Cornfields, frozen beef and the FCS stars who spurned big-time transfer offers
Credit to Author: Pete Thamel| Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2024 12:08:44 EST
North Dakota State left tackle Grey Zabel and South Dakota State quarterback Mark Gronowski are two players at the heart of the highest-profile FCS upset hopes this weekend. This offseason, they both faced similar big-money crossroads and made throwback decisions.
Zabel projects as a top 100 NFL draft prospect in 2025. Gronowski has led the Jackrabbits to back-to-back national titles, a 29-game-winning streak and has a chance to leave as college football’s all-time wins leader for a Division I quarterback. He’s also a strong NFL prospect.
Both players had plenty of interest to play at the highest levels of the sport through third parties and direct inquiries last year, but neither jumped in the NCAA transfer portal. The reasons can be traced, in part, to a swath to 250 cornfields and the benevolence of local cattle ranchers.
Zabel, a fifth-year senior, told ESPN he had multiple offers in the “high six figures” to go play at power conference schools. Gronowski told ESPN his offers, which were heavy on Big Ten and Big 12 schools, topped out at $1.2 million.
Despite eye-popping offers, they both stuck around, reminders of an era of college football before the transfer portal when continuity offered a distinct competitive advantage.
Showcase games added to the allure of returning. Zabel’s No. 2 NDSU team plays at Colorado on Thursday night in Boulder and No. 1 SDSU plays No. 17 Oklahoma State in Stillwater on Saturday with that 29-game streak on the line.
With 250 acres of corn planted on a farm nearly three hours from Fargo — “the best way to describe that is 250 football fields,” he says — Zabel literally and figuratively believes in blooming where he’s planted.
“We have a senior class of 27 guys,” Zabel told ESPN, “and I didn’t want to miss out on something special with those guys and go take a paycheck somewhere else.”
Gronowski graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering after a senior project that included building a prosthetic leg for easy assembly in developing countries. He’s started on his master’s in engineering management.
“Growing up, one of my big dreams was playing in the Big Ten, but the grass isn’t always greener on the other side,” he said. “The grass is pretty friggin’ green on this side of the park. It’s hard to leave a place you put so much time and effort into and met so many great guys.”
Opening weekend offers a fascinating referendum on those decisions.
Zabel will anchor North Dakota State’s offensive line on Thursday night against Colorado, protecting veteran quarterback Cam Miller‘s blind side. It’ll be a matchup of Zabel’s senior class against a school that’s taken more than 90 players in the portal the past two years. NDSU has won nine of 13 games against FBS opponents, prompting Deion Sanders to joke that he’s irked at athletic director Rick George for scheduling such a tricky opener.
Gronowski’s Jackrabbits haven’t lost since an infamous touchdown-less opening weekend defeat at Iowa in 2022, a 7-3 slog he sums up this way: “One of the worst college football games to watch of all time.” That 29-game win streak will go to Stillwater, Oklahoma — a difficult game against an Oklahoma State team that returns 20 starters from a 10-win team that played for the Big 12 title.
For Zabel and Gronowski, can sticking around their beloved FCS juggernaut programs help deliver a timeless upset? They can’t wait to find out.
It’s a Friday afternoon in the middle of the summer and Mark Gronowski offers a morsel of color that illustrates the difference at South Dakota State. One of the Jackrabbits’ graduate assistants, he said with a chuckle, was about to embark on a 6-hour drive to bring back “half a steer and a full pig” to help feed the program.
The hidden secret to SDSU’s success? Well, take a peek in the deep freezers under Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium. Leveraging its natural resources, SDSU takes donations from local ranchers and disperses them to players for meals. SDSU coach Jimmy Rogers said staff members — think QCs and assistant strength coaches — prepare items like overnight oats and protein shakes for the players.
“There’s nothing I can do to compete with the money,” Rogers said, referencing the annual frenzy of higher-profile schools recruiting his players. “We have to deliver an experience that’s different than most, we have to be genuine. At our level. You have to have your hand in everything.”
The hustle isn’t lost on Gronowski, who said each offseason the players get handed a few pounds of ground beef and ribeyes to cook at home. The red meat also shows up at team gatherings, position coach cookouts and other team events.
“They make it easy for us, and give us something healthy so we’re not stuffing our faces with Panda Express,” he said.
It takes more than red meat to build a champion. The Jackrabbits had eight players who spent time on NFL rosters last year and two more players — Mason McCormick and Isaiah Davis — drafted in 2024.
With a handful more NFL prospects this year, including linebacker Adam Bock, center Gus Miller and corner Dalys Beanum, a lesson emerged: “You can do it anywhere,” Gronowski said of getting seen by the NFL.
Part of the allure of staying to Gronowski was watching the development of young players this spring. “Seeing that talent build and grow and building connections with those guys. The people and the experience and the support and the love all played a huge part in this decision.”
Gronowski is 37-3 as a starter, which puts him in striking distance of both former NDSU quarterback Easton Stick’s FCS wins record (49) and former Boise quarterback Kellen Moore’s FBS record (50). An SDSU three-peat, the prime motivator for his return, would mean almost certainly he’d break those records.
Gronowski has a typical overlooked FCS story arc, as he ended up with preferred walk-on offers from Big Ten schools and a handful of Division I offers.
When Zach Lujan took over as SDSU’s quarterbacks coach in 2019, he wanted Gronowski as the program’s quarterback for the class of 2020. After an all-state senior season, a flurry of other offers came late.
But Gronowski’s instincts told him to trust the coaches who’d believed in his talent from the beginning. “Being at a place where you are loved the most,” he said, referencing his early interest. “I’d built this relationship with South Dakota State that was great so far, why change it.”
He and Lujan bloomed together, as Lujan eventually became the playcaller on both of SDSU’s national title teams before leaving after the 2023 title to become Northwestern’s offensive coordinator. Gronowski appreciated that when Lujan went back to his native Alaska he’d return with a halibut for a dinner for the quarterbacks.
Gronowski got baptized by blowtorch after FCS moved the 2020 season to the spring of 2021. SDSU’s two veteran quarterbacks got COVID in camp, and he got the first-team reps. “I didn’t look back from there,” Gronowski said.
Gronowski tore his ACL at the culmination of that spring 2021 season in the FCS title game against Sam Houston State, which the Jackrabbits lost after Gronowski left the game on the opening series.
Missing the fall 2021 season led him to understand the game better, as he spent games on the headset to better understand playcalling. And after that Iowa game, the wins kept on coming.
A true college experience came along with it. Gronowski’s undergraduate engineering degree included a senior project building low-cost prosthetic legs. Instead of $3,000, they figured out a way to make one for $67.
“You build a plan and the parts and send them an instruction manual, kind of like IKEA,” he said.
Ultimately, the experience on and off the field was too much to leave, along with the uncertainty of the role, scheme and all the variables that come with winning instantly at a new program. Gronowski has two years of eligibility remaining because of the injury, but said the plan is to play one more at SDSU and go “all-in” on the NFL draft this year.
“He’s a legend here now,” Rogers said, “just for staying.”
An opportunity to grow that legend looms with Oklahoma State.
When an analytics service graded Grey Zabel as one of the country’s top offensive linemen last year, he didn’t think long about testing the NFL process.
“I never really wanted to leave college eligibility on the table,” he said. “I wanted to play as much college football as possible.”
And two drastically different fields led him back to Fargo. The first is represented by the Fargo Dome, the cozy confines where NDSU plays. The Bison haven’t won a title since 2021, a lengthy drought for a program whose 2021 title marked nine in 11 years.
Along with helping restore NDSU at the top of the FCS, Zabel wanted to finish the job with his teammates. After NDSU lost to Montana in overtime in the FCS playoffs in December and coach Matt Entz bolted to become a USC assistant, interest in Zabel entering the portal reached a fever pitch.
But he spoke with other team leaders such as Miller and defensive tackle Eli Mostaert.
“We talked and said, one for all and all for one,” Zabel said. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this thing and take it head on.”
Another type of field offered incentive to stay. In Mound City, South Dakota, which he says is “only 3½ hours” away, Zabel rented 250 acres to plant corn this year. Zabel is an agribusiness major with minors in economics and precision agriculture.
The land isn’t an NIL deal, but Zabel said he’d saved up his money to rent. “This is my first year farming,” he said. “It’s really tough for me to do that from a ways away.”
NDSU head coach Tim Polasek also mentioned the power shift in FCS to South Dakota State likely factoring into Zabel’s decision. “It does matter that South Dakota State has kicked our ass,” he said. “If this guy has four national titles, what’s left to do?”
Zabel’s fidelity to the college experience and farm life has collided after each season, when he’s hosted his teammates on a pheasant hunt. He said some years they’ll stuff as many as 12 guys in his grandparents’ farmhouse — every couch filled and bed doubled up — and guys love the rustic experience.
He’s quick to point out that the term “hunt” would loom as a generous descriptor.
“We go punch some holes in the sky,” he said. “There’s not a lot of killing, but a lot of shooting and laughs.”
Zabel called it a “hard process” of deciding whether to transfer. He said the first contacts came late in the season and the queries intensified as NDSU went through the playoffs. He said he spoke openly with the coaching staff on the pros and cons of staying and leaving.
He said the hiring of Polasek got him “extremely fired up,” as he had North Dakota State ties, has an offensive line background and familiarity with Zabel and his family. Polasek recruited Zabel a bit when he coached the offensive line at Iowa, as the family took a visit.
Polasek also said he recruited Jett Zabel, Grey’s younger brother and NDSU freshman tight end, to Wyoming before taking the NDSU job. (Playing with his younger brother also proved to be a perk of staying.)
Polasek recalled Grey Zabel being “emotional” as he considered the decision, and he delivered Polasek the news on his way to hunting. “You are the first big commit,” Polasek said he told him.
While NDSU lost star receiver and all-purpose yards leader Eli Green to Iowa State, the core roster held strong with the belief that the players could end the championship drought and achieve their goals at NDSU.
For Zabel, the path to the NFL has been paved by those before him, as the school had three consecutive tackles picked in the draft from 2021-23.
“Anything you can do, you can do through NDSU,” he said. “Talking to some of the guys who’ve gone through that process. At the end of the day, it was a pretty easy decision for me to stay.”
Zabel connects with Polasek’s blue-collar sensibilities, as Polasek worked part-time as a lumberjack to earn money while a Division III coach. When Craig Bohl called him to work at NDSU in 2006, he’d just walked out of the woods after a full day of chopping wood.
Those sensibilities have guided Polasek, who helped NDSU build a championship culture as an assistant. He’s banking on those tenets emerging against Colorado and beyond.
“Absolutely and unequivocally, having the most experienced and cohesive teams matters,” he said. “It matters. We just can’t bank on cohesiveness. But man if it doesn’t mean something, we should all go in the portal and see what we can do.”