North Dakota State has a template to follow for obtaining the NCAA waiver for postseason action right down I-94.
The Bison recently moved from the FCS to the FBS, but NCAA rules nix playing in the postseason for two years during the transition period. As the Fargo Forum’s Jeff Kolpack reported, the Bison could do what St. Thomas did with the NCAA amid an unprecedented move from Division III to Division I in all sports. The Tommies cut the NCAA probationary period rule by a year after making a case and seeking a rule change.
“We just felt the rule wasn’t modern, an old, archaic rule applying thinking from 15 years ago,” St. Thomas athletic director Phil Esten told Kolpack. “We didn’t think the NCAA had an appetite to listen to an appeal for a waiver from a single school because they felt like they were different from somebody else, so we felt ultimately changing the rule was a better approach, and ultimately that worked.”
Esten informed Kolpack that the appeals process lasted nine months and the rule change took 18 months. The college football season is less than six months away, and NDSU hopes to become eligible for the College Football Playoff in Year One as an FBS program.
NDSU athletic director Matt Larsen has already gone public about the waiver pursuit and rule change cause. In addition, NDSU’s new conference, the Mountain West, publicly backs the Bison’s request.
Pursuit Paid Off For St. Thomas
The Tommies men’s and women’s basketball teams are eyeing NCAA tournament appearances a year early this week in the Summit League tournaments because of the school’s persistence with the NCAA.
St. Thomas joined NDSU in the Summit League for all other sports, and the Tommies play in the non-scholarship Pioneer League for FCS football. The Bison showed the wide-gap between that league and an FBS-bound team with a 62-7 route last fall.
For Esten, he emphasized the changes in collegiate athletics in general when he approached the NCAA. The landscape had many changes since the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference voted to make the Tommies leave in 2019, which prompted the Division I move when the school already had that feel with money and resources.
“When the rule was written, the transfer portal didn’t exist and NIL didn’t exist,” Esten told Kolpack. “Those two things make provisional periods really, really challenging from a recruitment and retention standpoint.”
“Presumably, they would want us to be successful. The league wants us to be successful. The NCAA wants us to be successful,” Esten added. “Well, when you tie one hand behind our backs while we still have to deal with the transfer portal and NIL, and we can’t go to the NCAA championship, it just exacerbates how challenging that is.”
NDSU Already Has an FBS Feel
Similar to Esten, Larsen believes he can show the NCAA that the Bison have been running an FBS program in many ways for years.
Besides the winning, NDSU has fielded many future NFL players and drawn College GameDay to Fargo twice. The Bison built a state-of-the-art indoor practice facility, and the program has a 9-5 record against FBS teams, which includes wins over Power Four teams.
North Dakota State Finds Hope For NCAA Waiver: Insider