Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m really glad the FCS championship game was able to take the spotlight on a Monday night instead of competing with the NFL on Sundays as usual.

In today’s SI:AM:

🦬 Bison makes it double digits
☝️ In honor of Dikembe Mutombo
🏀 Tennessee’s latest transfer success

The average sports fan doesn’t pay much attention to football at the FCS level, but anyone with even a passing knowledge of college football knows one thing about FCS play: The North Dakota State Bison are the kings of the subdivision. The result of Monday’s FCS national championship game should come as no surprise, as the Bison beat the Montana State Bobcats 35-32.

North Dakota State took a 21-3 halftime lead before Montana State scored on its first two possessions of the second half to make it 21-18. It was 28-25 in the Bison’s favor when NDSU got the ball with 7:33 to play and launched a nine-play, 66-yard drive capped by a three-yard CharMar Brown touchdown run that lasted five minutes Clock and essentially the game iced.

The victory gave NDSU an impressive 10th FCS championship and 18th title overall (including five Division II titles and three in the short-lived NCAA College Division). These overall figures are not entirely consistent with what other programs have achieved. The Yale Bulldogs hold the record for most national football championships with 18 (all between 1874 and 1927), followed by Alabama with 16. Among small colleges, the Mount Union Purple Raiders hold the record for Division III titles with 13, all last 31 years.

There are many programs in other sports with more titles than the Bison. The Oklahoma State Cowboys wrestling team holds the NCAA record with 34 championships (between 1928 and 2006), a record it shares with the Kenyon Owls, who have won 34 Division III men’s swimming and diving titles ( including an incredible 31 directly from 1980). until 2010). The North Carolina Tar Heels hold the record for the most championships of any Division I women’s program with 22 women’s soccer titles.

But with all due respect to the Kenyon swimming team, North Dakota State’s current run is the greatest of any major North American collegiate or professional sport. The Bison have won 10 of the last 14 FCS championships and have advanced to at least the FCS quarterfinals in every playoff since 2010, the third season they were eligible for the postseason after being promoted from Division II in 2004. re 51-5 in playoff games as an FCS program. And they have maintained this success through several leadership changes. Tim Polasek is now the fourth coach to lead North Dakota State to the FCS title, joining Matt Entz, Chris Klieman and Craig Bohl.

The only professional teams that can even come close to keeping up with the current Bison dynasty are history. The Montreal Canadiens won 15 Stanley Cups between 1956 and 1979, a streak that began when the NHL had only six teams, and the Boston Celtics, who won 11 titles from 1957 to 1969 as the NBA grew from eight teams during that time to 14. What’s more impressive? Do you dominate the early days of professional sports or govern a subdivision of nearly 130 schools at a time when college sports are being taken more seriously than ever?

It may be tempting to dismiss FCS football as some sort of junior varsity competition. Sure, the Bison play in the 19,000-seat Fargodome, and the national championship game is played every year at a 20,000-seat football stadium in suburban Dallas, which also hosts one of the FBS’s lesser-known bowl games (the Frisco Bowl). But make no mistake: this is football at its best. FCS schools routinely beat FBS programs in non-conference matches early in the season. And at a time when more schools are looking to make the jump to FBS in search of bigger TV contracts, FCS teams are stepping up their commitment. North Dakota State’s playoff victories during this streak of dominance include victories over current FBS programs such as Sam Houston State, Coastal Carolina, Jacksonville State and James Madison. The FCS tier doesn’t have the glitz and glamor of power-conference FBS football and certainly doesn’t have the concentration of future NFL talent, but it’s still a highly competitive division where there are schools that do the same to their football programs give a lot of priority like the big FBS programs do.

Many schools in so-called “big-time” college football could learn something about winning from the guys in Fargo. They’ve been doing it better than anyone else for more than a decade.

…things I saw yesterday:
5. Mina Kimes is embarrassing Live TV blunder.
4. Two breathtaking saves by Devils goaltender Jacob Markstrom in the third period of New Jersey’s win over the Kraken.
3. Consecutive three-way clutches by Anthony Edwards in the Timberwolves’ win over the Clippers.
2. North Dakota State walk-off punt to win the national championship. (I understand that Montana State relied on blocking the kick, but I still think it would have been wiser to send someone back to fend off the punt and get a final play from scrimmage.)
1. Coby White’s game-changing poster dunk about Victor Wembanyama.