Sports

UND-NDSU’s coming back, but will the passion?

By Matthew Semisch

08/26/2014

Nobody likes making a habit out of being proven wrong, but let me tell you about one thing on which I’d be perfectly happy to stand corrected.

It was announced last week that North Dakota and North Dakota State will meet each other on the football field - the Fargodome’s, to be precise - in 2015 and 2019. The first of those two games, set to take place on Sept. 19 of next year, will mark the end of 12 years’ worth of dormancy in what was once one of college football’s best rivalries and certainly the best the Peace Garden State had to offer.

This news should be welcomed by fans of both schools. Heck, even I, a relative NoDak newbie, have been finding myself getting into the spirit of it.

As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I’ve only been living in North Dakota since the middle of April. However, as an University of Nebraska-Omaha alumnus who grew up in that city and was well aware of UNO’s North Central Conference (NCC) history with both UND and NDSU, even I knew how big of a deal Bison-Fighting Sioux football games were.

(Before anyone brings it up, yes, I know UND’s not officially the Fighting Sioux anymore.)

Shortly after moving to Bottineau, I found on YouTube a Prairie Public program on the UND-NDSU rivalry, and I found myself fascinated with what I was seeing. I’d been aware of how big that rivalry has been here, but I didn’t know to what length fans took it.

At least when it comes to football, though, it seems to me that the fans’ level of commitment to the rivalry has tapered off to a certain degree. Not as much as the on-field rivalry itself has, obviously, but I feel like the jury’s out on just how big the games in 2015 and 2019 - and any potential UND-NDSU games after that - will become.

What we can already be sure of is that the games won’t be the same as before, and that’s because they can’t be.

The old Nickel Trophy the teams used to play for won’t be on offer anymore. The giant two-sided coin, with a bison on one face and a Native American on the other, is being retired.

UND won it last in 2003 when it defeated the visiting Bison 28-21 in overtime at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks. Since then, UND has claimed sole ownership.

Before that, students from the rival schools stole it from their counterparts in the 1990s. The trophy has remained in Grand Forks since 2008, though, after UND took it on a statewide tour as part of the school’s 125th anniversary celebration.

At any rate, the Nickel Trophy won’t be up for grabs anymore, and neither will the chance to become one step closer to winning a conference title. Since NDSU moved from the NCAA’s Division II to Division I - UND later followed the Bison’s lead, of course - the two teams have never been in the same football league.

UND might find itself out of NDSU’s league again next year in more ways than one. The Bison are back-to-back-to-back D-I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) national champions, and UND’s football team hasn’t blown the doors off of its Big Sky Conference competition since joining that league in 2012.

That last bit’s not incredibly easy for me to admit to. I adopted UND earlier this summer as my second college football team after Northern Illinois - my youngest brother is a redshirt senior tight end for the Huskies - and I’m fully aware that the sailing won’t be smooth.

How much more rough will it get? We’ll have to wait and see.