​Jul. 14—SIOUX FALLS — The college football season kicked off in a way on Tuesday, with the Missouri Valley Football Conference holding its annual Media Day event at the Sanford Pentagon.Both the University of South Dakota and South Dakota State University programs were represented. Here’s a sampling of what they said in interviews with Midwest Sports Plus. To see full interviews with all nine teams,AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementvisit the livestream replay on our website.SDSU quarterback Chase Mason on playing out his senior season at SDSU: “I’m just super excited to play a season with the guys we have. I love the senior class that we have this year. We’ve got a great group of guys and obviously nobody wants to get hurt, but injuries are going to happen. I think my job for this year is getting guys prepared that, maybe last year, there weren’t as many guys prepared when injuries happened. … We know how high our ceiling can be and we have the most talented team that we could ever want and coach (Dan) Jackson has done a great job recruiting. I feel like the job this summer is to kind of raise that floor up. When injuries happen and things happen in the season like they are going to, you can’t go around that. It’s those guys that need to step up. There’s going to be guys on the team that need to step up this year. That’s what the summer is for.”SDSU coach Dan Jackson on the status of the conference after North Dakota State departed: “Look at the talent and the coaching and the depth of our conference. In a lot of ways, I think this is the best conference, one of the best in the country, certainly one of the best in our region. I’m just grateful to be playing in this conference and have an opportunity to win a national title. That’s something that I was not able to do as an assistant. These guys have won, but I know they want one for themselves, leading the team, too. It’s a lot of fun and it’s motivating to be able to play for a national title.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSDSU defensive lineman Logan Green on preparing for a new season: “You just have to take it day by day, every workout and every run. Day by day and making sure you are doing what you got to do so that when you get to the season, you are fully prepared. That’s the thing we’ve been focused on all summer, making sure when the day does come, we are prepared for the season because we have to be better than we were last year and we will be.”Mason on being the league’s preseason favorite: “It’s something you can look at and it’s cool to have the respect from people in the conference. That’s as far as it goes for me. At the end of the day, it gets decided on the field.”USD coach Matt Vitzthum on taking over a program with a strong record of recent success: “I think this is such a credit to these guys for the success that we’ve kind of built and sustained over the past three or four seasons. It isn’t about me. It isn’t about the new coach. It isn’t about my quarterb