South Dakota State, the only program featuring both basketball and livestock auctions

Sometimes I’m sitting courtside at a women’s college basketball game, and just when I think life can’t get any better, I consider how James Naismith’s brainchild prominently features the products of cattle farming while leaving the other livestock of our great heartland unappreciated. Thankfully, South Dakota State is here to help, seamlessly integrating swine and sheep into the academic-athletic experience.

Every program has promotions for their many home games, most of which are variations on the same themes: student appreciation night, teacher appreciation night, Pink Game, Women and Girls in Sports Day, etc. And then there’s the Jackrabbits, who have been hosting the Pork Classic and Lamb Bonanza since 2019.¹

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Both events feature cuisine from each animal, from barbecue to sliders, halftime auctions and special items. In the case of the Pork Classic, there is a multi-hour hot-off-the-grill barbecue meal, pork bundles, and a pig that’s displayed around the floor at halftime and auctioned off.² For the Lamb Bonanza, there are snacks, special scarves and blankets, and a halftime auction of lamb pelts with different school logos.

The auctions are used to fund scholarships in the South Dakota State animal science and athletic departments,³ but there is a powerful gamesmanship angle to be had here, too. Consider a game against the Arkansas Razorbacks, whose mascot is a kind of swine, in which the halftime show features a hog tractored around the arena, auctioned off, then taken away to be slaughtered, and how intimidating that could be to the visiting team. Or if the Colorado State, VCU, Rhode Island or Fordham Rams — or, if you really want to stretch it, North Carolina, whose mascot is Rameses the ram — had to endure a pregame showcase of lamb sliders and lamb spread crackers before an intermission auction of lamb pelts, since both the ram and lamb are a type of sheep.

These are also attractive affairs for prospective future transfers, because who wouldn’t be tempted by a fresh barbecue or those lamb hors d’oeuvres. Sure, a bunch of SEC universities have waterfalls in their facilities, but man, South Dakota State’s snacks sound scrumptious.

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Unfortunately for the Jacks, there are no Summit League teams with mascots that could be taken advantage of with this foolproof strategy. Though they probably should’ve tried it for the 2020 home side of the South Dakota Showdown Series, when Chloe Lamb dropped 22 points on 13 shots to lead a Coyote win in Brookings, S.D.

Regardless, the series seem to be working well for South Dakota State: the Jackrabbits are a combined 6-0 in their Pork Classic and Lamb Bonanza games.

More programs need to embrace this food industry presentation of local products. Why doesn’t Boise State have a Spud Day? UVM’s “Vermont Night” features samples from Cabot, but the Catamounts ought to lean into the cheese even more (mostly because I love cheese and would greatly appreciate a Cheese Night.) Columbia could even adopt its own Pork Classic, honoring both the decades when thousands of pigs roamed the land its Morningside Heights campus currently occupies, and the smell emanating from that time this season when the Lions hosted FGCU, in Karl Smesko’s final collegiate game, and combined for 31 points in the first half.

1. The men’s team has been hosting both for far longer ↩︎
2. Talk about a “live auction!” ↩︎
3. An especially important endeavor, given that the South Dakota State University Department of Dairy and Food Science (claims to have) invented cookies and cream ice cream. ↩︎