The Sicatoka

Sagarin and Massey seem (at least to my eye) have a lot of "prior year" weight early in the season. By this point in the season it should be gone; however, that's my only explanation for where UNI keeps showing up ... or are they this year's "quality losses" Western Illinois.

What's more likely this weekend: NDSU losing at South Dakota or EWU losing at Portland State NDSU is going to come in hating USD from last season; Portland State will be pulling out all the stops. There's NDSU's #1 seed*. *And #1 NDSU and #8 UND in Fargodome.

Arguing EWU/NDSU 1/2 matters not all that much. They'll be spaced that a potential rematch would be in Frisco, TX. The difference between 3 and 4 isn't all that great.

So, what'd Kolpack think of UND's schedule?

The key takeaway from Miller's travel budget article: You play distant road conference games and near non-conference games or You play near road conference games and distant non-conference games. And if that's the same basic pool of opponents (conf or non-conf) that'll cost roughly the same.

Epic Halloween costume. Made Walsh Hall proud.

'Member Cameron Peterka? 'Member Peterka, then Jeff Glas, then Brandon Hellevang, then Zeb Miller? 'Member the run of great kickers? I 'member.

Who's sending that one to the NCAA? They don't like words or images disparaging American Indians at their playoff sites. (I wonder if that played into Breciani's recent words ... )

The issue is in the public eye. The civil authorities will deal with it. The issue is in the public eye. Coach Schweigert will deal with it as well. (And the people that hire Bubba will be watching him.) I'm not concerned about how this will be handled. It'll be done right with the right consequences.

If this "go to MVFC and Summit" really does come down I want an "Idaho" clause in each contracts (meaning MVFC and Summit). Quite simply: That's just basically the conference passing the exist fees on through to UND. If this is the MVFC looking to cover YSU or WIU bailing the MVFC isn't hurt. If this is a play to stick UND down the road (say the MVC comes calling), well, a couple million bucks buys a lot of butthurt salve.

The radio crew was just getting into their tempo of strictly saying "UND" or "North Dakota" (and not the dreaded five-letter "S" word). They were still slipping. (I'm pretty sure on-air folks and producers had side bets about how many mistakes they'd make in a night. ) Now you expect them to just seemlessly switch to saying "Fighting Hawks"? Doing radio is hard. Doing live radio is harder. Doing live play by play radio is harder yet. Now toss in words that were part of your normal dialog and cantor for decades that you can no longer say. The only guy with any advantage is the new Midco guy who never was on air saying the old name because he's new this year. The rest are having to over-think everything they say. I commend the on air folks for doing as well as they are.

We should be smarter on the chippy stuff after last weekend.

FIFY.

Can someone get Doug Woog to explain this?

They're mandated on both sides of major water crossings.

It was Santiago doing the hiding because he and the other backs knew they'd run more with Heidelbaugh (5 run, 1 pass) in there!

So Bartels came in after Heidelbaugh ran (2 + 3 + 1) plays: - goal line hand off to 5 - TD pass - to 22 - to 22 - to 5 (punt) - to 5 - Bartles comes in on 2nd and 12 (with under 12:36 in the 3rd) That confuses me. Waiting that long (third series) says it's not a missing helmet or even time for Bartels to throw and get warmed up. But Heidelbaugh only attempted one pass, so it's not how he's throwing. Did he look that uncomfortable out there that they decided to bring in the senior?

How many plays did Heidelbaugh play in the game? Just the two at the goal line? Did he run the next series (handing it off 22 twice and 5 once)? Or was that Bartles? The series after that clearly was Bartles because the play-by-play shows a Bartels incompletion to 11. http://www.undsports.com/pdf9/5049138.pdf Honestly, I'm wondering if Heidelbaugh came in at the goal line because either (a) they had a goal line package installed for him this week, or (b) Bartels couldn't find his helmet.

The best near-live source I've found: http://www.collegehockeynews.com/schedules/scoreboard.php

Go to Google. Put in "mandan nd to cannonball nd". Click on the map. Note the orange sections (plural) on Highway 1806 just north of Cannon Ball. That's not road construction. That's a Class C felony in progress.

< ding ding ding > He said the magic phrase! This pipeline ALREADY CROSSES the Missouri River southwest of Trenton. http://www.energytransfer.com/documents/DAPL_States_Counties.pdf

Bowers? Meh. Go get the next one.

That's where my pointing out of the ongoing Class C felony was going. If I'm driving down a highway and get stopped by an illegal road block with masked people do I have legitimate fear of great bodily harm or death? (The lawyers out there see the "key words and tricky phrases" I just invoked.)

It's fungible.