The Sicatoka

Jim, Can you change the color of this board from the pale blue to "Pantone 347"? If you don't understand, open the link I provided and read in the lower left corner.

No, no, no. McMahon grew 2 inches. Connelly grew 3!

I hope to graduate TO first grade some day.

bisonguy: I just don't expect anything new to come out tomorrow. I expect to hear most of the same hype. (That's not aimed at you but at Hallstrom's hype.) The situation really hasn't changed. What could either say? Do we expect the Big Sky to turn tail on their stated position? (They have a moratorium on new members.) I still believe if SDSU goes, so goes USD, and then UND has no choice but to follow. I've heard that Sac. St. wants to join the Big West when UC-Davis does. They're only 15 miles apart and could be travel partners. There are enough D-Is nearby in CA that I'm sure Wanless really doesn't like to have to shell out the travel bucks to Montana. I'm thinkin' he'd rather have to pay bus fare and not air fare.

You mean all of these rules? http://www.UND.edu/dept/our/logos/northdakota.pdf

We've been waiting how long? http://www.fightingsioux.com/sports/mhocke...RELEASE_ID=1400

Sockeye: I'm pretty sure 'jk' was just ribbin' Brian a bit. With this crowd, if it happens to you once, you're stuck with it forever. Now if had been one of them Gopher varmits saying it .... For example, Jason Notermann could bury every shot this season with five-holed, net-stretchin' solid twine slappers and yet we'd hear a yap about him and "p-ting" off the pipe all the time. (I'd probably be one of the guilty ones.) Hey, they all look like slappers over the glove from the dot on the score board and in the box score! We poke at 'em but love the hard-workin' muckers. Where else would a guy like Jim Archibald be remembered for 540 PIM and not a 154/75/69/144 career scoring line? (That includes a 37 goal senior season!)

Dropped passes or poorly thrown balls? Steve Hallstrom has hinted at the latter on his broadcasts. And UNC's seen the home of the Grizzlies already this year. FargoDome? Non-factor.

JBB: You make seven years of thrashing sound like something to look forward to. Imagine your life feeling the way you did about 9:30 CDT Saturday night, or like when UCD hit the flanker-reverse pass, for the next seven years. The lead dog in the NCC right now by far is Northern Colorado. I'm not sure about their schedule but I'm not sure who'll touch them either. NDSU's pass defense weakness was displayed by UCD. UNC will study those tapes just like they did for UND.

Simplest question I could ask: Who would you want running your team: Klosterman or Gorder? I know one of them CAN pass (when given time by his line) and can run, and has a conference and a national title. JBB: I hope you liked your trip to Davis. You'll be getting that treatment in IAA for at least six to seven seasons. (Anyone moving up would.)

Knowing Genoway has to sit for the first three and Canady's shoulder may not be ready, won't they be right on? Spiewak, Notermann, Hale, Lundbohm, Palmiscno, Fylling, Bochenski, Connelly, Massen, McMahon, Parise, and Prpich make 12.

History: Dale Lennon was hired by Roger Thomas to be his defensive coordinator. Terry Wanless was the UND AD at that time. Wanless is now at Sacramento State*. Thomas is now the AD. And Lennon was hired by Thomas to be the head FB coach. I'm not sure how you think there's this great Wanless/Lennon tie. The tie is Thomas/Lennon and Lennon is a UND alumnus. PS - Dale Lennon has a ring that he could show Babich so he'd know what one looks like, if you'd like. I mean outright conference title. Were you thinking of something else? *Sacramento State just had (2001-2002) their best IAA season yet. FB: 2-9 MBB: 9-18 WBB: On a 30+ game losing streak.

bisonguy: I found the post where "someone" claimed to be Bakken's son. Ryan Bakken isn't the Herald sports editor as that post claims. (I believe it is Kevin Fee.) That post appears to be a pure troll. You need to borrow a pliers to get that hook out of the corner of your mouth?

And of course there's always the "do it yourself" variety.

bisonguy: Like I said before, you took that bait? At least the miscapitalization can be explained away in a child. A little adversarial respect would be nice. I've tried to maintain that. PS - Wisconsin was looking to do a Gopher/Badger game at Camp-Randall and break that UM/MSU number. Of course, there were rumors of a UM/MSU rematch at The Big House also. (And of course the UM/MSU number was 30k under Michigan's average. Spartan Stadium ain't The Big House.)

Serious you say? Saturday, October 6, 2001: Michigan at Michigan State --> Attendance 74,554. That was nearly a 1000 more than Michigan State's average FB attendance for the season. And it was a hockey game. Game recap: http://www.uscollegehockey.com/recaps/2001...0/06/um-msu.php Game box score: http://www.uscollegehockey.com/box/index.p...me=msu&gender=m Now tell me again about who takes what seriously.

Here is Dr. Kupchella's statement: http://www.UND.edu/president/div1.html What he said was, "There are great problems in intercollegiate athletics in America, and while these span all the divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, most scandals seem to be associated with Division I." He did not refer to the nature or types of scandals, nor to the perpetrators. You are attempting to associate or infer something that just is not there. However, with your opening sentence you may have slandered Dr. Kupchella. It would be wise for you to attribute the source for the statement you have in quotation marks.

By saying that, you're admitting that the 16 IAA's playing D-I hockey are D-I pretenders (not true). Thus, by your statement, IAAs are D-I pretenders. Gotcha.

When has UND done that? Roger Thomas has been very careful in his public statements to frame them around UND. Dr. Kupchella's statement was framed solely around UND. If you're uptight about an internet posting board where people can express their opinions about the move, that's a little paranoid. None of us here speak officially for The University of North Dakota. Like I said, NDSU made its decision. Have at it. UND plans to watch the rest of the cards play out and they've said so.

University of Maine, Orono, Maine: It's four hours by car down I-95 to anything. Orono is a suburb of Bangor (population 38000). The 'greater metro' (75 mile radius, Bangor, Orono, etc.) is about 90000. There's the best comparison possible for UND. Why? Same size towns (GF probably has a better 75 mile population number) and they have NCAA Division I hockey titles too! I'll save JBB the trouble: Maine plays IAA football.

Back to UND and Grand Forks, eh? (Intentional Canadian/hockey ending, eh? ) You are making the classic reverse psychology argument. Paraphrased: "GF just can't do it." But NDSU hopes to have SDSU as a travel partner in a new league? GF can't but Brookings can? Pardon me if I scoff at that. It proves that deep inside you know that NDSU needs the 20k FB gate that UND and very few others could provide (Was the unfortunately cancelled Maine game sold out? I don't believe it was quite there.) and it needs the benefits of a D-I(AA) new NCC. Getting IAAs from 1000 miles away to come to Fargo to play won't be cheap, and remember, most (non-conference game) teams want a payday on a trip like that. Logistically and fiscally, going D-I(AA) doesn't make sense unless a group would go together. It solves the travel costs issues to a significant extent. That's why NDSU hopes SDSU goes. If SDSU goes, expect USD to follow and then comes UND. Check out the link to Article 3 at http://www3.sdstate.edu/Athletics/Division...Study/Index.cfm SDSU as much as admits that they need a IAA NCC to make it really work. (And they hinted that they may prefer a conference FB scholarship limit under 63 at the start. Bet you love to hear that.) Honestly, how's NDSU any different? How's any NCC team, save for UNC, with more D-I(AA)s, near by, any different? PS - If FargoDome is so 'prestigious', why is the lighting so terrible? The endzones are dark and the lights are at angles such that they shine in your eyes if you are sitting in box seating. Is Fargo going to 'progressively' fix that any time soon? I'm not trying to be malicious here. I do believe lighting there is a problem.

I hope a Gopher, Badger, Wolverine, Spartan, or BC Eagles fan didn't hear that. "Shredded" would be the best you could hope for.

I believe they'll look the same from the front and back. The questions is if Nike (and their contract manufacturer) would put in "side panels" of mesh. On Nike jerseys that do that they don't carry the bottom striping all the way around. It looks goofy to me that way. (I think they do it trying to look like the Denver Broncos jerseys, but not carrying the bottom stripes on a hockey jersey all the way around just breaks up the continuity and flow.) If it's true that Gemini is the contract manufacturer, I'd hope they'd keep them the same as last season.

A big part of the conversation that is missed here is logistics. There are a ton of IAAs in the northeast. There are a lot of IAAs down in Northern Colorado's neck of the woods. Out east, schools that should be DIIs are IAAs because it's easier to schedule games because everyone else around you is IAA. (If you're a DI, you have to schedule DIs.) Travel isn't an issue because they're all packed in a close space. In the midwest, there are significantly fewer IAAs as most schools are DII. Being DII in this area makes logistic and scheduling sense. That leads me back to what I've said all along. I believe NDSU took the "two year" approach to this in the hope that some of the large public schools in the NCC would make the jump with them to help with the logistics and schedule issues.

Your statement is accurate. The 2000 Frozen Four was very profitable for Michigan and BC. St. Lawrence and UND were the other two there that year. Because St. Lawrence is DIII and UND is DII, Michigan and BC split the participant's pot two ways instead of four. They forced UND to take home a trophy and banner instead of dollars. We won't talk about 2001.