Ever since College GameDay came to Fargo in 2013 and 2014 to feature the North Dakota State Bison and their national championship FCS program, South Dakota State fans and team officials have hoped and wondered if the iconic ESPN pregame show would ever come to Brookings.

It seemed far-fetched.

Brookings is a town of 23,000 people, far smaller than Fargo. The Bison have won multiple national championships; the Jackrabbits have none. NDSU fills the Fargodome routinely – the Jacks had never sold out Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium until this week.

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“It’s a dream for a football program, but it’s always a stretch,” said Jacks coach John Stiegelmeier. “Did I think it would happen? I wasn’t betting on it. But I thought it could.”

Then the perfect storm of factors came together to make it happen.

The Bison have won 28 in a row, are defending champs, and are coming to the site of their last loss, two years ago. SDSU is 6-1, ranked third in the country, having made consecutive semifinal appearances and rising to a level that has contributed to the Dakota Marker becoming the best rivalry in the Division I championship subdivision.

The weather forecast is favorable for this time of year, and while there are other big games that would have made sense (Auburn at LSU; Wisconsin at Ohio State), ESPN officials have emphasized their desire to occasionally go off the beaten path to visit new places, particularly those with compelling stories to tell.

As big as the games being played this week at the Horseshoe, Death Valley and the Big House all are, a GameDay appearance at any of those places would have been more of the same. Brookings will be unique, and GameDay hadn't been on an FCS campus since they visited James Madison in 2017.

That does not, however, mean that ESPN’s expectations for the event are lowered.

“Any time we come to a spot for the first time, particularly with FCS sites, we get an incredible scene and a passionate crowd that’s really eager to show off their school and what their brand is all about,” said Drew Gallagher, GameDay’s coordinating producer. “We found that out for sure when we went to Fargo and built a connection with that team, and we’re hoping to do the same with South Dakota State.”

Still, Gallagher admitted the Dakota Marker game came into focus as a serious candidate to host the show in short order.

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“I would say this one came together a little later than most,” Gallagher said. “We always have (less traditional) candidates in the back of our mind. At the start of the season we put out a list of all the potential GameDay sites week by week and that list evolves throughout the year as certain story lines emerge or teams win or lose, but we always put a lot of prominent FCS games on that list to have them out there.

"(The Dakota Marker game) was always on the list – not necessarily a front-runner just because of some of the games on the slate. The way the games go can determine the direction of the show, and by Saturday evening we started to think, hey this might be a good spot to be unpredictable.”

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GameDay director Rodney Perez spent much of Monday touring the SDSU campus and Brookings to determine the best site for the show, ultimately choosing the College Green area on the southwest quadrant of campus, as it had the best combination of proper space and aesthetics.

The Built by the Home Depot set will be constructed Thursday, and Friday afternoon the cast of Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso and Desmond Howard will make their first appearance from Brookings for College Football Live, which is taped at 2:30 and will air at 3:30 on ESPN2.

Saturday’s College GameDay show airs from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and will feature prerecorded segments and features relating to the teams and the game that were filmed this week. The game kicks off at 2 p.m.

“This is a pretty big matchup,” Gallagher said. “It’s an important game in the FCS, No. 1 vs. No. 3, a rivalry game, the defending national champions. It has all the ingredients for a great show.”