JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — Here in East Tennessee, they’re waiting for the Bison. Mighty North Dakota State is coming to town for a Saturday night game, and it’s a big deal.
“They’re like the Alabama of FCS football,” said the local team’s head coach, Tre Lamb of East Tennessee State. “Their name carries weight. … I told our team we don’t have to beat them 10 times, we have to beat them once. I think it’s a big deal to have them here.”
ETSU President Brian Noland went a step further and spoke with me Friday afternoon in the cozy William B. Greene Jr. Stadium on the west end of campus. From his presidential suite, the peaks of the tree-covered Appalachian Mountains were visible in the distance.
“We’re honored,” Noland said. “We thank you. We thank the people of North Dakota for giving this part of the country that doesn’t have the opportunity to see you play in person and up close the opportunity to travel all the way across the country to play us.”
The stadium’s capacity is listed as 7,694, with a spacious wall at the north end for standing-room-only fans. The record crowd at Greene Stadium is listed as 10,594.
“I don’t want to give anything away, but I think we’ll have 13,000 or 14,000 fans on Saturday,” ETSU athletic director Richard Sander said Friday, echoing Noland in describing what this game means to the school and the city.
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That’s the attitude when NDSU, winner of nine national Football Championship Subdivision titles since 2011, takes its show to a place it has never visited before. This is the Bisons’ first trip to Tennessee — ETSU will return the favor with a game at the Fargodome in 2026 — and they’re being treated like the circus is coming to town.
Kickoff is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. (Fargo time) Saturday.
It’s a circus featuring the most recognizable brand in the FCS, currently ranked No. 2 in the country, with at least two potential NFL players on their roster, and serious hopes of returning to Frisco, Texas, for another championship game.
The Buccaneers, the home team, were selected to finish sixth in the nine-team Southern Conference under Lamb, a first-year head coach.
“They’re probably the best team that’s ever played on this campus,” Lamb said. “And they’re coming to play the Bucs.”
Either he’s trying to live up to his fans’ expectations, or he’s exaggerating more than the barbecue sauce at Firehouse BBQ just around the corner from campus.
The Buccaneers have had some strong visitors in a previous life. No. 1 Marshall came to town in 1996 when a little-known receiver named Randy Moss took FCS by storm. That team had several future NFL players and won a national title. It beat ETSU 34-10 in an early November game. Georgia Southern was in the SoCon before moving to the FBS and was ranked No. 1 twice when visiting Johnson City — in 1999, when the Eagles won a national title, and again in 2001, when they lost in the semifinals.
David Samson/The Forum
ETSU lost the 1999 game 55-6, but won the 2001 game 19-16.
Could there be another upset? The Bison will likely be at least three touchdowns ahead when the odds are released Saturday. But there seems to be some confidence in Johnson City, largely because of the 34-year-old Lamb and a newly assembled roster that includes many players from his previous stint at Gardner-Webb.
“It’s going to be interesting. Honestly, we don’t know how good we are because we have 55 new players,” Sander said. “We really don’t know. In the opener at Appalachian State, I thought we competed well. I don’t think they overwhelmed us physically, which can sometimes happen in a game like this. But that didn’t happen. The game was pretty hard fought.”
ETSU lost the game 38-10, but went into the second half with a 17-10 lead before App State pulled away.
David Samson/The Forum
Win or lose, this game will be seen as a significant moment here because it wasn’t long ago that ETSU didn’t even have a football team. The Buccaneers had a long history in the Southern Conference until a previous president eliminated football after the 2003 season for financial reasons.
“When we started football again, we had nothing. When they stopped football, they tried to create a situation where football couldn’t be restarted,” Sander said. “They gave away 30 yards of the artificial turf in our old stadium so we couldn’t have a full field. They gave away the tape equipment. They gave away everything. We didn’t have a football. We didn’t have a helmet. They gave away everything, so we had to start over.”
When Noland made the decision to bring back football in 2013, he tapped Sander, the longtime athletic director at Virginia Commonwealth University, to lead the initiative. It was a rough road. ETSU’s first practice game was played on an open field near the current stadium while the president and his family watched from lawn chairs. A picture in the presidential suite captures the scene.
For the first two seasons after their re-establishment, the Buccaneers played at a local high school stadium. Noland oversaw the construction of the $26 million Greene Stadium, which was completed in 2017 and revamped that end of campus. Where the stadium stands used to be a huge parking lot. Two old houses stood on a ridge where the president’s seat and press box now are. The stadium is small but chic and still has room to grow.
ETSU visited the Fargodome in 2021 for a quarterfinal playoff game that the Bison won 27-3, and that’s when the groundwork for this game was laid.
From the non-existence of a program in 2004 to the arrival of the big, bad Bison in town in 2024, it’s been a journey for ETSU.
“We’re going to try our luck,” Lamb said. “What an opportunity. What an opportunity for our football team. This is a generational game. A game that can change careers. A game that can change the program. If we can somehow do that and beat these guys…”
Lamb trailed off. “We’re going to finish it. If ETSU wins, there will be an exciting story to tell in Johnson City and East Tennessee for years to come.”
