Wide-Open Missouri Valley Race Begins as Coaches Eye Opportunity Following North Dakota State's Departure
- Brayden Byers
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
The giant in the Valley is gone.
Twelve-time conference champion and 10-time FCS champion North Dakota State has left the Missouri Valley Football Conference to join the FBS and the Mountain West. While the absence of the Bison leaves the conference with only 9 teams, down from 12 just three years ago, it also leaves the path to an MVFC crown as wide open as it’s been in years.
“We have the players and the talent to go do it, but so will all of these teams,” Southern Illinois head coach Nick Hill said Tuesday at the conference’s annual media day in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “That’s why every Saturday, you’ve got to be ready to play, or these teams will beat you.
Hill’s Salukis were picked 6th in the conference’s preseason poll, but despite being picked in the lower half, they still earned a first-place vote and believe they can be a playoff team.
“That stings to hear we haven’t been in (the playoffs) the last two years, but we can sit up here at media days and talk about that all the time and ‘hey things are different,’ and that's for the fans,” Hill said. “The real work is believing in these guys and going out there and doing it.”
Preseason favorite South Dakota State had 28 out of 36 possible first-place votes in the poll. The Jackrabbits won their first seven games last season before losing four straight and sneaking into the playoffs on an overtime touchdown throw against UND. Head coach Dan Jackson acknowledged last season didn’t meet the program’s standard. “When I reflect on a year ago, the successes, a lot of those came in ways that people may not have seen on Saturdays,” Jackson said. “In a lot of ways, it was the perfect foundational year. Being honest with you, the football wasn’t good enough.”
The Salukis and Jackrabbits were two of five teams to earn at least one first-place vote, along with defending national runner-up Illinois State, North Dakota and South Dakota. Illinois State head coach Brock Spack recalled something former NDSU coach Craig Bohl told him about the nature of the conference.
“I think it was 2012, we had been in the league for a couple of years. We had a pretty good team, we get into the playoffs. He goes ‘you get into the playoffs, I’m telling you coach, you got a chance to win a national championship,’” Spack said. “I said, ‘You really think so?’ he said, ‘Yeah, because of the league you play in, the league gets you ready for that,’ and he was exactly right.”
The Redbirds made it to the playoffs last year, traveling over 8,000 miles and beating 4 teams in three different time zones, including the top-seeded Bison, on their way to the national championship game. In Nashville, ISU matched up with Montana State, coming up just one point shy of its first national championship in program history. Spack said this season his team will be playing with some purpose.
“I don’t know how you couldn’t be motivated as a team; what happened to us in the championship game,” He said. “It was a great football game, but there were opportunities for us we didn’t take advantage of sometimes.”
Youngstown State did not receive a first-place vote but was voted third by the panel of sports information directors, coaches and media.
Penguins head coach Doug Phillips says they have the talent to compete in the conference, but small mistakes led to some losses.
“You look at the first half of football games, and we’re walking down the ramp 17-7 against South Dakota State,” he said. Just that belief and that discipline to go 60 minutes, 4th quarter. This offseason, I think that's been a focus. I think you just hit it hard, but we gotta learn from those mistakes.”
“I’m happy with the growth,” Phillips continued. “We got great leadership, we have a lot of 5th-year seniors that stayed that have played a lot of football at Youngstown State, and their leadership is more player-led. They understand it, and it makes our jobs a lot easier.”
The middle of the pack
As mentioned before, both North Dakota and South Dakota received two first-place votes in this year’s poll, finishing fourth and fifth.
Fighting Hawks coach Eric Schmidt is back for his second season at the helm in Grand Forks. His team finished in fourth place in the standings a year ago.
“I think everybody in our building has a growth mindset and wants to get better,” Schmidt said. “I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this, there’s things that you can work on and improve.”
One thing Schmidt improved in his first year was the defense, which allowed the fewest points in the conference last season. He thinks defense will be a factor in the race for the conference’s automatic bid.
“There’s a lot of really, really good skill and offensive players in our league. It's ultimately going to be, in my opinion, who can play the best defense that's going to have the upper hand in order to win the football conference here this year.”
The Coyotes, on the other hand, will have a new coach in charge for the second straight season after Travis Johansen left Vermillion after one year to take the defensive coordinator job at Rutgers. Filling in that spot will be Matt Vitzthum, who was one of the co-offensive coordinators for USD last year.
One of the biggest questions of the offseason for South Dakota is who will replace Aiden Bouman under center after he graduated. Vitzthum said the options are down to senior Nevan Cremascoli, second-year player Austyn Modrzewski and Jackson Proctor, a senior transfer from Dartmouth.
“We don’t need that guy to be extra special; we’re gonna surround him with 10 really good football players and those 10 guys are gonna have his back and make sure that he doesn’t have to be Superman out there; he just has to be 1/11 of the offense,” Vitzthum said. “I think we’ll have a decision made kind of at the start of fall camp, but it’s wide open right now.”
Rebuilding programs
Northern Iowa, Indiana State and Murray State sit at the bottom of the pack in the Missouri Valley heading into this season. The Panthers are led by Todd Stepsis in the second year of his tenure, following longtime coach Mark Farley's retirement in 2024. UNI ended last season with a 3-9 overall record, winning only one conference game. Stepsis said he’s partly to blame for his team’s performance. “There’s lots of things that I could have done a better job with, and I think sometimes when things don’t go your way, it's a lot easier to look in the mirror and see where you need to be better, where, when things go well, sometimes that does hide. We’re just really excited about the future, but it is a one-day-at-a-time work-in-progress kind of thing.”
For Indiana State and Murray State, their coaches say their strength lies in the players they are returning.
“We faced seven teams that played in the playoffs, we played a national champion in Indiana University, and we played against not only the Walter Payton Award winner in Beau (Brungard) but also the Heisman Trophy winner in Fernando Mendoza,” Sycamore coach Curt Mallory said. “When you play against the best, that's only going to help you.”
“This conference is definitely not the conference you want to cut your teeth or test drive or get your driving permit in because it's big boy football in the biggest way,” Racers coach Jody Wright said. “Still young in a lot of positions, but I think we’ve got depth, and I think we’ve got the body types and the demeanor and stuff that it's going to take to be competitive and good in this conference, so I definitely feel like we’ve upgraded and so we’ve got to go out there and put it on the field now.”