MISSOULA, Montana — Dan Jackson has been to Missoula before. And South Dakota State is certainly no strangers to playing the Grizzlies in the playoffs.
Jackson, South Dakota State’s first-year head coach, was an assistant the last time SDSU played Montana at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in the 2015 FCS playoffs. He was also finishing up his education at SDSU in 2009 when the Jackrabbits blew a sizeable lead only to see the host Griz come storming back.
And while Jackson was not on the coaching staff each of the last two seasons when South Dakota State ended Montana’s playoff runs, he leads the Jackrabbits into the belly of the beast on Saturday as No. 14 SDSU comes to Missoula to take on No. 3 Montana in the second round of the FCS playoffs.
“We have a lot of respect for Montana, the history of their program, the consistency of it over time regardless of who’s the coach, who’s the quarterback, they’ve always found a way to be a power,” Jackson said. “And their fans. When you have a fan base that strong, and a support system that powerful, it allows you to maintain consistency.
“This year’s Montana team is no different. They are extremely talented. They are one of the more talented teams I’ve seen on both sides of the film. This is a phenomenal football team Coach Hauck has done a great job putting together.”
The trajectory of the Jackrabbits as a football program between their first FCS playoff appearance in 2009 in Missoula and where they are today has been both stunning and a testament to consistency. Back in 2009, the upstart former Division II also-ran had just started building momentum after playing third fiddle in the old North Central Conference to North Dakota State and North Dakota, each national champions at the Division II level while SDSU hovered around .500.
That 2009 team was the first to make the FCS playoffs. Their reward? A trip to Missoula to play the No. 1-ranked Montana Grizzlies.
As the ‘Jacks make their way to Missoula this week for a playoff matchup against Montana for the third season in a row, South Dakota State has become a benchmark type of program in the FCS. SDSU has been in the semifinals of the FCS postseason every season since 2017 save a second-round exit in 2019.
The only team to win a national championship other than NDSU since 2016 is South Dakota State; the Jackrabbits went back-to-back in 2022 and 2023 with two of the best and most talented teams the subdivision has ever seen. SDSU capped the second national title with a 23-3 win over Montana in the championship game in Frisco, Texas just 24 months ago.
The 2009 team helped set the stage for the rise. John Stiegelmeier never made the playoffs between 1997 and 2008 before that breakthrough season 16 years ago. The 2009 Jacks went 8-3, including 7-1 in the newly formed Missouri Valley Football Conference. And they had undefeated Montana on the ropes for most of the first 40 minutes.
Jackson played at SDSU from 2003 until 2005 before spending the next few years finishing his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He returned as an assistant in 2012, so he was not on the staff when South Dakota State fell victim to one of the greatest comebacks in FCS postseason history. But he is an alum and a former Jackrabbit linebacker who is close friends with Jimmy Rogers, a standout on that 2009 team who then led SDSU to the 2023 national title.
“We started out fast. We had a huge lead,” Jackson reflected earlier this week, referring to the 41-14 and 48-21 leads SDSU held late in the third quarter that November 28 day. “Then we allowed the momentum and some of the things the crowd brought to the table to impact us. We are at a different point as a program there, too. There was some learning and growing that needed to happen at that point.”
Montana, of course, mounted one of the legendary comebacks in the history of postseason college football. After falling behind by four touchdowns twice in the third quarter, UM’s magic man Marc Mariani did his magician tricks, returning a kickoff for a touchdown and catching two more touchdowns to spark an avalanche. The Griz ripped off 40 unanswered points to win going away, 61-48. That win was part of UM’s 14-game winning streak that year that came to an abrupt halt the next month in Chattanooga, Tennessee with a loss to Villanova in the FCS national title game.
South Dakota State has played Montana three times since then. SDSU lost 24-17 in 2015 in Bob Stitt’s lone playoff win at the helm for the Griz. Jackson was the defensive backs coach on Stiegelmeier’s staff that season. SDSU of course beat Montana in the national championship in 2023 and ended the Grizzlies’ season last season as well, winning 35-17 on the way to a seventh semifinal in the last eight seasons.
“We owe them one,” said Montana running back Eli Gillman, the Big Sky Conference Offensive Player of the Year after rushing for 1,261 yards and 17 touchdowns during his junior season. “We are happy to have them here this time. It’s our turn to get this done.”
South Dakota State has certainly endured plenty of turnover since the 2023 national championship game, as has Montana. Just 25 Griz that will suit up Saturday were on the Montana roster in 2023, including 12 players who were redshirting and did not play in the game. SDSU had eight players on that 2023 team that made NFL rosters, plus four-year starting quarterback Mark Gronowski, who grad transferred to Iowa following last season.
“After 10 years of college, Gronowski is no longer there,” Montana head coach Bobby Hauck quipped. “These guys are good players, both of them (Gronowski & SDSU starter Chase Mason). The run it fairly well and they throw it really well. The starter (Mason) was out for about a month, or maybe more, but he played this last week against New Hampshire. He has good arm talent, strong arm, and there’s a reason they win games.”
South Dakota State has ridden a roller coaster this season. Rogers took the Washington State head coaching job in the off-season and took 16 SDSU players with him. A few more transferred to Big Ten schools.
Still, SDSU started the year with a defensively dominant 20-3 win over No. 15 Sac State in Jackson’s head coaching debut. The Jackrabbits followed it up with a 30-24 double overtime win over No. 3 Montana State in Bozeman, becoming the first visiting team to win a regular-season game at Bobcat Stadium since October of 2019.
But Mason, the 6-foot-4, 235-pounder with a Super Man build, suffered an injury that ended up rendering him inactive for five weeks and four games. That, plus seven other season ending injuries according to Jackson, sent the ‘Jacks into a spiral.
“I knew coming into the season that we had some high-level talent, but there may be some depth we needed to build,” Jackson said. “Truly, our starters are guys who were here before as a backup or waiting their time and now they are taking advantage of it early in the year. And those guys are great players. And some of our transfers are going to take time. I loved how we started the season.
“As every team — there’s no excuse —but we’ve lost seven guys who were starting for us at the beginning of the season who were really impactful players. And over that stretch, we believe that everyone that goes in has to uphold the standard. They were from an effort standpoint but they hadn’t played a ton of football. We just weren’t playing efficiently at that time.”
Mason was the key injury, however. The former Division I baseball prospect is as revered and respected as any player who’s in his first season of real playing time of any team in the country. And he’s thought of like that internally, too. SDSU went 1-4 without Mason in the lineup, although the 34-31 overtime the Jacks earned against North Dakota in the regular season finale likely punched their playoff ticket.
Having Mason back, though, seemed to make the entire tide of the team rise back to the level of a real contender. South Dakota State smashed New Hampshire 41-3 and bring a two-game winning streak into Saturday’s game in Missoula.
“Having a quarterback as talented as Chase allows everybody to operate better,” Jackson said. “We stuck to the process. The guys continued to believe. They poured into it, we doubled down on our culture and now what you see is we have gotten a couple of guys back and we’ve improved our depth. We have guys who had struggled at time who are now confident and we are really hitting our stride.”
South Dakota State has had a Jekyll and Hyde season. The Jackrabbits looked like a true national championship contender in Bozeman in Week 2. Montana State hasn’t lost a game since falling to SDSU and is considered by many to be a favorite to make a run to the championship game for the third time since Brent Vigen took over in 2021. But SDSU also has perplexing losses, even considering the injuries, like a 24-12 home loss to Indiana State, a team Montana decimated 63-20 in September.
“South Dakota State is very sound in what they do and they play hard,” Hauck said.
“Like everybody, they’ve been banged up. Like us. We have been without four of our top five corners this season. It’s what you do with it, the situation you’ve been put in. They have rallied the troops, like we have, and they found their way to the playoffs.”
Part of South Dakota State’s rise from run of the mill DII team to nationally elite FCS power over the last three decades is stability. The Jacks stayed with Stiegelmeier despite his average success his first 12 seasons at the helm. But in 2009, SDSU had a breakthrough by simply making the playoffs and fighting an all-time great Griz team tooth and nail. And since then, the build has continued.
SDSU is in the playoffs for the 14th year in a row and the 15th time since 2009. South Dakota State has won 25 playoff games and been to the semifinals seven times, along with the national title game three times including the 2020 spring season when the Jackrabbits lost to Sam Houston 23-21.
Only North Dakota State and Montana State have had as consistent of results since 2019, but SDSU made the FCS Final Four two seasons straight before MSU’s breakthrough in 2019. The last time the Jackrabbits showed up in Missoula was the spark for the rise. And the epic comeback that everyone is fixated on from 16 seasons ago is a memory that will never fade.
But Saturday, Montana has an opportunity to avenge its gut-wrenching loss to rival Montana State its last time out in Missoula on November 22. And SDSU has a chance to right its midseason swoon, memories of 2009 be damned.
“Now, this is a different ball game. We are a national championship-type program now,” Jackson said. “Our players have the utmost confidence in our ability to beat anybody in the country at any level. Whenever we step on the field, there is an expectation to compete and win the game and play at the highest level. I think our guys’ mindset, the evaluation of our program over time and this team in particular, the connection and cohesion of this group, to be able to handle anything is a little bit unique. It puts us in a position to have success in a challenging environment. They can’t wait.”
