Week 1 screening: Jacks head to Mizzou for tough opener
Here are some notes and thoughts in advance of Week 1 of the South Dakota State football season. I'll have live coverage from Mizzou on Saturday afternoon starting around 1:30 p.m.:
Missouri has sold out of student season tickets for home football game, pushing the total number of season tickets out into the 44,000 range. The school record is 46,786 set in 2012.
The SDSU ticket office estimates that about 500 Jacks fans will be at Faurot Field. As of January, the school had 600 alumni living in Missouri.
Meanwhile, Mizzou doesn't have anybody from South Dakota, but it does have a few faces that will be familiar to the Jacks. Both teams have players from Blue Springs South High and Rock Bridge High in Missouri plus Harlan, Iowa and Burnsville, Minn. Also, Tigers junior OL Connor McGovern is from Fargo and had a scholarship offer from SDSU coming out of Shanley HIgh School.
For what it's worth, Tigers coach Gary Pinkel got a $300K raise during the offseason. That pushed his annual salary to $3.1 million. Jacks boss John Stiegelmeier makes $190,000.
Missouri is paying SDSU $350K for playing this game.
In actual football news, the Jacks appeared to be healthier this week than they were the last as several players returned to action including OL Travis Zimmerman, FB Chad Strehlow, CB Freeman Simmons, CB Ezekiel Herndon. However, Stiegelmeier said that two offensive reserves are out for Saturday: WR Brandon Andrews and RB Isaac Rodriguez.
The defensive reserves must be making strides because two of them – DE Kevin Klocek and S Nick Mears – have earned the gray practice jerseys given to high-performing defensive players.
The Jacks will travel 67 players this week, seven more than is allowed for conference games. The team left Brookings on Thursday evening after practice, bussed to Omaha – the hometown of several players – to spend the night and will finish the trip to Columbia today.
Of those 67, some 22 have never played a down for SDSU. Meanwhile, seven players will be making their first career starts.
The forecast from Weather.com indicates that it'll rain through 1 p.m. The expected temp at 2 p.m. is 84 with winds at 7 mph and 63-percent humidity. The real feel during the course of the game is in the 90 range.
Repeating a nugget from this week's live chat, SDSU deputy athletic director Leon Costello said that the turf surface at the new Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium in Brookings won't be ready until the 2016 season. Previously, there was a thought that component might be done in time for 2015.
Terry Vandrovec also posts regular updates on his Twitter page.