The gist
- Hornets 36, Beavers 30. Emporia State opened 2026 with a road win at Minot State on August 27 and sits 1-0.
- Boss cashed in. Linebacker Landon Boss was named MIAA Defensive Player of the Week on August 31 — his third straight conference weekly nod dating back to last season.
- Welch Stadium curveball. The east-side stands at home were closed to fans effective September 2, before ESU has played a home game.
- Pitt week. The Hornets are on the road again Saturday, September 5, at Pittsburg State.
A road win to open the 128th season
Emporia State opened its 128th season of football on the road and took care of Minot State 36-30 on Thursday, August 27, walking out of North Dakota 1-0. Per the athletics site, it was the Hornets' first road season-opener since 2021, when they beat Northeastern State 38-7 in Tahlequah.
Week 1 did not just deliver a W, either. It delivered a conference award, a curveball on the home schedule, and a rivalry game that arrived before anyone had time to breathe.
Boss cashes in — again
On August 31, the MIAA named ESU linebacker Landon Boss its first Defensive Player of the Week of the season. Per the athletic-department release, that's Boss's third straight MIAA weekly honor when you extend the timeline back into last season, and his fourth career.
Track that: Emporia State went 5-6 last year and its best defender is stacking conference hardware like nothing happened. He was on the D2football.com Elite 100 preseason list for a reason, and he cashed the very first week.
Meanwhile, at Welch Stadium
Real curveball landed September 2: the east-side stands at Francis G. Welch Stadium have been closed to fans effective immediately. ESU hadn't played a home game yet — Week 1 was in North Dakota — so this is the note that greeted the Hornets on the return trip home. The athletics site is the place to watch for a reopening date; none has been announced yet.
What people are saying
The season-opening win got the standard treatment from the athletics site's own game recap. Everyone else has already jumped ahead, because Pitt State is Saturday.
MIAA fans on d2football's MIAA board are splitting exactly the way you'd expect: Hornet loyalists confidently picking ESU, Pitt-leaning posters unwilling to give them the game but also unwilling to pretend they're confident. The most on-brand rivalry line of the thread — “Pitt sucks... but the bees suck more” — captures the mood. The name that keeps coming back around is Boss; an opposing-side poster called him “a rampaging beast” and openly wondered whether Pittsburg has any plan for him working over the middle.
The MIAA Pick 'Em thread for the week is even more telling: majority of posters have Pitt State winning at home, but not by much. Pitt is calling it a Family Day sellout.
Our take
Here's our read: 36-30 on the road, in North Dakota, on opening night is a real win — and the tape backed it up hard enough that the conference handed Boss another Defensive Player of the Week the very next Monday. Two years ago that scoreline would've felt like a shootout survival. This year it's the floor.
Hot take: the Welch Stadium east-stands closure is going to loom bigger than anyone wants to admit. Losing chunks of home capacity in a Kansas Division II program's rivalry-heavy stretch is not free, even if the noise around it stays polite.
Boss picking up a POTW in Week 1 is the tell. This isn't a program hoping to be competitive — it's one whose best player is already conference property.
Next up: at Pittsburg State, Saturday, September 5
No rest, no home debut yet, straight into rivalry week. Emporia State travels to Pittsburg State on Saturday, September 5, 2026 — the MIAA opener that d2football's board is treating as a referendum on both programs. Family Day crowd at Pitt, per the forum, and the picks are split enough that nobody's calling it a runaway.
If Boss shows up in Pittsburg the way he did in Minot, we like the Hornets to walk out 2-0. If Pitt figures out how to keep him away from the mesh point, this thing tightens fast — and if you'd rather back your read than yell about it, that's literally the game.