Thompson's Cash Danner flipped commitment to his dream school, NDSU. His post got 5.5 million views

Dec. 2—THOMPSON — Cash Danner was at home watching the Green Bay Packers on Nov. 23 when he realized his commitment post had surpassed one million views.

A couple of minutes later, it was up to two million.

In the days that followed, Danner's tweet reached 5.5 million views.

The Thompson senior had announced his commitment to North Dakota State the day prior on X, formerly Twitter. He was previously committed to St. Thomas.

NDSU offered Danner over a week before his official announcement. He held off on posting it, waiting to talk to both sides and to get a commitment graphic from the Bison.

Danner happened to unveil his decision the day of the NDSU-St. Thomas game.

The post was published at 3:03 p.m. At that point, the Bison were already beating the Tommies 21-0.

North Dakota State ended up crushing St. Thomas, 62-7.

Danner had received his graphic and discussed the decision with the programs. He was clear with the St. Thomas coaching staff from the start that NDSU was his dream school, and if he received an offer, he would likely take it.

On Saturday, he was just ready to put the decision out in the open.

But it didn't take long for the snarky quote tweets and replies to start rolling in.

"It was just really bad timing," Danner said. "I didn't think anything of it at all."

Mixed in with the typical "great decision" and "congratulations" replies were a host of college football fans and X users poking fun at the timing of the announcement.

"Man really saw the score and said 'yeah I pick them,'" read one reply.

"NDSU scared him into flipping his commitment," read another, punctuated by a series of laughing emojis.

The online reaction did little to dampen the excitement surrounding Danner's commitment, though.

"(My parents) thought it was funny," Danner said. "I have a lot of friends around the area that are big NDSU fans, and they've just been awesome, they've been so excited for me."

For Danner, the decision was the culmination of years of work, and one that he's dreamed of for some time.

"I'm super excited," Danner said. "I've always wanted to be part of NDSU. Just watching them since I was young, watching them win all those national championships. It's really been a dream of mine ever since I started to get traction around the recruiting world."

Danner is listed as a 6-foot-4, 225-pound linebacker on 247Sports.com. He earned a spot on the North Dakota Class A all-state second team for his excellent two-way play for Thompson this season.

Danner was also named the North Dakota breakout player of the year by PrepRedzone.com.

He racked up those accolades while playing with a broken hand over the latter half of the season.

"I just played through it," Danner said. "It was kind of a thing where I kind of knew something was wrong, I just didn't want to get it really checked out because I didn't want to miss time or have to get a cast or surgery."

Thompson went 5-5 this season and lost to Hillsboro-Central Valley in the first round of the playoffs.

NDSU recruited Danner to play tight end.

"They just told me they want a lengthier, but not a 6-7 kind of guy," Danner said. "Just a lengthier tight end that can move, that's physical, like with my defense and stuff, just playing both sides."