Can the Jackrabbits avoid a let down at Northern Iowa?

There’s multiple ways to lose a college football game that you should win, but I believe the biggest way is having a let down after a big win. Coming off a win over in-state rival South Dakota, South Dakota State will look to avoid that this weekend when it travels to Northern Iowa.

When teams have a big win that alters their season, they’re usually riding high and feel like everything is clicking. Then they don’t take their next opponent seriously or move past the win, and boom, you lose a game that you shouldn’t or don’t get up enough for another big-time game.

This has especially been a theme this season, both in the FCS and the FBS. For SDSU, its let down happened two weeks after a big win because the Jackrabbits had a bye ahead of a 21-10 loss to North Dakota on Oct. 17.

Coming off the bye, SDSU was given a No. 1 ranking ahead of that game and had just beaten a ranked Illinois State team on the road with its backup quarterback. The Jacks started slow against the Fighting Hawks and before you knew it, they were down 21-3 at halftime and did not recover.

USD beat UND in overtime two weeks ago and then the Coyotes were down 21-0 to SDSU this past weekend. UND’s win over SDSU came ahead of the game against USD and the Fighting Hawks fell into a 20-3 hole and couldn’t complete the comeback.

As a Minnesota Golden Gopher fan, I was at the game in the beginning of October when the Gophers shocked Michigan and won the Little Brown Jug at home for the first time in over 50 years. The next week, Minnesota goes and plays a Purdue team that it probably should have beaten and gets its doors blown off, 41-13.

So, you get my point. College football is as much a mental game as it is about how much talent you have. How you handle success is usually a big factor in how you navigate a season.

The last time SDSU had a big win, the Jacks didn’t handle the success well. Head coach Dan Jackson would be the first person to tell you that, but he thinks his team learned a lot from that loss.

“I need to continue to do a good job of preparing our guys for what’s going to happen on Saturdays and what they need to expect. I just don’t think I did a good job of that in the game that we stumbled in earlier this year. … We had a setback. We’ve experienced that and know what we’ve gone through. I learned and the team learned,” Jackson said.

SDSU comes into Saturday’s game with a record of 7-2 and the Jacks are ranked No. 5 in the State FCS Perform Top 25 Poll. The Jacks are hoping to have at least a top-four seed come FCS Playoffs time and would like to move up all the way into the top two and have home field advantage until the championship game. 

The Panthers are 4-4 but they have not lost at home and have notched wins over North Dakota and Illinois State at the UNI Dome. SDSU is 14.5-point favorites against UNI according to FanDuel Sportsbook, but Jackson said SDSU won’t overlook the Panthers because every game is a playoff game from here on out.

“In a lot of ways, it’s playoff football,” Jackson said. “… There’s just a sense of urgency in the building right now, that I felt was there and I thought earlier in the season was definitely there, and now I feel the urgency and confidence in our team that they know when we play a certain way, [they know] what we could be.

“They know that they have to play that way if they want to get to where they want to go. … I was just telling the guys to understand the implications of every game. You know, we want to win. We want to win big. We want to look a certain way when we play, and all of those things factor into the end goal, so it all matters.”

For most football teams, the season is a roller coaster full of ups and downs. Very rarely do you have a season that goes perfectly. The only one that I’ve covered that was almost perfect was the 2023 Jackrabbits who went 15-0 and won the National Championship. But even with them, there were some close calls in the regular season and they had to fight the expectations that were put upon them.

Jackson said on Tuesday that his team needs to treat every game the same, whether it's a win or a loss. You have to be able to control your emotions throughout the season and hopefully come playoff time you’re hitting your stride.

“We lost one game, and we got back to work, and we improved from it, and we grew from it,” Jackson said. “And we need to do the same thing with a win. … You can’t ride the wave. You know, the best teams in the conference have done this for years. 

“There’s so many teams in our conference that you can never count them out, no matter how much adversity they have, and I think there’s just a level of understanding that this is a tough conference and you better be at your best. We’re all trying to get better throughout the season, and you want to be peaking at the end of the season anyways.”