(This is the first in a series of columns from The Forum’s Mike McFeely looking at some of North Dakota State’s former rivals in FCS who’ve moved up to the higher-level FBS. NDSU joined the Mountain West Conference this year and will play its first season in FBS beginning Aug. 29 against Jacksonville State.)
FARGO — They won’t say it out loud for fear of diminishing a subdivision North Dakota State dominated for 15 years, but there was a growing sense among Bison administrators and coaches that the Football Championship Subdivision they joined in 2004 was long gone and never to return again.
The ultra-successful, football-focused schools from the early days — Georgia Southern, Appalachian State, James Madison, Sam Houston — had all left FCS to move up a level to the Football Bowl Subdivision. At the same time, the NCAA Division II schools joining FCS — North Alabama, West Georgia, Long Island, Chicago State, New Haven — had no chance of truly replacing the dearly departed.
“It feels like the end of our Division II days, when everybody was leaving for I-AA,” an NDSU administrator told me a few years ago.
Add in the backslide of once-powerful FCS programs like Northern Iowa and Eastern Washington and the top of the subdivision was reduced to essentially a handful of programs from three contiguous states in the middle of the country — North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. The excitement (or glamor if you want to use that word) of playing Division I football in every corner of the country for a national championship was gone.
“There was a major seismic shift taking place. The best FCS teams were all getting out and if they hadn’t got out already, they wanted to get out,” former Sam Houston and current Temple head coach K.C. Keeler told me in a recent interview, explaining why he eventually came around to supporting the Bearkats’ move from FCS to FBS.
It wasn’t the only reason NDSU made the very expensive decision to accept an invitation to the FBS Mountain West Conference in February, a football-only move that became official July 1, but it was a factor.
Most of their peers at the top of FCS, the ones that provided the best challenges and memories both in the regular season and playoffs, were gone. The Bison were Will Smith in that famous meme from the end of the popular television series “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” — a guy looking around an empty room after everybody else moved out.
Including NDSU, 22 FCS programs moved to FBS since the Bison went Division I in 2004. Other successful football programs like Boise State (1996), Marshall (West Virginia) and Troy (Alabama) moved before that.
North Dakota State quarterback Brock Jensen runs up the middle against Georgia Southern on Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011, during the NCAA Division I FCS semifinals at the Fargodome.
David Samson / The Forum
While not all the programs that moved up were powerhouses, the numbers outline the quality that drained from FCS.
There have been 48 national champions crowned in FCS (called Division I-AA before 2006) since the subdivision started in 1978. Twenty-nine of those titles now reside in FBS, including the 10 won by NDSU.
There’s a large pile of playoff appearances, wins and championships among the programs that left FCS since 2004:
NDSU (joined FBS in 2026) — 16 playoff appearances, 51 playoff victories, 10 national titles.Appalachian State (2014) — 20 appearances, 24 victories, 3 titles.Delaware (2025) — 24 appearances, 26 victories, 1 title.Georgia Southern (2014) — 19 appearances, 45 victories, 6 titles.James Madison (2022) — 18 appearances, 24 victories, 2 titles.Sam Houston (2023) — 13 appearances, 24 victories, 1 title.
Even some of the “second tier” schools that left took quality with them:
Jacksonville State (2023) – 10 appearances, 7 victories.Massachusetts (2012) – 8 appearances, 10 victories, 1 title.Western Kentucky (2008) – 8 appearances, 8 victories, 1 title.
The fact that FCS has been diminished by the migration to FBS is indisputable. NDSU will join their ex-rivals when it opens the season Aug. 29 at the Fargodome against Jacksonville State, the team it defeated for the 2015 FCS national championship.
It hasn’t all been smooth for the schools that moved up. Some programs used to notching double-digit victories (or close to it) every year and making deep FCS playoff runs have struggled to be consistent at FBS.
Others, most notably James Madison, made the transition almost seamlessly.
North Dakota State’s Derrek Tuszka sacks James Madison quarterback Bryan Schor during the NCAA FCS championship game at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas, on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018.
David Samson / The Forum
Bigger budgets, consistently better opponents, extended travel and mid-week games in some FBS conferences were a challenge for some. In the last few years, the transfer portal and paying players have been difficult hurdles.
As NDSU readies for its first FBS season, we decided to re-visit three former playoff rivals of the Bison to see how they are doing in their higher-level home. There will be upcoming stories on three programs.
Georgia Southern provided early and unforgettable playoff memories for Bison fans with two semifinal games at the Fargodome in 2011 and 2012.
Sam Houston was a frequent postseason opponent (and provided one memorable regular season game early in NDSU’s FCS era) the Bison beat twice in national championship games in Frisco, Texas, following the 2011 and 2012 seasons.
James Madison made national headlines a year ago by controversially qualifying for the College Football Playoff in its fourth year in FBS, but prior to that the Dukes and Bison played each other in two national title games and two semifinals that won’t be forgotten.
Each school has a little different story to tell about its move up. What track NDSU takes is, of course, yet to be seen.
Mike McFeely is a columnist for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. He began working for The Forum in the 1980s while he was a student studying journalism at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He’s been with The Forum full time since 1990, minus a six-year hiatus when he hosted a local radio talk-show.