Polasek's rise through the ranks to Mountain West rookie North Dakota St. was launched by hard labor

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — The effort and energy Tim Polasek has poured into North Dakota State's football program on the climb to the FBS can be easily sourced back to his rural roots.

As a small-college quarterback on summer and winter breaks, and later to supplement a meager income as he launched a career in coaching, Polasek worked grueling jobs as a logger in the woods of central Wisconsin and on the overnight shift at a steel mill near his tiny hometown of Iola.

Appreciation for the unglamourous work as a small-college assistant sure comes quick with that background.

“I learned a lot there: That could be you if you don't graduate college and pursue something,” said Polasek, who is 28-3 with the Bison since becoming head coach in 2024. “Seeing those tough jobs and other people having to execute that every day really always makes it an honor and a privilege to be the leader of this program.”

Having handily beaten Jacksonville State and Fordham in their first two games, the Bison will face one of their biggest tests as a first-year FBS team on Saturday night: Their Mountain West Conference opener at Air Force.

Though five of the strongest programs — Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State — departed this year to restore the Pac-12, the Mountain West restocked with UTEP and North Dakota State and Northern Illinois as football-only members to join holdovers Air Force, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, San Jose State, UNLV and Wyoming.

There's enough relative proximity to the league's geographic footprint and like-minded public institutions for NDSU to see a long-term home that now offers the chance — albeit an annual long shot — to make the College Football Playoff. The Bison won 10 national championships over two decades in the FCS after collecting eight national titles at lower levels.

“We weren’t going to go just to go,” athletic director Matt Larsen said. “It really had to be the right fit.”

Polasek was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Wyoming from 2021-23 under head coach Craig Bohl, his former boss at NDSU. Having spent four seasons as the offensive line coach at Iowa before that, Polasek took the job at Wyoming with an eye toward becoming a head coach himself.

“It was really critical for me to go to Iowa and Wyoming and not be one of the top two or three teams picked in the preseason every year and learn those hard lessons,” said Polasek, who turned 47 last month. “There was always chatter that NDSU would fit in the Mountain West.”

After becoming the all-time leading passer at Concordia University, an NCAA Division III school near Milwaukee, Polasek spent three years on staff at Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Then he got his first big break with a graduate assistant job under Bohl at North Dakota State, which was two seasons into a jump from Division II to the FCS.

He was put in charge of the running backs a year later, added tight ends to his responsibilities after three more seasons, and returned from a one-year stint at Northern Illinois in 2014 as NDSU's offensive coordinator and running backs coach under head coach Chris Klieman.

Then Polasek got a taste of Big Ten play at Iowa, learning the value of “being brilliant at the basics” under longtime head coach Kirk Ferentz before the jump to Wyoming.

“The second thing I learned from Coach Ferentz is if you treat people right you can cultivate an environment where it’s fun to show up to work,” Polasek said last month in his office at the Fargodome. “No matter if the portal or NIL and all this stuff exists or not, hey, let’s treat each other with respect. Everybody in the building should be able to dance to the music the way they want to dance to it.”

The upperclassmen on NDSU's roster were recruited by the previous staff under Matt Entz, who's now the head coach at Fresno State. Polasek's enthusiasm for and experience with the program was immediately palpable to those players.

“He’s just hard-nosed and he loves football and he knows the game and he’s a people person," said third-year wide receiver and kick returner Jackson Williams. "He’s going to take care of us, but at the same time he’s going to push us to our limits.”

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