The Legend of Tim Polasek: From logger to leading North Dakota State into FBS

NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...

It was 5 p.m. on a Friday back in 2006, 10 degrees below zero, and Tim Polasek was just getting off work when his old yellow Nokia cell phone rang.

The screen barely worked, though well enough for a few games of Snake, and Polasek had just finished another day at his logging job, operating a skid steer and hauling trees out to the landing.

On the other end of the phone was North Dakota State head coach Craig Bohl. That call would change the course of Polasek’s life. Bohl wanted Polasek to come to Fargo to interview for a job. There was just one problem: Polasek needed to find a way to pay for the trip.

So he sold his TaylorMade driver.

The superintendent at the Division III school where Polasek was coaching knew he was struggling to find the money to make the trip and bought the driver from him, giving Polasek the cash he needed. He would eventually send the club back.

Polasek made it to Fargo on Monday. He got the job.

“And the rest is history,” Polasek said.

Except the history of Tim Polasek is far more interesting than that simple phrase lets on.

Before he became the head coach at one of the most decorated programs in college football, Polasek’s path included logging in subzero temperatures, working third shift in a 130-degree steel mill and earning about $24 per hour during his first four years coaching football.

It is a journey built on doing hard things.

“There are people out there doing hard things,” Polasek said. “It really makes you appreciate the opportunity we get to coach football, at least until somebody tells you you’re not good enough.”

Those jobs also gave a young coach plenty of incentive to make sure no one ever had reason to tell him that.

Polasek grew up a small-town kid, raised by a single mother, and watched relatives build careers in steel mills, sometimes working there for more than three decades before retirement. He knew firsthand what those jobs demanded.

The steel mill, he said, might have taught him even more than logging.

“I worked third shift, in 130 degrees,” Polasek said. “Obviously, that helped me pay for college, but the life lessons that I learned — or didn’t want to learn much more about — really provided motivation to stay the course and to believe in football.”

That belief has paid off.

Now, the coach who once had to sell a golf club just to get himself to Fargo is leading North Dakota State into the biggest transition in the history of Bison football.

NDSU officially joined the Mountain West this summer as a football-only member, making the jump from the FCS to the FBS after becoming the defining dynasty of the lower subdivision. The Bison won 10 FCS national championships beginning in 2011, including the 2024 title in Polasek’s first season as head coach.

Now there is another mountain to climb — literally and figuratively. And perhaps no coach is better suited for the challenge.

A foundation built on the basics

Polasek’s football education includes stops with two coaches who helped shape not only his career but his philosophy: Craig Bohl and Kirk Ferentz.

From Ferentz, Polasek took an appreciation for the things that rarely make highlight reels.

“Being better at the basics and valuing fundamentals,” Polasek said. “Playing good, tough, clean football gives you a chance.”

From Bohl came lessons in evaluation, recruiting and resilience. Polasek still marvels at Bohl’s ability to command a room without saying much, but perhaps the most lasting influence came in recruiting.

“Your eyes are your eyes in the recruiting world,” Polasek recalled of Bohl’s philosophy. “Don’t think you can’t out-evaluate people, it takes time and effort.”

That approach matters at North Dakota State.

For years, the Bison have built championship rosters without the recruiting rankings or resources of college football’s traditional powers. They identified players who fit their program, developed them and won with them. The conference may be changing, but Polasek doesn’t appear particularly interested in changing the DNA that got NDSU there. His own coaching staff reflects it.

“I do like a guy that’s traveled up the food chain a little bit,” Polasek said. “I think they’ve had jobs that weren’t real sexy.”

He knows those jobs well.

At the Division III level, coaches stuffed recruiting envelopes, helped with laundry and handled whatever else needed to be done. At UW-Stevens Point, Polasek remembers selling old Jacksonville Jaguars cleats and t-shirts at a rummage sale to raise money for wood they wanted to put in the locker room. Those experiences matter to him.

“I like that path,” he said.

The Bison aren’t coming to the FBS quietly

NDSU’s first FBS season shouldn’t be viewed simply as a year to acclimate. The Bison enter the Mountain West with legitimate expectations.

Polasek is 26-3 through his first two seasons, and NDSU brings four Preseason All-Mountain West selections into its new league, including preseason Special Teams Player of the Year Jackson Williams and two-time FCS All-American offensive lineman Griffin Empey.

Senior quarterback Nathan Hayes takes over for Cole Payton, while junior running back DJ Scott should assume a larger role in an offense that averaged more than 40 points and 450 yards per game last season. The Bison must replace Payton, 1,000-yard rusher Barika Kpeenu, and their top two receivers, but doubting North Dakota State because of what it lost has rarely been a profitable exercise.

The level of competition is changing, but the schedule provides an opportunity for immediate success. NDSU opens at home against Jacksonville State before its first Mountain West test at Air Force. With no Power Four opponent on the schedule, nine wins feels attainable, 10 wouldn’t be shocking, and a run at the Mountain West championship shouldn’t be dismissed as a Cinderella scenario.

“I’m just not quitting on you today”

For all the stories about Polasek’s toughness, some of the most revealing moments from his career aren’t really about him at all. Ask him about Iowa State offensive coordinator Tyler Roehl, who played for Polasek at North Dakota State, and the coach lights up.

“Tyler is for sure one of the guys that I would put in the top five to eight football players I’ve ever been around,” Polasek said.

The company he put Roehl in included Jack Campbell and Tyler Linderbaum. Roehl could catch. He was explosive. He could play fullback or become a featured running back. But what Polasek remembers most is how fiercely he competed.

One game against Minnesota still sticks with him. Roehl had fumbled the ball twice and Polasek’s natural instinct would normally have been to make a change. Instead, he told his player something different.

“I’m just not quitting on you today,” Polasek recalled telling him. “It doesn’t matter.”

Roehl responded by making play after play. Polasek remembers Roehl’s mother later telling him that decision made the difference. Roehl ultimately earned an ESPN helmet sticker for his performance.

It’s a small story from years ago that feels particularly appropriate now. North Dakota State is stepping into a world with bigger budgets, more scholarships and a transfer portal moving at full speed. There will inevitably be moments when the Bison get punched in the mouth. The question is what happens next.

Polasek has spent most of his life answering that one.

Outwit. Outplay. Outlast.

Ask the players who spend every day around Polasek and apparently, they already know how this story ends.

At Mountain West Media Days, North Dakota State quarterback Nathan Hayes was asked how far his head coach would make it on Survivor. The senior didn’t hesitate.

“He worked his way up in Fargo, so he knows how to put his head down and work,” Hayes said. “He was in Wyoming, so I think he has a lot of lay-of-the-land skills, so yeah, I think he would be good.”

Then Hayes learned his coach had actually worked as a logger.

“Okay, well then, he can make a fire,” Hayes exclaimed. “He’s winning it.”

There is just one problem. Polasek isn’t nearly as confident about his fire-making abilities.

“Maybe,” he said when presented with his players’ prediction. “Building alliances, maybe. But I don’t know that I could figure out the fire stuff.”

He paused.

“I would hang in there and fight the good fight, though,” Polasek said.

And, for the record, he loves Survivor. So maybe Hayes is onto something.

Because, from a freezing logging operation and a yellow Nokia with a barely functioning screen, to selling a golf club for gas money, to the Fargodome and 10 national championship banners, the story of Tim Polasek has largely been about the same thing.

Put your head down. Do the hard things. Stay in the fight. And never count yourself out.

North Dakota State is about to find out how well that formula travels to the FBS this year.

More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos