The Coyotes got their name from an 1863 horse race at Fort Randall, where a Dakota horse beat a mount from Iowa and a soldier said it ran like a coyote. Mark Twain, writing a decade later, called the animal a living, breathing allegory of Want, always hungry. No school chooses a jackrabbit or a coyote because it looks unbeatable. You choose them because they survive. And in the version of this story South Dakota tells, there is no beep beep and no punchline at the coyote’s expense. Last November the coyote caught something.
South Dakota and South Dakota State have played 118 times since 1889. They are the two largest public universities in South Dakota, one in Vermillion and one in Brookings, and they will meet for the 119th time on October 31, 2026. Halloween, 5:00 PM at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium in Brookings, on ESPN Networks. Kickoff lands right about when the trick or treating starts, which means a lot of South Dakota parents are choosing between the doorbell and the fourth quarter.
At the FCS level the economics are simple. The money that funds athletes here is not conference distribution money. It is fan money. Which makes this rivalry, two fan bases who genuinely care, in a state small enough that everyone knows which side you are on, about as clean an argument for fan funded NIL as college sports produces.
The matchup has its own Week 9 game page, and every athlete in it is on RallyFuel.
Here is the primer, and then the part that actually matters.
It started in 1889, and it barely counted as a football game
The first meeting ended 6 to 6 in Sioux Falls, back when touchdowns were worth four points and conversions were worth two. It was not even a standalone event. It was one piece of a two day intercollegiate slate that also included baseball, a track meet, and an oratorical contest. The SDSU squad spent two days traveling by horse to get there.
The series then went quiet for a decade. When it resumed in 1900, Vermillion owned it. Ten straight wins before SDSU broke through in 1919, including the largest margin in series history: USD 73, SDSU 6 in 1912.
The eight year silence
The only real interruption in the modern era was not about bad blood. SDSU moved up to Division I first. USD stayed in the Division II North Central Conference and followed later. From 2004 through 2011 the two programs simply did not play football.
The head start showed. Stack SDSU’s last three Division II wins onto the first seven meetings after the 2012 restart and you get ten straight wins from 2001 to 2018, the longest run by either side in 137 years.
When the series returned to Brookings in November 2012, more than 15,000 people came out to watch the Jackrabbits win 31 to 8. Some of the old edge was still around, in the stands and on the shirts. But the day itself was tailgating, both marching bands chatting on the sideline, and Jacks fans applauding The Sound of USD at halftime.
The play that still haunts Brookings
Every rivalry needs one play people can name in four words. This one has The Hail Mary.
DakotaDome, November 2021. SDSU had erased a four point deficit on a Pierre Strong touchdown run, gotten a fourth down stop, and picked up the first down that should have ended it. They could not drain the clock. Rather than punt, they had Chris Oladokun heave a deep ball to burn the last seconds.
Review put one second back on the board.
Carson Camp’s throw got batted into the air and came down in Jeremiah Webb’s hands with zeroes showing. USD 23, SDSU 20. A result that pushed the Coyotes into the playoffs and probably cost the Jackrabbits a seed.
Where the series stands going into Halloween
The all time ledger reads SDSU 58 wins, 53 losses, 7 ties. The SDSU record book lists it as 33, 24 and 1, because it starts counting at the 1950 meeting. Both numbers are accurate. They just measure different eras.
The recent run:
- 2022, Brookings. SDSU 28, USD 3, with the Jacks ranked second in the country.
- 2023, Vermillion. SDSU 37, USD 3, with the Jacks ranked first. The biggest Jackrabbit margin of the Division I era.
- 2024, Brookings. SDSU 20, USD 17 in overtime. The kind of game that gets replayed all offseason by whoever lost it.
- 2025, Vermillion. USD 24, SDSU 17, with the Coyotes ranked 22nd. Tied at 17 going into the second half.
SDSU opens 2026 third in the preseason media poll, has back to back FCS national championships from 2022 and 2023 on the wall, and just watched Adam Vinatieri get enshrined in Canton. USD arrives holding the trophy. And basketball already hinted at a shift. The Coyotes swept the men’s series last winter, winning by a point in Brookings before taking the rematch at home, 75 to 70.
The NIL part
In the FCS there is no enormous media rights check backfilling the roster. A Jackrabbit running back and a Coyote quarterback build their name, image and likeness value through a fan base that is regional, loyal, and small enough that individual support is visible in the total.
Both schools play in the Missouri Valley Football Conference, which carries 1,274 verified NIL athletes on RallyFuel, with 90 percent of every deal going straight to the athlete.
USD athletic director David Herbster once described these two fan bases as people who know each other and work together all year, right up until the one day where you’re either red or you’re blue. That is not a bad description of what fan funded NIL looks like at this level. Support follows loyalty, and at two schools this size, it comes from people who show up all year rather than from a broadcast contract.
Three things to watch on Halloween night
- Whether 2025 was a turn or a blip. SDSU at number three says the Jacks are not rebuilding. USD winning in Vermillion says they do not need them to be.
- The venue gap. Dykhouse seats 19,340 and hosts this one. The DakotaDome seats about 9,100 and is the only domed football stadium in the state. Home field means something structurally different depending on the year.
- The date. Since the 2012 restart this game has traditionally been played in the last week of the season in November, which often meant league titles and playoff seeding were decided by it. A Week 9 slot changes that. There is football left afterward for whoever loses.
Which, historically, has never made either fan base feel any better about it. Brookings has the titles and the bigger building. Vermillion has the last word, for now. That is the whole appeal.
The game page for South Dakota State vs South Dakota is open now, and athletes from both rosters are on RallyFuel year round.
