Stu Whitney

swhitney@argusleader.com

At first glance, it seemed like a neat idea.

North Dakota State University, in conjunction with Fargo-based Scheels All Sports, would take its five national championship football trophies to stores in various cities so fans could view them and take photos.

The trophy tour started last week and included North Dakota locations Bismarck, Minot, Grand Forks and Fargo. On Saturday, the event heads to Rochester, Minn., followed by a scheduled tour finale on Sunday at the Scheels location in Sioux Falls.

Wait. What?

That last part changed everything, especially among South Dakota State fans who view NDSU as their primary rival since the Division I move. Jackrabbit Nation is not enthralled with the fact that the Bison have won five straight Football Championship Subdivision crowns, not to mention eight consecutive games against SDSU.

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To bring the championship trinkets into Sioux Falls – less than an hour from Brookings – during the Summit League basketball tournament seemed either provocative or naïve, and outrage soon followed.

“My first reaction was shock, then anger,” says Paul Rystrom, a former SDSU football player who works in sales in Brookings. “It seemed like salt in an open wound.”

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Phone calls and emails came fast and furious to Scheels this week, keeping store manager Chris Kray busy. Rystrom and other SDSU alumni, many of them outdoor sportsmen, threatened to take their business elsewhere if the Bison trophies made an appearance.

Calls also went out to Scheels corporate offices in Fargo, where the employee-owned company has been an enthusiastic supporter of NDSU athletics.

“People were fired up,” says Barry Nagel of Sioux Falls, a former Washington High standout who played football at SDSU. “I figured that maybe it happened out of ignorance, because I’m guessing they wouldn’t want any of our basketball trophies displayed in Fargo. It just didn’t seem like good business.”

By Tuesday, the planned event collapsed under the weight of complaints. Kray says he received a note from NDSU saying that the trophies would not come to Sioux Falls, and the online schedule carries a red slash through that date.

“They decided they did not want to bring them down,” said Kray. “They apologized for any inconvenience.”

There’s a lesson somewhere here about the passion of college rivalries – or maybe the jealousy that lack of competitive balance brings. NDSU’s football dominance has drawn plenty of national plaudits, including ESPN GameDay visits to Fargo, while the Jacks have managed just three FCS playoff wins and haven’t defeated their northern rival since 2009.

Not surprisingly, the Bison have used gridiron success as a Sioux Falls recruiting tool, raiding the city of high school standouts such as Preston Evans, Trevor Gebhart, Mike Hardie, Austin Kuhnert and Dan Marlette.

For Gebhart, the former Washington High wide receiver who helped NDSU win the first four of its national titles, the trophy tour controversy seems a bit silly.

“Scheels is just trying to promote their business and get people in the store,” says Gebhart, who recently moved to the Minneapolis area. “There are Bison fans in South Dakota, and that following has grown in recent years, for obvious reasons.”

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As a Sioux Falls product whose father and uncle ran track at SDSU, Gebhart is no stranger to the heated nature of this Dakota Marker rivalry.

“I wish I could tell you it was all sunshine and roses,” he says of his decision to attend NDSU. “I definitely felt friction from some people, including friends and even some family members. But it’s pretty much a friendly rivalry.”

J.D. Berreth, a former SDSU player who hosts a sports talk radio show in Brookings, took a few phone calls on the controversy but was shocked to learn that Sunday’s event was cancelled.

“The player in me would want to go down and knock the trophies off the shelf, but I understood the corporate part of it,” Berreth says. “It’s not like they were renting out a bar across from the Summit League tournament to show them off. It was part of a tour that included other stops.”

But in an era when Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh caused controversy by holding “satellite” camps in SEC country, outrage comes easily. Maybe it always did. Back in the heyday of the Nebraska-Oklahoma rivalry, it’s hard to imagine the Sooners displaying a national championship trophy at a sporting goods store in Lincoln.

“It just showed a lack of awareness,” says Rystrom. “I’m not trying to take anything away from NDSU, because we’d be proud to have those trophies ourselves. But I was disappointed and angry that they wanted to bring them here on the weekend of the Summit League tournament.”

Kray wouldn’t comment on how the Sioux Falls event originated, nor did NDSU officials respond to questions about the decision. All we know for sure is that the trophy tour stop in Sioux Falls is cancelled, and the rivalry lives on.

Clearly, the best way to make sure the Bison receive less attention nationally and in Sioux Falls is by preventing them from hoisting hardware, which nobody seems able to do. Maybe the Summit League tournament offers a way to replace their momentum with moments more suited to SDSU or USD.

"I am not going to say that North Dakota State walks on water,” Jacks football coach John Stiegelmeier insisted a few years back.

Pretty soon, we might need some actual proof.

Argus Leader Media city columnist Stu Whitney can be reached at swhitney@argusleader.com. Follow him on Twitter @stuwhitney