, it can be told now, had plenty of skin in the game when it came to NDSU moving to FBS.<\/p>\n
He was an early and strong advocate, even if he couldn\u2019t be as public about it as he might\u2019ve wanted.<\/p>\n
Former NDSU president David Cook, athletic director Matt Larsen and a cast of many others deserve credit for this transformational move. No question.<\/p>\n
So does Matt Entz. He was a key figure in getting the ball rolling to last week\u2019s big news of NDSU’s football program making the leap from FCS to FBS.<\/p>\n
Let me tell a story.<\/p>\n
I received a phone call from Entz in November 2020 that began with a cryptic question: \u201cHave time to talk?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sure, I said, what\u2019s up?<\/p>\n
Could\u2019ve been any number of things. There was a bunch of stuff happening not only in the world, but in the Football Championship Subdivision sub-world.<\/p>\n
The nation was still in the grip of the COVID pandemic. NDSU\u2019s football season had been washed away other than one game against Central Arkansas at the Fargodome. Entz and others at the school had already griped the weakest programs in the Missouri Valley Football Conference were responsible for calling off the fall season because they didn\u2019t want to compete. There was talk of the FCS playing a silly spring season in early 2021 and then turning around and playing another season in the fall.<\/p>\n
![\"Entz](\"https:\/\/cdn.forumcomm.com\/dims4\/default\/c22ba73\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5981x3988+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforum-communications-production-web.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fe1%2Fac%2F3c081f5e48e181cfe2c903f9e7c7%2Fentz-fresno-two.JPG\")
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Former North Dakota State head coach Matt Entz is now the head coach at Fresno State.<\/p>\n
Contributed \/ Fresno State Athletics<\/p>\n
Entz was already agitated with potentially the best team in Bison history, the heavy favorite to win another national championship in 2020, was already breaking up because the fall season was largely canceled. Quarterback Trey Lance was going to the NFL Draft, left tackle Dillon Radunz left NDSU to prepare for the draft, several other key players decided to not come back for the possible spring season.<\/p>\n
It was a mess.<\/p>\n
So what was on the coach\u2019s mind?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to go FBS,\u201d Entz said.<\/p>\n
And with that began a five-plus year journey that culminated with the recent announcement that NDSU will join the Mountain West Conference this fall.<\/p>\n
I wrote a column based off our discussion<\/a><\/p>\n and kept writing them.<\/p>\n For close to an hour, Entz made his case. I listened and asked questions. Essentially, his argument came down to NDSU\u2019s football program \u201crunning on a treadmill,\u201d everybody from the athletic director to the last player on the roster working their tails off just to stay in place. That, combined with difficulty in scheduling non-conference games and the frustration of the fall 2020 season and a dozen other things pushed Entz over the edge in his FCS-to-FBS stance.<\/p>\n Entz was reminded of the conversation on Monday’s phone call. He remembered it.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that phone call came after we had been told \u2018no\u2019 by everyone in the country about playing us. We were kind of the last holdout. We wanted to play that fall for a variety of reasons and we couldn\u2019t find anybody other than Central Arkansas to play,\u201d Entz said. \u201cI remember vividly, we talked to a conference that had a school back out of the 2020 season. We called them and said, \u2018We\u2019ll take their place on the schedule. We just want to play the conference schedule. We\u2019ll have their home games at our place and we\u2019ll travel for their road games. We just want to play.\u2019 We were told no, that the commissioner would get fired if he let us play in place of a conference member.\u201d<\/p>\n It was an FBS conference, but Entz wouldn\u2019t say which one. It\u2019s not difficult to figure out.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was when I said we need to do something different,\u201d Entz said.<\/p>\n The first column pushing for an FBS move didn\u2019t come for a few weeks. There were phone calls, emails, discussions, research. I had to make up my own mind if NDSU going to FBS was the right thing for which to advocate.<\/p>\n Eventually, I came to that conclusion. The first column I wrote linking NDSU to FBS came Dec. 14, 2020, and was headlined, <\/p>\n
![\"Entz](\"https:\/\/cdn.forumcomm.com\/dims4\/default\/803daa0\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6000x4000+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforum-communications-production-web.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fc6%2F70%2F2804b45542c797e4209ae025bd91%2Fentz-fresno-three.JPG\")
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