Gene Chizik has a message for anyone not taking tonight’s opener against Football Championship Subdivision opponent South Dakota State seriously — “Northern Iowa.”

The ISU football team opened their then-first year coach’s campaign last season with a pair of losses, one to MAC opponent Kent State, and the other to in-state rival and Football Championship Subdivision opponent UNI. This year’s schedule lines up similarly, starting with South Dakota State, playing their first game as members of the newly formed Missouri Valley Football Conference.

This year is different, players insist.

“We’re trying to make it loose… we’re confident and we’re ready to go,” backup quarterback Phillip Bates said. “When we get out there on Thursday, this is a new team, a new identity, fresh faces. We’re going to make it happen.”

For starters, the Cyclones must get off to a better start than their 0-2 record last year. What could make this year different, says senior lineman Doug Dedrick, was having a year to get used to a new coaching staff.

“We had another whole year for everyone to bond together — everybody has jelled a little more,” Dedrick said.

How much different this team is will be partially revealed tonight when they play a Jackrabbits team that will be jacked up to play their first game against a Division I FBS opponent since 1984. South Dakota State is ranked No. 20 in the FCS Coaches’ Poll to begin the season, and finished 2007 with a 7-4 record and Great West Football Conference Championship.

South Dakota State has only one player on the MVFC preseason all-conference team — offensive lineman Kevin Robling — but is led by a senior quarterback. The Jackrabbits also return six starters to a defense that finished third in total yards and first in scoring in the conference in 2007.

It may seem easy to look past a lower division opponent in week one, but the Cyclones are not having any part of it.

“We’re definitely not overlooking anyone at all. There’s no difference between this or Iowa or Nebraska,” Dedrick said.

Added starting quarterback Austen Arnaud, “You look at our record last year, and we were 3-9. Coach Chizik talks about every game, you’ve got to execute every rep. We can’t overlook anybody, any play, any situation.”

Arnaud and Bates have received a lot of press for competing to be starting quarterback, but there are position battles going on all over the team.

“If a new guy and an old guy are at the same level, they are definitely going to play the new guy,” Arnaud said. Seven underclassmen are slated to start against the Jackrabbits with several more in key backup positions.

That makes getting off to a good start all the more important.

“This year, especially with all the young guys we have, we need to find confidence, and we need to find that swagger early,” Arnaud said.

Iowa State appeared to have that swagger late last year, winning their final two games in Jack Trice Stadium against Kansas State and Colorado. But, as Arnaud was quick to point out, the Cyclones were “dominated” in the final game of the season at Orange Bowl Champion Kansas.

The two wins, he said, could still carry over. And a nationally televised Jack Trice Stadium crowd hopes they will, starting tonight.