North Dakota lands fourth in MVFC preseason poll, five teams earn votes
UND climbed to fourth in the MVFC poll, but 11 watch-list picks and three preseason All-America nods say the Hawks drew more respect than their slot suggests.
North Dakota landed fourth in the Missouri Valley Football Conference preseason poll with 211 points and two first-place votes, a spot that looks more like a challenge than a ceiling for the Fighting Hawks. South Dakota State topped the poll with 312 points and 28 first-place votes, Illinois State followed with 256 and three first-place votes, and Youngstown State was third with 235, while North Dakota finished ahead of South Dakota in a top five that all collected at least one first-place vote.
That split mattered. Five MVFC teams, South Dakota State, Illinois State, North Dakota, South Dakota and Southern Illinois, received at least one first-place vote, tying the conference record set in 1993, 2001 and 2008. In a league that has produced an FCS-best 14 national championships, the poll did not point to a runaway favorite so much as a crowded race in which the margin between contender and pretender is thin.
For UND, the move to fourth from seventh in last year’s preseason poll tracks with what happened after Eric Schmidt took over the program. Schmidt was hired on Dec. 8, 2024, and guided North Dakota to an 8-6 finish in 2025, including a 5-3 mark in MVFC play. The Fighting Hawks scored 461 points and allowed 278, averaging 32.93 points per game while giving up 19.86. That is the profile of a team that did more than survive the schedule; it played like a program that had already climbed into the league’s upper third.
The preseason honors only sharpen that case. North Dakota placed 11 players on the MVFC preseason watch list, a level of representation that suggests the respect is spread across the roster, not concentrated in one name. The Hawks also landed three players on the Stats Perform FCS Preseason All-America Team, with senior edge rusher Lance Rucker on the first team and senior offensive lineman Liam Becher and junior edge rusher Kaden Vig on the second team. Rucker added another line to his preseason resume with a spot on the Buck Buchanan Award watch list after posting 64 tackles, 11.5 sacks and four forced fumbles in 2025, breaking the UND single-season sack record while leading the MVFC in sacks.
The poll says North Dakota is not yet the league’s clear No. 2 threat. The watch list totals say it is very much in the conversation, and in a conference this deep, that distinction is what keeps a team in the title race.
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