Colorado football's Week 1 opponent is no slouch.
North Dakota State has won nine NCAA Division I FCS national championships and exactly 90% of their games (172-19) since 2011. Simply put, the Bison are one of the most successful college football programs in the nation regardless of what division they play in. NDSU is ranked No. 2 in the FCS coaches poll to start the season.
However, this isn't the same NDSU of years past.
"This is the first time in a long time that NDSU has had a head coach with an offensive background," Bison offensive line coach Dan Larson told the Coloradoan. "It hasn't changed the identity of the program at all — we still have to win in all three phases — but the biggest thing has been, all of a sudden, the defense is hearing some things from an offensive coach's perspective when he sits in there and watches film with them.
"We're obviously getting a head coach that, from an offensive staff standpoint, has had experience coaching at the Big Ten level (Iowa) and the Mountain West where they've played in some big games. They were in Texas' stadium last year so it'll help combat some things with noise and some different elements that we're obviously going to see in a couple days at Boulder."
Former Wyoming offensive coordinator Tim Polasek was named the head coach at NDSU in December, becoming the first offensive-oriented mind to lead the Bison in 20-plus years. He took over for Matt Entz (2019-2023), who is now the linebackers coach at USC. Prior to Entz, Chris Kleiman (now at Kansas State) went from defensive coordinator to head coach (2014-18) just like his predecessor, Craig Bohl (2003-2013), did.
Polasek's hiring marks a slight shift in philosophy for a program that has lost more games in the last two seasons (seven) than it did in the previous five years combined (five). That doesn't mean he'll stray too far away from what has made the Bison a perennial powerhouse.
"The recipe isn't broken, it's just what kind of little spin or spices and ingredients will they put into it to try and make it their own," Larson said. "It's still about being great at basics and fundamentals. You have to play good, sound defense, be a good tackling team and you have to play as physical as you can on offense."
Larson is no stranger to physical, offensive play.
The former Division III head coach (Wisconsin-Eau Claire) arrived at NDSU in 2019 as the Bison running backs coach. During his first season in Fargo, NDSU rushed for a school-record 4,601 yards as the Bison went 16-0 and won their ninth national title.
That squad was led by quarterback Trey Lance (now with the Dallas Cowboys), who led the team with 1,100 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns on the ground. Larson's current quarterback may not be as explosive as Lance was at NDSU, but Cam Miller can be absolutely deadly as a runner.
Look no further than a FCS Championship semifinal in 2022 for evidence of that, a game where Miller had just one completion but ran wild for 132 yards in a Bison playoff win.
"The big thing with Cam is just that he's an ultra-competitive kid," Larson said. "I mean, we won a national semifinal game a couple years ago with him at quarterback and he completed one pass. There were a couple passes that got dropped, a couple passes that were overthrown but it just wasn't going the way where you're feeling confident. Well, he found a way to change the game and put it back in NDSU's favor by using his legs.
"The kid is willing to do whatever it takes to win. The only stat he truly cares about is the 1-0 one. You need me to be a part of the running game 15 times? You need me to throw it 15 more times? He's just got a competitive juice to him that is willing to do whatever it takes."
Larson and Miller have their hands full preparing for the Colorado defense ahead of next week's matchup in Boulder.
Week 1 opponents are typically difficult to game plan for, so that's not new to NDSU, but what is new is nearly half of the Buffs' starting defense in 2024. Not only that, but Colorado has a new defensive coordinator in Robert Livingston who the Bison have to figure out.
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"It's super challenging," Larson said of the Week 1 preparation for Colorado. "The biggest preparation we can do for an opponent is how well do we know ourselves? You have to rely on that aspect of it because you just don't know. Especially when the defensive coordinator comes from an NFL background, there's a lot of intricacies there that you have to get a feel for. He's (Livingston) been a part of a lot of big football games and he's obviously been around a great defensive staff there in Cincinnati for a long time so he's going to have a ton of knowledge in terms of how to make adjustments.
"Then, I think it's just really hard to figure out who the starters are. If you start worrying about all those things from a preparation standpoint, you probably start losing a little bit of focus on the areas we feel comfortable when it comes to NDSU. You can't prepare for the unknown outside of just making sure that your guys are ready to try and handle any situation that gets thrown at them."
Halftime adjustments will be crucial to deciding who comes out on top of a matchup between two programs playing against each other for the first time ever.
And while there are a handful of new faces projected to play a big role on the Colorado defense this fall, Larson knows there's plenty of returning talent to be cognizant of.
"They're good tacklers, willing hitters and the physicality part of it obviously shows up big time," Larson said of the Colorado secondary. "As we're watching them as a staff, I notice just how quickly those guys can end a drive for an offense and make plays kind of out of nowhere. I think that's the biggest thing, they're such dangerous athletes that you just never know when one little mistake can hurt you because they can make up ground so fast.
"It's impressive to watch. They're talked about and spoken about in a highly regarded manner throughout the country and certainly within the conference. You flip on a little bit of tape, watch it and it doesn't take you very long to figure out why that is."
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The Bison enter next Thursday's matchup with Colorado as 9.5-point underdogs (as of Aug. 21) but they aren't strangers to pulling off upsets of FBS teams.
NDSU is 9-4 overall against FBS opponents, including wins over No. 13-ranked Iowa (2016), Iowa State (2014), Kansas State (2013), Colorado State (2012), Minnesota (2011) and Kansas (2010). The Bison's six-game FBS winning streak was snapped by Arizona in 2022.
"We have to try to minimize our distractions and the biggest thing is how clean we can play football," Larson said of what it will take to upset Colorado. "When you have as many talented players as they do, if you're giving them extra possessions, giving their offense extra possessions because you're turning the ball over and not being efficient on special teams, you're just putting yourself in a big hole."
Larson and the Bison will be walking into a raucous environment unlike anything they've ever seen in a matter of days.
A likely sold-out crowd at Folsom Field will be rocking to witness the start of Deion Sanders' second season in Boulder. It'll be a far cry from the 19,000-seat Fargo Dome.
"You talk with a couple people here and there either in the profession or around the area but we won't have any clue of what it's like until we're really in it," Larson said of the atmosphere at Folsom Field. "It'll be a fun environment to be a part of and it'll be something our players will remember in terms of being around that gameday experience and being involved with such a high-quality opponent.
"Those are the things that you want out of your college football experience. Our guys are going to embrace the challenge and it'll be different, but hopefully we can get the bright lights out of their eyes by the time we come into the locker room and get ready to go for kickoff."
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This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: NDSU football assistant coach finds preparing for Colorado to be 'super challenging'
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