Coyotes

The Missouri Valley Football Conference title came in 2024, and with it a run to the semifinal of the NCAA Division I FCS playoffs. It was a single step short of the championship game, but it capped a season that stood apart from the rest of the program's history, most of which had been built in a different conference altogether.

Before the move to the Missouri Valley, South Dakota's championships belonged to the North Central Conference, and they came in bursts rather than a steady stream: titles in 1927, 1938 and 1939, again through the late 1940s and early 1950s, then a run across 1972 to 1974, one more in 1978, and a final one in 2005 before the conference dissolved.

The program itself traces back to 1889, long predating any of the conferences it has since called home. The team plays in red and white, colours that have carried through every era of that history without needing to change.

Home games are played at the DakotaDome in Vermillion, a dome that seats 9,100 and gives the team a fixed, enclosed arena rarely troubled by the weather that shapes so much of college football on the plains.