The Northern League

"The Northern League" was the name of a independent baseball league that operated in the Upper Midwest until 2010. Since the name seems to be available, use it for a new D1 league with football at the FCS level. This makes so much sense that it will never happen. The members of this league would come from the Big Sky (football and basketball), the Missouri Valley Football Conference (football, duh), and the Summit League (basketball). Members should include:

• South Dakota State and U.
• North Dakota State and U.
• Montana State and U.
• Idaho State and U.
• Weber State (Utah)
• Eastern Washington
• Northern Arizona
• Northern Colorado

That's 12. Cut out the last two if 10 would be more manageable. This would be BY FAR the best FCS football conference and a pretty good mid-major basketball conference. There are natural rivalries here, unlike the current conferences. What does SDSU have in common with Youngstown State? What does Montana have in common with Cal Poly? The 12 I have named are all state schools of similar size. The first six are in states where there are no FBS teams soaking up the attention.

Besides external forces, there are internal reasons why it will not happen. South Dakota State does not want to lose the home court advantage of having the Summit League basketball tournament in Sioux Falls every year. North Dakota State may want to jump to FBS sooner rather than later. But this week a crack formed in the Big Sky. Cal-Davis is joining the Mountain West in all sports except football, where it will remain in the Big Sky. Mountain West football is FBS, so how long will the two leagues tolerate Davis having that split?

On the other hand... rather than forming an FCS super conference, take all of the above and make it a Group of Six FBS conference. It would be very competitive. According to the Sagarin Ratings, South Dakota State is the highest-rated FCS football team at #39 and would be the betting favorite at a neutral site against EVERY Group of Five team except Boise, which is in the FBS playoffs. In fact, the Jackrabbits would be the favorite against half of the teams in the Big Ten (which has 18 teams now). There are too many obstacles to making this happen, but it should.

A headline I never thought I would read

I am not a gambler, but the following headline from a football fantasy site grabbed my attention: "Isaiah Davis or Odell Beckham Jr. | Who Should I Start?" The two were on opposing teams Sunday, Beckham with the Dolphins and Davis with the Jets.

Odell is a famous NFL player and has had enough big moments to be considered a star. He played and won a championship for one of the elite Bubbas of FBS college football LSU, had an iconic moment on Sunday Night Football with the Giants in 2014, and won a Super Bowl ring with the Rams in 2021. He is currently with the Dolphins and has only nine catches for 55 yards this season after coming back from injury. Most people have never heard of Davis. He followed a much more obscure path to the NFL but was the best running back in the FCS last year as South Dakota State won its second consecutive championship. After being limited to special teams most of the season, he scored touchdowns on a pass last week and a rush this week. In answer to the specific question asked in the headline, Davis was the better fantasy football choice last weekend with 67 total yards and the TD, while The Great OBJ had one catch for one yard.

Although the NFL all-time scoring leader is from South Dakota State (Adam Vinatieri), I'm just not used to players from my alma mater scoring touchdowns in the NFL. Vinatieri scored on a two-point conversion in 1998 and had a passing TD in 2004, but never crossed the goal line for a TD. It seemed most of the other players from SDSU who made the NFL were linemen, such as Hall of Fame Center Jim Langer, who toiled in the trenches for the undefeated Dolphins of legend. He played 151 games, touched the ball on every play as a center, but he never accumulated any offensive stats except for recovering two fumbles. When I was at SDSU in the late '70's, I knew an offensive lineman (can't remember his name) who got invited to Oilers training camp. He didn't make the first cut, got paid a few thousand dollars, and came back to Brookings. I don't know what he did after that, but I'm guessing that one of the highlights of his life was being a teammate of Earl Campbell for a couple weeks.

Since SDSU went D1 FCS, it has become more common for Jackrabbits to make it past training camp and actually play in the league, and not just in the trenches. Tight End Dallas Goeddert of the Eagles got the TD ball rolling and has 24 TDs in seven seasons. The next great Jackrabbit tight end, Tucker Kraft of the Packers, has nine TDs in two years. Davis' predecessor at Jackrabbit RB, Pierre Strong, Jr. of the Browns, has two TDs in three years. And now Davis has two TDs as a rookie with the Jets.

Although the Jackrabbits have two good running backs named Johnson succeeding Strong and Davis as they enter the quarterfinal game against Incarnate Word this Saturday, one thing they have been missing is All-World tight end play as they got from Goeddert, Kraft, and Zach Heins, who got a look from the Chargers this year but didn't make the team. I don't know if there are any NFL touchdown makers on the current Jackrabbit squad. In the tradition of the great Jim Langer, the next draft pick might be another center, Gus Miller, the 2023 FCS Rimington Award winner.