By Tanner Castora
Originally published
Jan. 9, 2025 on Medium
Republished in the True Dakotan with permission from the author
From piecing together a staff, to endless phone calls and texts with current players, recruits and ‘portalers’, new South Dakota State Head Coach Dan Jackson has been a busy man this past week and a half.
But he hasn’t been the only one.
After being hit with a fair share of shock that the entire coaching staff would be leaving Brookings for Pullman, SDSU junior offensive tackle Quinten Christensen (Wessington Springs native) got on the phone with SDSU senior QB Chase Mason (Hurley native).
“Right away it seemed like everyone was in on leaving because so many people were being asked to go with, and the coaches made it seem like it was a way better option than staying,” Mason explained.
“When Chase and I got on the phone we were both like, well, we don’t want to leave SDSU, but I guess we will if we’re going to turn into Murray State,” Christensen said. “But then we kept talking and said if we could start to get a good number of guys to stay, we would be just fine.”
They continued to hear pitches from their now former coaches on why Washington State would be a better home moving forward, but their minds had been made up.
“What pissed me off about all this is that myself and multiple other guys on our team were getting tampered with, having sixfigure deals thrown at us and we’d tell our coaches about it, and they would say, ‘no, stay at SDSU, be loyal to the program, it’s not about the money,’” Christensen stated. “But the same ones telling you to stay, now that they’ve left for more money, now all of that is out of the window and they’re telling you to leave. I’m sure in terms of their side of things, they’re thinking this is how everyone’s doing it, so we need to do it too — but it’s still ridiculous.”
“The more I thought about it, something just didn’t feel right, something just didn’t sit right with me,” Mason stated. “And the more I thought about it, there was more unknown going to a whole new place than staying here. Just because it’s the same coaches, doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same kind of team and culture.”
Mason and Christensen began making phone call after phone call to Jackrabbit teammates. “I felt like a recruiting coordinator for a few days,” Mason began with a bit of a laugh. “Those days honestly felt more like weeks with how constant I was on my phone.”
“I’d call up a teammate, tell them to not make a rash decision, SDSU isn’t going anywhere, talk to them for about 20 minutes, then call the next guy,” Christensen added, “and it kind of felt like a domino effect.”
Current Jackrabbits Greyton Gannon, Jalen Lee and Joe Ollman soon hopped on board, and so too did former players. “Ryan McKnight and other guys from the JFPA, Mason (McCormick), Dyshawn (Gales), Jason Freeman, Garret (Greenfield), all those guys were bought in on trying to keep guys here just as much as we were because the program is bigger than just us, it’s about everyone,” Christensen remarked.
Some will say it’s a dogeat- dog world, that this is the way of college football in 2025. Others will speak with disappointment towards the way things have been handled by the former staff since their departure.
Yet whatever notion you lean towards, one cannot dispute the deep irony of the situation: Jimmy Rogers, the lead man attempting to gut and deteriorate the current roster, is a legendary Jackrabbit player himself.
“Once I made up my mind that it wasn’t the right thing to leave and we started rallying the troops, it kind of came to a point where it was us vs them,” Mason said.
And the rallying of troops extended to the incoming Jackrabbits as well.
“I was telling recruits to be patient and stay together,” Mason stated. “I was talking to recruits that I have never even met in person, letting them know they could reach out to me if they had any questions and several of them did.”
Christensen too spoke with a number of high school seniors.
“I was basically just telling them everything that was going on and was telling them to relay my message to other recruits,” the offensive tackle explained. “There was a couple of families and parents in the background listening and I could tell it helped them feel a bit better about the situation.”
As more players have decided on their future over the past week, the constant calls and texts for Mason and Christensen have slowed down a bit.
And that’s probably a good thing for the Jackrabbit starting left tackle.
Coming into the season with a herniated disk, the 6’5 300-pounder would tear his groin in the Jackrabbits week one matchup this past year against Oklahoma State. Christensen turned down the idea of having surgery, which would have sidelined him until at least the playoffs.
He instead opted to play through the pain, accepting a round of injections from a 7-inch needle. Yet after the second round of injections proved to no longer be effective, he pushed through anyways.
In the regular season finale vs Missouri State, he broke a bone in his big left toe, the foot he used most to push off of.
As the aches and discomfort in different areas of his body added up, perhaps the most excruciating pain stemmed from his core.
Throughout the season it was believed Christensen was dealing with a hernia — In actuality, it was recently discovered that he had torn his abdomen on both sides where it is supposed to be connected to the pubic bone.
Despite all this, the home-grown warrior started all 15 games this past season for the Yellow and Blue.
In the coming days he’ll undergo surgery.
Christensen and Mason have been in close contact with Dan Jackson, as their latest head coach, a former Jackrabbit player himself, is set to be introduced to the media and public on Friday, January 10.
“Brookings just meant way too much to me to leave,” Mason said. “And I think the guys that chose to stay, I feel like we’re going to get even closer.”
“All those guys 20 years ago who watched film in the trailers with spiders crawling on their legs and rats running around, and Stig staying here for 30 years and building this place up from almost ground zero, just to throw it all away? No way,” Christensen remarked.
“They built it up and it’s our job to keep it that way and grow it even more.”
Editor’s note: Christensen underwent surgery to repair a core injury, also called a sports hernia, on January 9, 2025 at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The procedure, described by his mom Christina as “reattaching his six-pack to his pelvis,” went very well and Christensen traveled back to South Dakota the day following surgery. He is currently following rehabilitation protocol and progressing faster than expected.