Don’t see a conference game ever being there. Would any school give up a home conference game to play at a neutral site? Not a chance, not even NDSU. Outside of St Thomas, no FCS team is going to bring a huge crowd anyway. This is going to be a Bison home game: so embrace it and pack the place.
"North Dakota State is a big part of the fabric of college football right now."
"North Dakota State is alive on the college football map."
-Lee Fitting ESPN
Lets remember a few items:
1. The road teams also have to be willing to do a game in Minneapolis. In the past, when teams in other conferences that have moved their home conference game to neutral sites, the conference and the road team has to sign off on the switch (the road team may incur added travel costs). Indiana moved their home game versus Penn State to Fed Ex Field about 10 years ago, and the Big Ten had to give them the stamp of approval.
2. Many teams do not want to play NDSU at the Fargodome with 19k fans at all, and I can assume that there are even fewer that would want to platy in front of potentially 45,000 fans.
3. There are not many "local" FCS options for a game in Minneapolis to help increase attendance.
4. Most HBCU teams that play in neutral site games want to play against other HBCU teams - not a team from half way across the country, and a team that there is no shared history with.
5. If this is opening weekend, it could get potential television consideration.
6. Minneapolis gets a fair number of flights from the Pacific Northwest, so there will be direct flight options for fans of Eastern Washington that may want to attend the game.
7. This could be an opportunity to see how much NDSU can fill up a major capacity stadium.
We did this once, it was fun. Once was enough for the next 10 years.
I would buy tickets to see NDSU play anyone (even Butler) at US Bank.
It's OK to not be OK.