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Oklahoma State Scheduled The Worst-Possible FCS Program To Begin 2024 Football Season

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Oklahoma State is coming off a 10-win college football season that concluded with an eight-point win over Texas A&M in the Texas Bowl. The Cowboys will be hard-pressed to keep that momentum rolling in their first game of 2024.

They scheduled the worst-possible FCS program to start the year. It will begin with a national champion.

Oklahoma State will pay South Dakota State $450,000 to play the contest. There is a good chance that it could also cost them a win.

The Jackrabbits won their second-straight Football Championship Subdivision national championship on Saturday. They have won 29 of their last 29 games.

UH OH!

There is a lot of conversation surrounding FCS opponents each fall. They usually take place at the beginning of the year, but the chatter gets especially loud when a team like Alabama hosts Chattanooga in the middle of November. How is that fair? Should that be allowed?

It is a topic that has and will be debated at nauseam until those type of games are no longer on the schedule. That may never happen because those “buy games” oftentimes keep the smaller schools afloat in terms of finances.

Oklahoma State scheduled the FCS school.

Next year’s game was formally announced on July 12, 2022. South Dakota State was coming off of an 11-4 season in the fall of 2021 after losing the FCS National Championship during the spring of 2021— which was actually the 2020 season, but the whole pandemic thing bumped it back by six months.

It was a gutsy decision for the Cowboys to schedule the Jackrabbits when they did. It has become even more so after the latter’s most recent run, dating back to Sept. 3, 2022!

  1. at Iowa — L, 3-7
  2. vs UC Davis — W, 24-22
  3. vs Butler — W, 45-17
  4. at Missouri State — W, 28-14
  5. vs Western Illinois — W, 34-10
  6. vs South Dakota — W, 28-3
  7. at North Dakota State — W, 23-21
  8. at North Dakota — W, 49-35
  9. vs Indiana State — W, 49, 7
  10. at Northern Iowa — W, 31-28
  11. vs Illinois State — W, 31-7
  12. vs Delaware — W, 42-6
  13. vs Holy Cross — W, 42-21
  14. vs Montana State — W, 39-18
  15. National Championship vs North Dakota State — W, 45-21
  16. vs Western Oregon — W, 45-17
  17. vs Montana State — W, 20-16
  18. vs Drake — W, 70-7
  19. vs North Dakota — W, 42-21
  20. at Illinois State — W, 40-21
  21. vs Northern Iowa — W, 41-6
  22. at Southern Illinois — W, 17-10
  23. at South Dakota — W, 37-3
  24. vs North Dakota State — W, 33-16
  25. at Youngstown State — W, 34-0
  26. vs Missouri State — W, 35-17
  27. vs Mercer — W, 41-0
  28. vs Villanova — W, 23-12
  29. vs UAlbany — W, 59-0
  30. National Championship vs Montana — W, 23-3

Can South Dakota State make it 30 of 31? Oklahoma State will look awfully silly if it loses to the reigning FCS national champions to begin the 2024 college football season instead of scheduling… anyone else!