Klieman and Entz seemed to work really well together and it seemed like Klieman was grooming Entz to be a head coach at one of the Team Makers events before he moved to K State. Entz was hired with essentially nowhere to go but down. Maintaining the Bison decade of dominance was just not realistic. There were so many times during the run that 1 play decided a playoff or national championship win and they almost all went the Bison way. The pressure on Entz to “win” has to be unbearable at times.
Plus, the landscape of college athletics changed big time with the transfer portal. The rules changed and they affect a developmental program like NDSU more so than others. Unfortunately, I don’t see this getting better and yes Entz and NDSU will need to adjust also but we fans all talk about how changing the culture is bad so it’s impossible to have it both ways.
This is largely where I'm at. We need to make improvements, but you can't justify canning a guy with championships unless things get real ugly. Maybe if we didn't make the playoffs a couple years or had early exits it would be legitimate. Losing in Frisco isn't a firable offense.
IF we ever replaced Entz, I would want a guy who knows our system, and would keep it mostly intact. That system has been successful and won us a LOT of titles over multiple coaching changes.
We won this last game on TOP and yardage. Had enough points to win a lot of games. It's the defense that needs repair imo. We might have to look for a new DC if it doesn't get better soon.
Last edited by BigHorns; 10-02-2023 at 09:17 AM.
All the “nowhere to go but down” talk neglects the fact that we have head and shoulders more resources than 98% of the programs at our level. And the other 2% are still a ways behind us.
Not saying it’s easy but it sure is realistic to think that we should be blowing the doors off of USD every time we play them. And Indiana State for that matter.