BISON RAISE THE BAR

By Jeff Kolpack The Forum

Fargo

It was probably fitting that rain was falling on Monday when crews started site work on North Dakota State’s new indoor football facility, a behemoth of a structure that when all is said and done will probably take $35 to $40 million to finish. The weather isn’t always pretty in Fargo.

Ask former NDSU head coach Craig Bohl, who before the bubble over Dacotah Field was first installed in 2014 had to practice at a golf dome, a sports arena or outside in winter weather advisory conditions if the Fargodome wasn’t available.

The inflatable, portable bubble is serving its purpose. The new Nodak Insurance Football Performance Complex will take indoor workouts to stratospheric levels in the world of FCS football. And the Bison aren’t alone.

The Missouri Valley Football Conference is far and away the leader for practice facilities in the FCS, mainly due to the bigger budgets of its members and a northern location of most of its programs.

“To me, when you see success, usually there is investment and resources behind it and I think you’re seeing that in the Valley,” said NDSU athletic director Matt Larsen. “I think it shows the commitment and investment in the programs.”

Youngstown State was the first with its Watson and Tressel Training Site that opened in 2011, a project that began with a $1 million donation that included former head coach and current university president Jim Tressel. Total cost was $14 million.

South Dakota State and North Dakota built their complexes in recent years. The Sanford-Jackrabbit Athletic Complex at SDSU cost $32 million. UND’s High Performance Center cost $19.5 million.

The Youngstown, SDSU and UND facilities all include indoor tracks, something the NDSU facility will not have since the school already has the

Shelly Ellig Indoor Track and Field Facility.

In all, six of the Valley’s 11 members have access to indoor football. Four of those were ranked in the FCS top 25 poll this week.

Northern Iowa and South Dakota, both of whom have new outdoor turf practice areas, play and practice in the UNIDome and DakotaDome respectively. Both stadiums are on campus.

“Part of it has to do with the region that the league sits in,” said Bison head coach Matt Entz. “There is a winter here. It’s important for yeararound development.

I think it shows the importance of football but also the importance of intercollegiate athletics at all of the institutions that make up the Missouri Valley right now.”

Entz, however, pointed out that indoor practice space alone does not necessarily translate to success. Schools will quickly point to recruiting advantages, but he said there’s more to wooing players than bricks and mortar.

“We do address it but I don’t think we labor over it,” Entz said. “There are a lot of other reasons why you want to be a Bison besides facilities but it is a positive. I think to see the support, the size and sheer magnitude of this facility when you’re talking about $35 to $40 million, especially working through a pandemic, I think it’s pretty unique and not very many athletic departments or universities could probably pull that off.”

The Big Sky Conference may be close to joining the Valley with almost half of its members having an indoor facility of some type.

Three teams play in indoor stadiums in Northern Arizona, Idaho State and Idaho, but only Weber State has an indoor practice facility. It’s not big by any means at 60 yards in length but gets the job done when the weather turns south. The renovation of the building opened in 2013 at the cost of $9.2 million.

It’s possible, if not probable, that Montana and Montana State will join the indoor parade in the coming years.

The Bobcat Indoor Performance Facility is part of MSU’s master plan. Construction has already started on an $18 million Bobcat Athletic Complex addition to the north end of the stadium that will be home to the football program.

With Montana State being aggressive in its approach lately, expect Montana to do the same in the interest of the arm’s race of the two in-state Division I programs.

The chatter in Missoula lately is the Grizzlies’ win over the University of Washington two weeks ago sparked renewed interest in donors investing in the program. In the Colonial Athletic Association, James Madison, Delaware, Stony Brook and Maine have some sort of structures to get out of the elements.

Maine and Stony Brook are recent additions to the indoor club. The Mahaney Dome at Maine opened this year at a cost of $1 million and is very similar to NDSU’s bubble. Stony Brook’s new training facility is more extensive at a cost of $11 million and has a football field 80 yards long.

Delaware renovated its old fieldhouse with 100yard artificial turf. JMU’s Athletics Training Center with indoor turf is a small space that can be used for some aspects of practice.

Tennessee State of the Ohio Valley Conference has a 70-yard long structure that was built in 2011. It includes classroom space and the school’s ticket office.

But most of the FCS indoor structures pale in comparison to NDSU’s investment. The first building phase, which also includes a warehouse, is expected to be done in about a year. The cost is tabbed between $34 to $35 million. The outdoor practice fields are expected to be not far behind.

Seven overhead doors will connect the indoor to the outdoor fields when the weather is cooperative.

After that, Phase 2 will include a 10-12,000 square foot weight room with nutrition and fueling station, offices for strength and conditioning staff, a locker room, sports medicine, equipment room and recruiting area.

“It’s one of those things we’ve been talking about for four years,” Larsen said, “and now to walk out there and see them mobilizing and starting the demo of the field and new construction, there was a big smile on my face.”

North Dakota State’s