The last Saturday in October at South Dakota State usually belongs to Hobo Day, the Jackrabbits' homecoming carnival of parade floats and blue-and-yellow pageantry. This year the calendar hands Brookings something different: a Halloween afternoon kickoff against the school the whole state measures itself against.
South Dakota and South Dakota State will meet at 3 p.m. on Oct. 31 at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium, with the game airing on ESPNU. The selection was made before the season as part of the Missouri Valley Football Conference's schedule.
What the network gets is a series with a longer memory than almost any in college football. South Dakota and South Dakota State first met in 1889, and the two have played 118 times. The Jackrabbits lead the all-time series 58-53-7. The Coyotes' 73-6 win in 1912 remains the most lopsided result in the series; SDSU's ten straight wins from 2001 to 2018 is the longest run either side has managed. The Coyotes won the most recent meeting, 24-17 in the DakotaDome on Nov. 8, 2025.
The two schools are the largest public universities in South Dakota — South Dakota State in Brookings, the University of South Dakota in Vermillion — and both compete in the Missouri Valley Football Conference at the FCS level. Their athletic departments also contest an all-sports competition, the Interstate Series, in which the schools accumulate points across more than 20 events each year. The football game is the loudest of them.
That the rivalry is this consequential this late in the season is partly a product of patience. South Dakota State announced its move to Division I athletics in 2003; South Dakota followed in 2006. The transition created the longest break in the series, and the two did not meet as conference rivals until both had settled into the MVFC. Since then the game has regularly carried conference-title and playoff implications, which is why athletic directors on both sides talk about it as something other than a ticket sale. "It's not transactional in nature and I think that's the beauty of this rivalry series," SDSU director of athletics Justin Sell told KELOLAND News. "It's not buying a ticket just to come watch a game. It's literally getting fully into supporting your university and finding a passion for that."
This year's edition arrives with both programs near the top of the national picture. With under two weeks to go before kickoff, SDSU stood 6-2 overall and 3-1 in the Valley.
The venue itself is young by the standards of this rivalry. Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium opened in 2016 at a cost of about $65 million, with a listed capacity of 19,340 on an AstroTurf surface. It replaced Coughlin-Alumni Stadium, the Jackrabbits' long-time home, and it already holds a record crowd of 19,477, set on Oct. 25, 2025, against North Dakota State. The stadium also hosts Brookings High School football. Its namesake, Dana Dykhouse, is a South Dakota State alumnus and banking executive whose name is on the field where the Coyotes will try to win for the second straight year.
For the Coyotes, that is the subplot worth watching. USD's win in Vermillion last November snapped a streak and gave the program a rare upper hand in a series it has trailed for most of the modern era. Doing it again in Brookings would be a different kind of statement.
For everyone else, the appeal is simpler. A state that spends most of the year arguing about which shade of red is correct gets one Saturday when the argument is settled on the field, in the afternoon, on national television, with the season's standings still very much in flux. Tickets are required and available through South Dakota State athletics; the game will also stream on ESPN+ and air on the Jackrabbit Sports Network on radio.
Kickoff is set for 3 p.m. Central on Halloween at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium in Brookings.