The administrative world of college football seems like a complex place with myriads of levels within sections of each classification. But it’s also a small world once all those lines are wiped away.
Just between Montana State University and South Dakota State University there are three direct connections. The most obvious being MSU director of athletics Leon Costello, who was an assistant AD at SDSU. Then there’s former Bobcat and current MSU running backs coach Jimmy Beal, who coached the Jackrabbits as an assistant, and Jason Eck, who was at MSU for one year before becoming the offensive line coach and eventually offensive coordinator for SDSU.
“I’d much rather play an opponent like this than an opponent we don’t know,” Costello said on Wednesday. “They have a lot of success. We keep building, we have had a lot of success here recently. It’s a great matchup of great football programs.”
MSU head coach Brent Vigen was involved at North Dakota State University as a player and coach for so long that playing SDSU this week is probably like coaching a conference game to him. And SDSU head coach John Stiegelmeier is one of the longest tenured coaches at one university that he probably has some kind of connection with just about everyone in the Football Championship Subdivision and beyond.
“Going back to my playing days, they were a team that we were back and forth with and I know we lost to them my senior year (in 1997) and that was a big loss for us. They were a .500 team (4-6) and we were a playoff team and that kept us out of a conference championship,” Vigen remembered on Tuesday. “They always had good players for that stretch and as we finished up those Division II years, it was a back and forth deal.
“As Coach Stiegelmeier started to put his own stamp on the program, they continued to get better and better. What I admire about South Dakota State is we (NDSU, SDSU) made that move (to Division I) together back in 2004 and NDSU did the things and continue to do the things that have been done there (eight national titles in nine seasons) but South Dakota State, they made a conscious decision that we are going to do this as well as we can.”
South Dakota State had almost no success on a national level during its Division II days between 1973 and 2003. Since making the FCS playoffs for the first time in 2009, SDSU has 11 playoff appearances and 14 playoff wins, including trips to the semifinals in 2017, 2018, a national runner-up finish in the spring and this fall’s Final Four trip.
“You look at the last 10 years, they are a perennial playoff team,” VIgen said. “There is a continuity that’s gone on a long time. Coach Stiegelmeier has always had a strong staff. They have upgraded their facilities greatly this decade. They really got it going. They still continue to be a thorn in NDSU’s side if anybody is (NDSU has lost 12 games since the beginning of the 2011 season, including four to South Dakota State) and they’ve clearly driven each other. That’s apparent.”
In 2016, SDSU opened Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium, a 19,340-seat venue that cost $65 million to erect. South Dakota State also built a $32 million indoor practice facility that opened in 2014. Costello had a hand in raising the money for those venues as an associate athletic director under athletic director Justin Sell.
“A ton of people that I know still work there, including my mentor, Justin Sell,” Costello said. “I owe him a lot for where I am today, working with him and for him. We were able to accomplish a lot of things at SDSU and I was able to bring some of that over here, tweak it a little bit and have some success over here. I owe a lot to SDSU and the people there.
“Friends off the field but you want to beat your friends even more when you play them on the field. We can feel that. It’s really cool to see an opponent you know and know personally.”
The Jackrabbits have been to Bozeman three times over the past 17 years and all three games were classics. Losing 27-24 in 2004 due to a vintage Travis Lulay comeback, winning 47-40 during a blizzard in the first round of the 2014 playoffs and again on Gold Rush night in 2017, 31-27, with a fake field goal touchdown late in the game spoiling MSU’s upset bid of the No. 4 ranked Jackrabbits. So Stiegelmeier is no stranger to Bobcat Stadium, if not some of the MSU coaches.
If those games are any indication of what’s about to transpire this Saturday, then football fans are in for a real treat. Stiegelmeier, of course, saw all three first-hand. MSU only has a couple coaches that were on hand for just the most recent game. Brian Armstrong, MSU’s offensive line coach, and Kyle Risinger, MSU’s defensive backs coach. Bobby Daly, MSU’s linebackers coach, was a red-shirt freshman on the 2004 team, while Beal was a sophomore defensive back for the Bobcats at that time.
Costello helped spearhead the facility renovations and new construction at SDSU as he progressed up the ladder within the school’s athletic department. His experience with that helped him land the MSU AD job, where he has also had great success bringing MSU’s sports facilities to the forefront of the Big Sky Conference as well as nationally for similar universities.
Beal transferred from MSU in 2005 to attend Rocky Mountain College in Billings where he excelled at running back winning team MVP honors as a senior. After short stints coaching at Rocky and Texas State, Beal became the running backs coach at Northern Arizona and developed several of the top runners in the Big Sky Conference during a nine-year stint, including All-American Zach Bauman, the only player in league history to rush for 1,000 yards in four different seasons. Beal was at SDSU for the 2019 season before coming back to Montana State in 2020.
“A good number of our guys played in the game against SDSU in 2018 and some of them even played in 2017, I think what it does is you have an instant respect for what (SDSU) is all about,” Vigen said. “And what I bring to the table having all the experience I have against them is, you can flip the film on and you are playing a very unfamiliar opponent in the playoffs sometimes, like you did with a Tennessee Martin (who Montana State beat 26-7 in the second round) and you have a hard time focusing on how hard they play, where the kids come from.
“That is not the case with this situation. Our guys got beat down pretty good the year in Brookings (45-14 in 2018) and they remember that and they remember it from the standpoint that they have really good players. That’s the perspective our guys have. Coach Beal, he has a really good perspective and Leon, he also has a great perspective on how they’ve done things, how they’ve grown that program.
“Any time you know an opponent, respect an opponent, your preparation is influenced.”
Eck was only at MSU for one year when he replaced popular offensive line coach Jason McEndoo. Eck is firmly entrenched at SDSU having served as the offensive line coach there from 2016-18, then taking over as the offensive coordinator in 2019. His first year he was tabbed the FCS Assistant Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association. The Jackrabbits have become among the elite teams in the FCS during Eck’s time at SDSU.
“To play them here on this stage, I appreciate they won a couple games against some higher seeds (SDSU trounced UC Davis 56-24, beat Big Sky champion No. 4 Sacramento State 24-19 and won at No. 5 Villanova 35-21) and got us a home game in Bozeman, but I think going into the playoffs, they were a team that I would’ve clearly said had a great chance of being here in the semifinals,” Vigen said. “They are a very well-rounded team, runner-up in the spring, played in the championship game so we will have our hands full for sure.”
