NDSU Guides

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ESSAY BY JEFF KOLPACK

The perfect conclusion

It was during my 25th high school reunion when Christina Baker Kline left me with a thought about book writing that lasted. Conclusion, said the wife of Dave Kline, my classmate, and author of great reads like “Orphan Train.” You need a conclusion. All good books have a conclusion.

It would be almost 10 years later before the reality of what she meant hit home. The funny thing about writing “Horns Up: Inside the Greatest College Football Dynasty” was in retrospect, I almost screwed up the advice of one of America’s greatest authors. The fact there was a conclusion to this football book was in reality a stroke of luck.

Let me explain:

The process started in the fall of 2013 during the week of my mother’s funeral. During all that went on that week, my oldest brother from Seattle and a 1977 NDSU graduate, Bruce Kolpack, mentioned something about writing the sequel to dad’s book. That would be Ed Kolpack’s “Bison football: Three Decades of Excellence” that details the rise of NDSU football in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Although intrigued about writing some sort of book, and most writers probably feel the need at some point, I wasn’t feeling the wave of enthusiasm of doing something about NDSU’s rapid rise to success in Division I FCS football. But with the brothers (Dave the middle brother included) getting on board, I made the following pitch sometime before the 2013 playoffs began: if the Bison win four in a row, I’ll tackle the project citing a rare instance of a program winning four straight championships. It made for a decent book angle, I figured.

Everybody knew that 2013 team was loaded and a third-straight title was probably imminent. But four in a row? The Bison graduated a boatload of talent from that ’13 team including Brock Jensen, the all-time winningest quarterback in FCS history. In 2014, they would have a new quarterback in Carson Wentz and although he showed promise to those of us covering the team, he was still untested.

It wasn’t a great start to ’14, either, with a so-so game against Weber State where Wentz threw two very-at-fault interceptions. But the Bison put it into overdrive when it counted, especially in the playoffs, and found themselves in the title game against Illinois State. I knew what was in it for me personally sitting in the press box at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas: a win and the book project starts. A loss and and it’s shelved.

And when Tre Roberson went 58 yards for a touchdown with 1:38 left in the game, giving the Redbirds a 27-23 lead, the no vote was looking good. But Carson did what Carson does: he drove the Bison 78 yards in six plays and his five-yard touchdown run with 37 seconds remaining gave NDSU a fourth-straight FCS crown. Afterward, the brothers let me know about the bet. Fair enough.

So about a week after Frisco, I just started. No reading a book about how to write a book; no advice from accomplished authors; just go with it with the following promise to myself: do something every day, whether it was five minutes or 500 words, just do something.

So over the course of four to five months, I held to that edict with a self-imposed deadline of mid-July if I wanted to get it out before the start of the 2015 season. Most of the project was written in that time frame, but one issue remained: getting in touch with former head coach Craig Bohl.

Craig was the architect who designed and built the dynasty. Writing a book without his influence seemed incomplete, at the least. Now the head coach at Wyoming, trying to figure out how to get face to face was problematic, so much so that by July, and with no Craig, I decided to postpone the book until after the 2015 season.

In retrospect, it wasn’t complete anyway. There was no real concrete conclusion. Four straight college football titles is good, but it’s not unprecedented.

Five straight? Never been done.

And it wasn’t looking promising when Wentz hurt his wrist halfway through the 2015 season. If that injury derailed the Bison train, then the feeling was all of the work on the book up until then would go to waste.

Who puts out a book on FCS titles after not winning a title?

But Easton Stick went 8-0, Wentz returned to the lineup for the title game against Jacksonville State and the run of five straight was complete.

It was time to finish the project. With the hope that Christina Baker Kline would approve of the conclusion.

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