He's back: Mark Gronowski officially announces he'll return to South Dakota State football team

Apr. 30—BROOKINGS — Take a deep breath, Jackrabbit fans. Your MVP quarterback is returning for another year.

Mark Gronowski, the 2023 winner of the Walter Payton Award winner as the FCS player of the year, made it official on Tuesday night with a social media post indicating he'll be staying in Brookings for the 2024 season.

The senior quarterback from Naperville, Ill., posted a screenshot of Michael Jordan's press release announcing his return to basketball in 1995 (several years before Gronowski was born, by the way), one that famously consisted of two simple words: "I'm back."

Gronowski captioned the pic with his own words: "Back to back to...."

So yes, after a few months of low-key drama about whether a power conference team might poach Gronowski with NIL money, the Jackrabbit quarterback quelled those fears and will return to the team seeking a third consecutive FCS title.

All Gronowski has done so far in his career is lead SDSU to the FCS national championship game in all three seasons that he's been the starter (2020/21, 2022 and 2023; he missed the 2021 season with an injury), winning the last two. Officially, Gronowski still has two years of eligibility remaining, as he can use a redshirt for the 2021 season and still has not taken advantage of the COVID year afforded to all players who missed the 2020 season due to the pandemic.

So that means Gronowski and the Jacks could find themselves going through this process all over again next year, but that's a bridge both sides will cross when they get to it.

In the present, the Jacks got back a huge, huge piece in their efforts to win a third straight championship. Gronowski is 29-1 as a starter over the last two seasons, with the only loss coming to the Iowa Hawkeyes.

He threw for 3,058 yards and 29 touchdown passes last year, and in his three years has completed 65 percent of his throws for 7,590 yards and 70 touchdowns with just 13 interceptions, while rushing for a total of 1,387 yards and 27 touchdowns.

Given Gronowski is from the Chicago area, when SDSU offensive coordinator Zach Lujan was hired for the same job at Northwestern, speculation immediately took off that Gronowski and Lujan would join forces for the Big Ten's Wildcats.

Whatever offers were made, they ultimately weren't enough to sway Gronowski away from the Jackrabbits, who recently launched their own collective to create NIL opportunities for players and give them a fighting chance against potential power conference poachers.

Now SDSU fans can rest easy knowing Gronowski will be under center when the Jacks put their 29-game winning streak on the line in the 2024 season opener at Oklahoma State on Aug. 31.