North Dakota State at New Mexico
Who: New Mexico (5-1, 2-0) vs. North Dakota State (6-1, 3-1).
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: University Stadium
How to watch/listen: The CW will carry UNM-NDSU with Jack McMullen (play-by-play), Cody Kessler (analyst) and Marshall Newhouse (sidelines) on the call. Robert Portnoy (play-by-play) and DonTrell Moore (analyst) will broadcast the game on the Lobo Radio Network (770 AM/96.3 FM).
Who’s favored: UNM is listed as a 4.5-point favorite, per DraftKings. The over/under is set at 41.5 points.
Nobody would mistake New Mexico and North Dakota State as rivals. Separated by 1,262 miles and vastly different football pedigrees, the two programs will only play for the first time Saturday, a game with plenty of meaning in the absence of any longstanding series history.
But for some of UNM’s coaches, Saturday might carry a little bit of a rivalry feeling anyway.
Including head coach Jason Eck, nine coaches on the Lobos’ staff — from coordinators to strength and conditioning assistants — have all previously played or coached against the Bison entering Saturday’s game.
Three have even played and coached against NDSU: defensive coordinator Spence Nowinsky, offensive coordinator Luke Schleusner and tight ends coach Zach Lujan.
“They don’t love North Dakota State,” linebacker Mercury Swaim said Tuesday. “They don’t love those guys very much. They definitely (made) that known to us.”
“We hate each other,” Nowinsky said, “you know what I mean?”
Of all the Lobos’ staffers, no coach goes back further with the Bison than Nowinsky. As a player at Division II Minnesota State-Mankato, Nowinsky was a freshman on the team that shocked NDSU in the playoffs in 1991 before coming back to beat the top-ranked Bison by one point in 1993.
Nowinsky’s childhood best friend, Todd Steffenhagen, recovered a fumble late in the latter game. Five of Nowinsky’s former Minnesota State teammates – Steffenhagen included – will be at University Stadium for Saturday’s game.
They will, of course, be wearing Lobo gear.
“I asked coach (Eck), ‘hey, is it cool to get those guys sideline passes?’” Nowinsky said on Oct. 7. “He said absolutely. But two of them live in Chicago and three of them still live in the Twin Cities.
“And he was asking, ‘they aren’t Bison fans, are they?’ And I said, ‘oh, no, they hate them.’”
But for Nowinsky, is it hate in the truest sense of the word? Not really — after all, his late uncle, Terry Nowinsky, played defensive line for the Bison in the 1960s. The Hatley, Wisconsin native also grew up 30 minutes away from NDSU head coach Tim Polasek, tracking his coaching journey from Division III Wisconsin-Stevens Point to now.
If the two used to battle over the same recruits and coached against each other in an FCS national championship game — Polasek’s Bison bested Nowinsky’s Illinois State 29-27 in 2015 — they’ve also spent time on the road eating dinners, trading stories and playing golf together.
“(Polasek) worked his way up — he did every meager job possible,” Nowinsky said. “That’s what my footprint is as well — you didn’t have a golden spoon in your mouth, you weren’t born on third base. You had to work your way through … My hat’s off to him, he’s done a great job and hasn’t missed a beat.”
Schleusner is no stranger to the Bison either. A former receiver at the University of North Dakota, he went 3-1 in the “Nickel Trophy” rivalry, the now-dormant, once-heated series between UND and NDSU.
In Schleusner’s senior year, 11th-ranked UND beat No. 2 NDSU 19-7 on Oct. 6, 2001 at the newly-opened Alerus Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He remembers a sellout crowd of 13,500 having an impact in the game, similar to what Eck asked for heading into Saturday.
When Schleusner returned to coach at his alma mater in 2011, the “Nickel Trophy” rivalry was in the midst of a 12-year hiatus. Despite resuming the series in 2015 — two years after Schleusner’s last on staff — NDSU’s move to the FBS ranks has now put UND and NDSU’s longstanding series on hold indefinitely.
“You wish the Dakota (schools) stuck together … You hate to see those rivalries go away,” he said, “but it’s part of the new college football landscape. Everybody has to move on and go to the next thing.”
As a coach, Schleusner was reintroduced to the Bison through the “Dakota Marker” series between NDSU and South Dakota State, a manufactured rivalry if there ever was one. From 2004 — when NDSU and SDSU both moved up to the FCS — until Schleusner’s first year on staff, the Jackrabbits compiled a 4-7 series record against the Bison.
In 2016, Eck joined Schleusner on SDSU’s staff as the Jackrabbits’ offensive line coach. He instantly acquitted himself as a thorn in NDSU’s side, finding ways to beat the Bison on the recruiting trail and throwing a couple perceived shots on social media.
Perhaps most notable: “Must not have had enough motivation,” Eck tweeted during NDSU’s 27-17 FCS semifinal loss to James Madison on Dec. 16, 2016, an assumed tweak on former Bison coach Chris Klieman’s remarks after beating South Dakota State 36-10.
Must not have had enough motivation.
— Jason Eck (@Coach_Eck) December 17, 2016
“Coach Eck likes to have fun,” Schleusner said with a grin, “you see it to this day. And sometimes he was having fun at the Bison’s expense. Their fan base doesn’t take too kindly to that, so even some of the tweets that he maybe thought were innocent garnered a lot of attention.
“But that’s O.K. because once the game starts, it’s really coming down to the guys on the field and it just added more intensity to the rivalry. So, that’s his personality and he’s got to be who he’s going to be.”
In Eck’s first year, SDSU snapped an eight-game losing streak to the Bison in the regular season before falling to NDSU in the playoffs — the game that led to Eck’s perceived jab on Twitter. The Bison won three of the next four before the Jackrabbits rattled off five straight wins in the series, including a 45-21 victory in the 2023 FCS national championship game.
UNM tight ends coach and former SDSU quarterback Zach Lujan was the Jackrabbits’ offensive coordinator in that win, calling plays for a unit that put up 506 total yards on the Bison.
“The Bison had the upper hand for a long time,” said Jeff Kolpack, a longtime NDSU beat writer for InForum, “until the Eck regime, when (SDSU head coach John Stiegelmeier) hired him and Luke and Zach. Those are the guys, that is the staff that turned the tide.
“They figured out how to beat the Bison.”
Saturday, they’ll have to figure out how to do so again. There’s some new stuff, sure — Lujan pointed out that NDSU’s defense now runs more Tampa 2 coverages than quarters. The players are different. The level is, too.
But: “It’s still the Bison,” Nowinsky said. “They can humble you in a hurry.”
At the same time Eck was poking the bear in NDSU, his coaching career started to take off. He said the “Dakota Marker” rivalry is one of his favorite rivalries he ever coached in, a regular occasion to rise to.
“Coaching is full of competitive people,” he said Monday, “and I think when you have great challenges in front of you, those are very rewarding games to be a part of.”
Schleusner and Nowinsky agree.
“They were the Goliath of FCS football … They’ve just played at such a high standard that it was fun to go against them, fun to recruit against them, to work against them,” Schleusner said. “You knew you had to be at your absolute best, and you know how consistent they were.”
“It means the world to me,” Nowinsky said, “because this is a great team, and this is what’s fun about football. Really, no offense to anybody else, but these are the teams you want to play. This is real football, it’s bone-on-bone football.
“They’re gonna try to run the ball through our face, and that’s what makes football great to me.”
Sean Reider covers college football and other sports for the Journal. You can reach him at sreider@abqjournal.com or via X at @lenaweereider.
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