text: BISON PRIDE IS WORLDWIDE - Features - NDSU Spectrum Top College News Subscribe to the Newsletter
  Bailey Benson taught her friends in Antsirabe, Madagascar how to put up the Bison horns.
  NDSU alumnus and CW2 Ken Paulus and SSG Nate Doll, of Detachment 42 of the N.D. National Guard, at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.
  Matthew Hagen in Orenburg, Russia. The monument behind him marks the dividing line between Europe and Asia.
  Justin Cave at the Great Wall of China.
  Former NDSU Student Body Vice President Aaron T. Schwengler from his tour of duty in Iraq.
  Aubrey Bot and Stephanie Jacobson fly the Bison flag at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. The mountain is the tallest in Africa and is also the highest freestanding mountain in the world.
  orth Dakota State University is officially universal. Thanks to the "North Dakota State Bison" Facebook page, Bison pride can be seen at iconic locations, not only across the United States, but also from all ends of the earth.
  Ever since ESPN's "College GameDay" came to downtown Fargo, on Sept. 21, NDSU has been a part of what Director of Marketing Justin Swanson calls "a phenomena."
  Swanson, who is one of the administrators of the official NDSU Bison Facebook page, has received and posted hundreds of pictures of NDSU fans and alumni sporting their Bison clothes and gear in worldwide locations, such as the Great Wall of China and Africa's highest point in Tanzania.
  NDSU's official Facebook age for Bison Athletics—which has grown leaps and bounds over the last year, Swanson said—with almost 37,000 likes, has retained a mission to not only post content, such as press releases and game recaps, but to get fans involved in NDSU Athletics and have them show their Bison pride.
  Through ESPN's "College GameDay" and an outreach campaign during Homecoming, Bison fans were encouraged to send in their pictures of Bison pride, wherever they were in the world in hopes of having it posted online, and NDSU fans answered the call.
  "On the first day, four or five pictures came in and we started posting them," Swanson said, "and all of a sudden, pictures started coming in by the hundreds from many different countries on the map and every state in the union, people showing their Bison pride somewhere."
  Swanson said the significance of this showing of Bison pride is monumental since it reveals the worldwide popularity NDSU has gained being a top-100 research university, along with the heightened success Bison football has had in recent years.
  "Our fans are great across the board, the way they travel, they way there support us," Swanson said, "but when you get pictures of fans kayaking on the Nile River giving the Bison horns or sitting on the border of Europe and Asia staying up until one in the morning to watch the Bison game on their computer, it's a really worldwide phenomena that there are Bison fans everywhere."
  The pictures from around the world are not the only displays of the wide-reaching reputation NDSU has recently received. When NDSU plays on the road, when NDSU administrators go to conferences, when Bison fans are traveling across the country, when they walk through airports wearing Bison clothes, people recognize and are intrigued or even respond by throwing their horns up and saying, "Go Bison!"
  Bison pride is virtually everywhere with all ages and even different species, Swanson said.
  "We must have gotten 200 pictures of little babies, from a day old to two months old, wearing Bison gear, and we've got 50 to 100 pictures of dogs wearing Bison doggie shirts," he said.
  The NDSU Facebook page even had a picture sent in of a bunny wearing a Bison shirt. So it's official, Bison pride is worldwide.