For Craig Bohl, the eureka moment came when he looked into the Fargodome crowd during the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. The North Dakota State coach had become accustomed to seeing students standing up at Bison football games, but Bohl noticed that legions of older fans -- who used to yell at the young ones to sit down -- were now leaping to their feet alongside them.
Grant Olson experienced a similar feeling when the sophomore linebacker saw a huge display of Bison football gear at a sporting goods store, then greeted the excited Christmas shoppers who recognized him. Cornerback Marcus Williams felt it, too, when he realized during a game that he couldn't hear over the roar of the crowd.
Thousands of those frenzied fans will be in Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas, on Saturday to watch the fourth-ranked Bison play No. 1 Sam Houston State in their first appearance in the NCAA's FCS title game. Thousands more will wish they were at FC Dallas Stadium, where all 20,086 tickets were snapped up in three days.
The school received 8,000 requests for the 4,600 tickets it was allotted. NCAA officials said they were shocked by the demand, but Bohl -- who estimated NDSU could have sold more than 10,000 -- was not. A 13-1 record, a share of the Missouri Valley Conference championship and three playoff victories on their home field have driven interest in the Bison ever higher as they pursue the biggest prize of their rich football history.
"We set a goal to win a national championship, and it was a realistic goal," said Bohl, a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award as FCS coach of the year. "The atmosphere at our games has been truly electric. Even those 70-year-old grandpas are standing up. This is a great thing for our football program and our institution. It's January, and we're still talking about NDSU football."
Olson, a Plymouth native who played at Wayzata High School, said it felt strange to have football practice over the Christmas break. But this is what he and his teammates have been aiming for since December 2010, when the Bison lost to top-ranked Eastern Washington in overtime in the FCS quarterfinals.
NDSU won eight national championships between 1965 and 1990. In 2004, the school moved from Division II to Division I FCS (then Division I-AA), and it became eligible for postseason play in 2008. Though the Bison made history with their first FCS playoff appearance last season, they found no satisfaction in a season that ended with a 38-31 defeat to the eventual champion.
That drove the players to push themselves harder, beginning in the offseason. NDSU won its first nine games -- including a 37-24 victory over the Gophers at TCF Bank Stadium -- and rose to the No. 1 ranking for two weeks until a 27-24 loss to Youngstown State on Nov. 12. In three playoff games, the Bison have outscored opponents 85-21, and they are 6-0 against ranked teams after crushing Georgia Southern 35-7 in the semifinals Dec. 17.
