North Dakota State put together an entirely new football schedule in a month after the school officially announced a move up from the FCS to the FBS.
For NDSU deputy athletic director Todd Phelps, it was wild. The Bison had 100% turnover in opponents for 2026, and Phelps navigated it with the few open dates other FBS teams had.
“We were willing to go anywhere, I mean it was really, really hard,” Phelps told the Fargo Forum recently. “There were a few times over the course of this, probably in the last three weeks, where we were like, I don’t know what we’re going to be able to put together.”
Phelps also told the Forum that two opponents already had 12 games, and adding the Bison would make it 13 games for both squads. That’s the season-opening opponent, Jacksonville State, for Week Zero on Aug. 29 and San Jose State in the regular season finale on Nov. 28.
“So they had wiggle room,” Phelps said. “They were both very cooperative and very helpful and said, yeah, we’ll do it.”
SJSU ironically opens with USC on Week Zero, a date the Trojans had listed as open at the time when the Herd moved up to the FBS. The Forum reported that USC already had a team in mind for that date after NDSU’s announcement.
Mountain West Makes Exception For Bison
As a member of the Mountain West Conference, NDSU couldn’t just schedule SJSU as a non-conference opponent.
However, the Mountain West having only eight conference games, left the door open to explore the chance since two weren’t playing each other on the 2026 conference schedule.
“We went to the Mountain West and said, can you help us and have that to be the team we’re not going to play in 2026?” Phelps said. “And they’re like, absolutely, we’ll make that work for you.”
While SJSU will be a regular on the schedule in future conference play, JSU will pop up on the Bison’s schedule again, too. The Bison will visit the Gamecocks in 2029 for the back half of a home-and-home agreement.
For fellow FBS newcomer Sacramento State, the Bison found a natural non-conference opponent for a Sept. 19 game, as the two were in the same boat. Sac State did a scheduling overhaul amid a transition to the Mid-American Conference and won’t face any Big Sky Conference teams this year.
“Much easier, they were in a scramble, too,” Phelps said. “It was easy for us to say, hey, let’s just find the dates and let’s make it work and it worked out perfectly. It worked right where we needed it.”
NDSU Only Needed 1 FCS Game
Similar to Sac State, NDSU won’t see any teams from the Missouri Valley Football Conference after moving out of the conference this year.
The Bison will face one FCS opponent, however, with the addition of Fordham for a Sept. 5 contest. It originally looked like the Bison were going to keep two FCS opponents from the original schedule, but that ultimately changed.
NDSU will pay the Rams $475,000 guaranteed, the Forum reported. It will mark a final tune-up for the Bison before the Mountain West opener against Air Force on Sept. 12.
While the Mountain West released the conference matchups in late February, the conference didn’t provide game dates, which kept parts moving for NDSU. Phelps is glad preparation for future seasons won’t look like this one.
“Certainly was not easy,” Phelps said. “I would not recommend doing that in this shorter period of time ever again. But overall, we had some things fall into place that helped expedite it.”
North Dakota State Exec Makes Admission on FBS Schedule