aff

With all due respect, rushing to average 60 schollies so that you qualify for multiple D-IA body bag money games doesn't really prove to me that USD is fully committed to D-I. Fully funding you're already competitive swim team or other non-revenue sports would be more of a commitment. Most schools can throw all of their money into football and mens bball. Committed schools want to be competitive across the board.

Pretty funny that they have the "I choose Division II" banner out for a game between two schools both going to Division I.

Give it a rest. This is the last response to you. I refuse to waste time on a troll. You know what I'm saying is true, I know its true, and 75% of the posters here know its true. Give it up.

Awesome. To all you sioux fans out there calling me a bison or jacks fan, heres a guy calling me a sioux fan! LOL. Seriously though, you're not fooling anybody, give it up. Just admit you're an NDSU fan and be done with it. You're pleas of innocence are falling on deaf ears.

Got to love a post whose 1st sentence is made up, which then assumes this made up idea as fact and talks about it for another 5 paragraphs. Seriously, your an NDSU fan, its blatantly obvious. The whole "We didn't get into the conference because they were scared of us" gives you away every time. Having to read through that kind of arrogance made me stop even looking at the Bison board. NDSU didn't get in the big sky because they are located in Fargo, ND, period. Montana wasn't afraid, Sac State wasn't afraid, they just didn't want to go to Fargo. Get over it already.

And the dissent to full fledged smack thread is complete. Really, a very worthy topic to even discuss. Only Moses could have predicted that this would turn into a smack thread. LOL.

DON'T EVER GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAM MLPS BISON! Seriously though, I think this move is designed to turn into a mo. valley football conference in the next decade (Possibly with DI-A aspirations?). If that ever does become the case, it will be too lucrative for members of the conference to leave for football, because of the basketball side of things. Indiana State may still drop though, but I don't see a second school leaving.

Classy acceptance of the congratulations there Johnny.

I could ask other fans if they've ever been anything but over-the-top-optimistic too. I guess it all balances out then...?

Ever heard the phrase "Hope isn't a strategy"?

Wow, looks like S. Utah may be able to grab that spot in the big sky they have been looking for now... Seriously, even if this does happen, it doesn't mean expansion to the dakotas is going to happen. UVSC, Denver, S. Utah or any combination would all likely be more likely than UND. If Portland leaves, Sac State, and EWU all are going to be more likely to want S. Utah than UND. I don't care what your facilities are, a conference spanning from Arizona to North Dakota isn't going to happen. Sorry to be negative here, but I don't know what else to say. By the way, what is this, the 10th scenario on this board getting UND into the sky? Give it up already. What you should be worried about is this: 1. PSU leaves the sky. 2. Sky adds S. Utah 3. The mid-con expands to Texas Pan Am to move back to 10. 4. Another sky school, say Sac State 5. Sky adds UVSC 6. Another school defects from the mid-con 7. Edwardsville is added to the mid con. Heres the expansion order for the mid-con and sky if defections take place in either (during the next 10 years) Big Sky- 1. S. Utah 2. UVSC 3. NDSU/SDSU 4. UND/USD Mid-con- 1. Texas Pan Am 2. Edwardsville 3. UND/USD Thats what people should be talking about, but amazingly, nobody at either USD or UND seems to care about this situation. The class your moving up in is a a lot more crowded regionally than when SDSU/NDSU moved up.

I'm sure facilities matter somewhat, but I doubt to the extent that fans on these message boards believe, and certainly not as much as location. Case and Point: NDSU/SDSU vs. Northern Colorado for the big sky invite. I hope nobody is going to argue that out of those three, Northern colorado has the worst facilities, and yet they got the conference invite, and NDSU or SDSU did not.

Undoubtedly going to be seeking mid-con membership I suppose...

Are you sure you didn't pay SDSU something for that game? I have a hard time believing that SDSU would travel to the fargo dome twice in a row with no compensation from NDSU for their lost home game (which likely would have netted them quite a bit of money also at home). Even if it was scheduled by the conference that way, I would think some sort of compensation would be in order for playing two games in a row at the fargodome.

The main thrust of his article- that the Sioux name is likely to be a detriment to UND during a D-I move- right or wrong- is correct.

Paperwork? Why do you interpret everything that your administration says like it's the bible? I'm pretty sure none of them put even a quarter of the thought you do into these statements.

No offense, but that sounds like bull from the OVC. Why on earth would evansville leave the Missouri Valley? Because of "financial problems"? I'm sure that dropping out of a mid-major conference that is hauling in the tournament dough to an also ran conference is really going to help the finances. I mean, the best idea ever would be to get more fans interested by bringing in less desirable opponents, leaving a conference with tons of publicity along with forfeiting 100,000's of dollars a year in tournament money, all to get into that OVC! In any case, wouldn't Longwood be as likely a replacement as Evansville would be? Longwood would be more than willing to join I think...

Yeah, perfect sense, except they don't have a football team.

LOL. Well, I'm glad that Minnesota was able to get the only mistake made during the entire game fixed! It must be a relief to know that your refs made no bad calls, except for that one last play, and that you were able to get it corrected.

Thanks for that extensive analysis, and the fact that you didn't even mention what was going to happen to the school in the name of this thread. I'm glad we've got it all figured out now.

If SIU-E approves this in march, as they appear to be getting ready to do, that would mean they are entering the transition at the same time as USD and UND.

There is one thing we agree about, SIU-E will be in the mid-con in the near future, their location, and the recruiting area it opens up makes too much sense for the conference. I'm not sure how you have came to the conclusion that USD is in with them though? Lets take your scenario for example. Your assumption is that UND gets into the sky... assuming thats true, that would likely stop S. Utah from bolting the mid-con any time soon... in that case wouldn't the logical additions be UVSC and SIU-E? That would make tons more sense if your dividing the conference in two than adding a school in Illinois and a school in South Dakota. Another thing that hasn't been considered, that I read on another board, is the possibility of SIU-E and Chicago State coming back after their athletic department is cleaned up. That makes a lot of sense geographically, and I have to think that this is Chicago States goal. In any case, adding a school is Chicago has to be more attractive than adding a school in Vermillion SD. I guess the only sure thing about this is the SU's were pretty lucky to gain conference affiliation when they did. I can't see them getting added if they had started two years later than they did.

Seriously, this is getting too stupid to even discuss anymore. Do I really have to lay out the reasons why USD-NDSU is different than UNI-NDSU AGAIN? You really think that UNI is a valid comparison to USD. Nothing different there, at all? No differences that would make that comparison irrelevant? (HINT: READ THE ABOVE POST AGAIN. I HAVE ALREADY LAID OUT WHY THE COMPARISON IS NOT VALID, AND IT WAS MORE THAN DISTANCE).

READ MY PREVIOUS POSTS AND PRACTICE YOUR READING COMPREHENSION. I'M NOT GOING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOU IF YOU CAN'T READ WHAT I HAVE VERY CLEARLY INDICATED AT LEAST 3 TIMES ON THIS THREAD.

Come on, in 5 years two teams within 300 miles of each other, that were previously in a conference, haven't had an opportunity to schedule each other in any sport? When NDSU was already on USD's schedule for the first year of the transition to D-II, USD had to make a special effort to NOT play NDSU and schedule Peru State. It would have been easier to simply play the game that had been scheduled for at least 3 years previous to that, and that is for all sports, not just the major ones. USD seriously had to go through extra effort to find NAIA schools to take NDSU's place on their schedules. Does that sound like something friendly schools do? Or would they suck it up and play one last game going into the transition to D-I? The comparison to Montana State, Northern Iowa etc. doesn't make any sense, because those schools aren't as close to NDSU as USD is, and those schools haven't been in the same conference as NDSU in the last 5 years. Yes, there are a lot of reasons to not play a team, but seeing USD drop NDSU off of their schedule in everything, after they played them in every sport they had the previous year kind of makes you raise an eyebrow. You're not going to convince me that USD couldn't have helped NDSU during the first year of their transition to D-I, even if it was only in the non-revenue sports. Again, this is not at all similar to Montana States buyout, OSU playing Florida, SDSU playing Illinois, or any other conference arrangements. The only thing that has been simplistic are these ridiculous comparisons to non-NCC schools that are 1000 miles away from NDSU.