wheelsup

agree 100%.. 9500 was a very generous number. Im going to blame it on the weather shutting down the western half of the state, but I was disappointed by the showing. Very few students.. lots of empty season ticket holder seats and very empty otherwise as well. I truly expected more on such a meaningful game.. senior day.. veterans weekend.. playing a South Dakota team(seemed like there was about zero USD fans) and basically the playoffs.

Seems like it helps to me.. The Bison need us in their argument for higher seeding.. If they beat us this weekend we would be their best win and only ranked win of the year (think about that).. If we beat them this weekend they need to talk about how good we were to improve their argument for seeding. They only screw themselves by talking us down.

I wish they would make the pre 4th quarter hype videos available on the North Dakota football Facebook page or the football app. They are awesome! whoever is doing those needs to put together more content.

I was surprised by the relatively poor attendance today. Very few Students.. but also a lot of empty seats in my section which is usually quite full. I thought it would be easily over 10k.. but the announced 9.5k was a very generous estimation of how many people were actually there. I guess it was more than the Abilene Christian game? Need to keep winning these games and building the fanbase.

Another nice win.. The fellas did not stub their toe when there were multiple opportunities to do so. couple of thoughts. When we were 3rd down on the 2.. Im really surprised we didnt bring in Quincy.. There is zero chance that Quincy doesnt get a touchdown with two tries from the 2 yard line. Sometimes Danny gets a little too cute. The 4th down call was particularly terrible.. if you knew you were going for it on 4th down it makes it even more of a no brainer not to bring in quincy. The Special teams, punt and punt coverage were a huge part of this victory. That blocked punt was awesome.. Probably the play of the game. Huge momentum swing into halftime. kickoffs are still questionable.. that out of bounds kickoff with 1:30 to go in the 3rd quarter.. uffdah. better than a big return I guess.. all of that said.. extra points seem automatic now. Its been a long time since I havent really paid attention during our extra points. Our offense is legit.. just about no complaints.. We didnt score in the 4th quarter.. but we didnt really try to score either.. we were running clock and using about 25% of the playbook with a 2 score lead. Its a great balance.. QB.. RB.. WR.. OL.. the fellas are rolling. The defense continues to be a challenge.. but I think it looked better again today. Still some real gaps in pass coverage.. and not great pressure on the QB. ONce they became one dimensional and had to pass our pressure was solid. Im looking forward to next weekend.. Im hopeful we made the playoffs with the win today, but I would love to go in with a win against that school down south.

I wish they would make the bid information public. I for one was super disappointed that year that we didnt have a home playoff game. UND (and most other teams) has been a completely different team at home, although this year we are doing well on the road. As a secondary note.. If having a certain number of hotel rooms for the visiting team is a requirement, Im not sure not having hotel rooms reserved in advance shines any better on our athletic department? Or at least is representative of their lack of faith in UND football. Hopefully they have sorted that out.

Time to enjoy a great road win! A dominating road win.. a win UND can and should have won!

So I saw that.. I was wondering if anyone knows how the MVFC goes about selecting our rep.. does it rotate amongst AD's.. is there some type of election process or the term? Just curious how it works. I did a quick google search and couldnt figure it out.

This is interesting.. thanks for posting this? Does anyone know how often this changes or the process for selecting the MVFC rep? Does it just rotate through all of the different AD's?

It was as full as the rest of the alerus

A lot of angst and gnashing of teeth in our chat about Indiana State this upcoming weekend.. Not bad for a team that is currently 5-3 facing a team thats 1-7. Apparently, we are so worried about Indiana State that we are even concerned about the backup QB situation.. when we have one of the best QB's in UND history currently playing with 2 years of eligibility currently remaining. . I happen to think we will be just fine in that area in the short term with Q.. Feeney and even Romfo. That room seems just fine and about 7th on our list of priorities although the transfer portal and a decommit could change that... still a topic for another time or at least one of the other channels . This seems like a game where our team can continue to get better. Their team is not as bad as the record indicates but if you want to be a playoff team you have to win it. They have been torched by 3 teams, Purdue, SDSU & Montana.. (all good teams, Montana is debatable.. but I think they are solid). They have lost 4 close ones (less than a TD).. NDSU, UNI, YSU, ISU... all decent to very good teams. Of all of those games.. the only one I have seen in the NDSU game. NDSU did everything they could to lose that game and still won. Im looking forward to a victory for our squad as well. I would love to hear from some of the great football minds on this board as to some of the matchups that we have to watch out for. Otherwise I have to wait for Kelly and the fellas at 360 to drop some knowledge on me when I get around to their podcast sometime Thursday. Also, I know people rip on the #daybyday.. but I love those midco #daybyday videos.. I wish we got a couple of them a week. (am i hashtagging?)

I refuse to believe UND cant recruit a kicker that can regularly kick it 5+ yds deep into the endzone in a dome environment. There are multiple high school kickers every year in the state of North Dakota not to mention the rest of the USA/World that can do this. Therefore I assume that Brady can do this and he seems to have plenty of leg on long field goals so I assume its not a physical limitation. This to me means its a scheme by Kostich/coaching staff which seems absolutely inexplicable given our struggle to cover the kickoffs in a productive manner or at a minimum is just getting cute and outsmarting ourself. I dont really understand the idea of not kicking it reasonably deep into the endzone.. Most teams at the D1 level have a returner capable of breaking a long one or at least relatively easily getting it past the 25 yd line. If people want to kick to CJ or Red at the 1 yd line every time I guarantee UND has a better average starting position then the 25 and at least once a game will be past the 50.. Hopefully they will have it sorted out this weekend

My son was wondering where the sack city sign was.. it doesnt get a lot of use this year but its always nice to see.

A couple of thoughts.. probably all beaten to death. The attendance was a bad as I have seen it outside of covid. Obviously they didnt intend to schedule this as the same time as a destination hockey game but wow.. If there were actually 6500 fans in attendance I would be surprised. hopefully that doesnt happen again. Very few students, I assumed they might show up as they probably werent all in Vegas but very few showed up. Easiest halftime walk around the concourse that I have had. The defense is hard to watch. I know we pick on the d-backs a bit.. but the complete lack of pressure on the QB cant help them. I think our lack of pressure up front is worse than the defensive coverage. KK had a great interception. I am really surprised at our inability to get any pressure up front. Their QB can take a nap back there most plays. ST's.. when did the kickoff coverage fall apart like this. Can we really not kick it through the end zone on kickoffs?? Punt coverage was solid.. I was happy to see Red returning kicks instead of CJ. Offense is what is holding the team together right now... the Offense is fun to watch except for the times when Danny seems to lose his mind and get inexplicably cute. Our offense is good.. The o-line is continuing to improve.. hoose is awesome.. People badmouth our WR's.. i think they are super fun to watch. Bo, Maag and the young guys... At some point i hope Danny takes the obvious.. maybe hand the ball to hoose.. maybe bring in Quincy in short yardage.. its great. I thought the officiating was terrible.. The complete miss on pass interference and then overturning that sack/fumble.. really some terrible officiating. Maybe it will look different when I rewatch the game.. but in the alerus the officiating looked terrible. I liked the 4Q hype video.. nicely done.. give us more of that.. The alerus also seems like its figuring out the replays.. We are finally getting some at the right times. The only nice thing about the lack of fans was that I could get from my seat to the beer stand and back without missing a play. Overall.. another win.. Ill take it! Need to keep it rolling.

Coaches recruit players.. Coaches Coach and Players Play There is a kernel of truth to the point that players screw up and its on the player and also the point that if they were better prepared by the coaches they probably wouldn’t screw up. This specific pick 6 play.. looks like it was on the player. I hope the kid learns from it and goes on to have a great year/career. I tend to look at it more of an aggregate.. Bubba has a 54% winning percentage at UND over 9 years, 51% at UMD and 53% overall so he is actually getting marginally better at UND. Great teams tend to have less screw ups and so whether that is better players through recruiting or better coaches because of coaching preparation you can argue that both lead back to the coaches.. so blaming the coaches in aggregate is not stupid. Im optimistic that the squad will figure it out and that we will be 8-3 heading into the playoffs at worse 7-4.. Based on history.. we will likely be 6-5 and miss the playoffs as there will be an inexplicable egg laid in one of the winnable games. This is another opportunity for Bubba to change the Narrative around UND football and finish the year strong instead of with a whimper… my guess is everyone on this forum, outside of a few NDSU fans, would be ecstatic if that is the case. Also.. Ill be at the two remaining home games and the NDSU game cheering as loud as anyone else for the old F’n Hawks.. hoping we make the playoffs and start rolling. I also know that not too many people jump on the bandwagon for a team that hovers around .500 and doesn’t win the really big games. How do we pack the Alerus? Doesn’t have anything to do with the sound system or the price of beer or the walkout video (although those are all easily fixable things and should be fixed).. win some big games.. have some home playoff games and win them and people will start showing up.

I have had my current season tickets for 10+ years. The Alerus sound system has always sucked, the coordination of the video/audio during the entrance has nearly always been terrible. The coordination of mic's during the game.. refs mic's etc has always been terrible. When you compare what we do to the operation down south and many other competent FCS level organizations its a mickey mouse operation at the Alerus. If I was that bad at my job I would get fired.. I really dont understand how they cant fix it year after year. As a venue.. I generally like the Alerus and dont have many of the complaints that I have heard others voice.. I think our video boards are good.. and our section has a great time. I think its a good place to watch the game.. the beers are $9 but you can get one quickly and its a pretty rare place that they arent $9 anymore. The rest of the problems are very fixable and I dont know if its an Alerus problem or a UND Sports problem but its really a bad look.

Lots of good points all around.. The ability of SDSU to get pressure on Tommy while only rushing four. Our o-line is young and Im super optimistic for their future but this one was a challenge. Our inability to get pressure... and zero turnovers by the defense.. this is a trend of the last couple of games.. makes it very hard to win games. 3 turnovers on our offense.. I would call them uncharacteristic. That pick 6 was terrible terrible.. the pick to end the first half was a deflator.. the fumble was part of a 3rd quarter that we all need to forget. Nearly impossible to win a game when you lose the turnover battle by so much. I dont understand our first onside kick with nearly 7 minutes to go.. obviously SDSU wasnt ready.. called a timeout to get ready.. we still did it/turned out poorly. It actually reminded me of the Bison game last year 4th down fake punt.. They were ready.. we still did it.. Both seem like we should have been able to react to that. I was surprised by the lack of Quincy in the 2nd half. Could have used him on the 3rd and 4th and short plays. As much as we/I keep complaining about the defense.. the offense/special teams put them in some really challenging positions.. The good part of special teams.. zero missed extra points.. Im almost starting to relax during an extra point. Great pressure during their punts.. We were close to blocking a couple more. I hope #29 from SDSU ends up with explosive diarrhea for a month.. seemed totally classless.. I dont understand why he wasnt removed from the sideline as I thought that was the rule.. but it must not be anymore. Im still optimistic for the rest of the year.. 3 very winnable games and finish the year with NDSU hopefully for our signature win running into the playoffs.. I love playing NDSU on the last game of the year in a game that hopefully means something for both teams! that Southern Ilinois loss to USD did not help the Valley. Im a bit concerned that 7-4 wont be good enough to get us into the playoffs and in reality.. If you lose to NDSU, SDSU and Southern Illinois Im not sure that we would deserve to be in the playoffs. My biggest disappointment is that it is incredibly difficult to build fan support with such an up and down team.. next weekend will likely be very poor attendance due to the hockey game in Vegas but.. Ill still be there as will some other die hard fans). The team is consistently inconsistent. People expecting a sellout yesterday need to realize that the casual fan wont jump on the bandwagon until we start consistently winning. It would also really help if they could get the Alerus sound system figured out.. it was really terrible.. Our team entrance/song/video has about the worst organization/timing possible.. I think a 10th grade theatre intern could do a better job.. And the constant bleed through of various mikes during the game is really terrible.. I question the competency of whomever is running the show with respect the Alerus. Its annoying and embarrassing when compared to many other places. UND football and fans deserve better than that mediocre effort from the Alerus. Finally to confirm... I hope #29 from SDSU ends up with explosive diarrhea for a month.. seemed totally classless.. I dont understand why he wasnt removed from the sideline as I thought that was the rule.. but it must not be anymore.

Home field advantage in the FCS playoffs is such a huge deal and cant be understated.. Im sure somebody has more details on this. UND has been a different team in the Alerus versus on the road. Ive blocked out the 2016 Richmond playoff game as I really do put that loss on the coaches.. Look at that goofy loss to Nichols state in 2019.. I guarantee the result is different if that one was at the Alerus. In 2020 look at the thrashing of Missouri State. The fargodome is a home advantage that has to be in the top couple in the FCS.. over and over you will see a team come in and lose by halftime because they can't handle the crowd noise. At the SDSU/NDSU game all of those false starts in the first half put SDSU in a hole that they almost couldn't crawl out of. I hope the Alerus can get to that level but we have a ways to go.. opening up the endzone standing room would be a nice start. Also.. Im not taking anything away from NDSU as their run as been unreal but they have a losing record in away playoff games. Since 2010, every time they made it to Frisco.. the path went through the fargodome with zero away playoff games. (they are also dominant in Frisco (neutral site) and travel there unbelievably well). This doesnt take anythign away from the bison it points out how hard it is to win road playoff games. Hopefully at some point we will be having multiple home playoff games in the Alerus and that becomes the expectation. You have to win during the regular season to get there and be able to win big games on the road... we will have our opportunity this Saturday playing the #1 seed at home, hopefully win the games that we should, and the last regular season game in Fargo where Im sure the Bison will also be high ranked.

which I think was the correct decision.. the goofy 3rd and 1 was not.. that time-out when the Bison were going to punt also was not. Both of those calls would have been lit up if Bubba would have done them.

The NDSU/SDSU game was pretty interesting today.. couple of thoughts SDSU offense in the first half looked pretty terrible when it went away from the run. This was made way worse by all of the false start penalties. Without those penalties the first half the differential is probably a fair amount worse. The Stig timeout on the Bison 4th and 1 when the Bison were going to punt was a terrible call. Always let the Bison punt on 4th-1.. of course they rethought it and decided to go for it. Seems like Luepke will pick that up 99 times out of 100. We would have heckled bubba mercilessly for that call. NDSU offense looked pretty solid in the 1st half.. but all of that passing probably got them away from what they really wanted/know how to do. The 2nd half was terrible. The freshman QB looked like a freshman QB.. terrible throw. Watching SDSU try to figure out a short yardage run by the goal line made me appreciate even more what we have in Quincy. We are going to have a problem with both of these offenses.. The lack of Luepke in this game is baffling to me. I think our offense has a chance to put up some points Im still amazed at the difference between halves.. the fargo dome is an amazing home field advantage and SDSU was clearly not ready for it in the first half. Anyhow. both teams will be a big challenge for us but i have some hope... Best thing for us happened.. #1 team coming into the alerus next weekend. Hopefully we can pack the place and make it loud. Im excited for the game and after watching some of the questionable decisions by both Stig and Entz maybe we are a little hard on Bubba.

It clearly takes more than having a great home winning record.. I think its all about consistently winning games and regularly making a run in the playoffs. Even the Fargodome was half empty before the bison started their Championship runs in the last decade. UND could do some pretty easy things to improve the game day experience.. i.e improve the sound system.. it was totally embarrassing yesterday.. every time the ref tried to talk the feedback was so bad you couldn't hardly hear what he said. Have some decent merchandise for sale at the game.. We had friends with us at the game yesterday and they wanted to buy some UND gear and what was available was not great. Maybe dont screw up all of the timing for the intro video and team entrance Maybe send a couple marketing reps down south about 75 miles.. they seem to be able to figure out the things above on gameday. Overall, the stuff listed above would improve things around the margins and keep the current fanbase more interested.. I think it will take playing meaningful football in December/January on a regular basis to truely attract more fans.

How long do you suggest we let him play it out? 9 years of .500 football seems like he has been given a pretty fair shot? By the way.. the game today was super fun. I believe almost everyone would love for bubba and UND football to succeed. I know I sure do.. but how long do we wait? 9 years.. 10 years? Maybe he will figure it out in his 11th year and string together two winning seasons in a row. im going to enjoy the victory today.. I’m going to hope the team keeps rolling.. but the idea that there are a bunch of bubba haters or that he hasn’t been given a fair shot doesn’t line up with the facts.

Awesome Win! The team was incredibly resilient. All of the haters might have to give bubba a little credit for a close victory on the road. couple of thoughts the officiating was a gigantic challenge.. many terrible crucial calls.. terrible how many games are we going to have to watch KK get worked over for a big TD. Ive always loved watching the heart of that guy but he is really struggling in coverage. Everyone was ripping the D.. through 3 quarters they had outscored our offense :).. Feed the Hoose! My two favorite things about UNI.. getting the hoose.. and beating them last week bubba was alternately awesome and infuriating.. that FG attempt at the end of the 2nd half was a terrible coaches call. I like winning a close one on the road.. its a new experience :)..

And starting off the half with technical difficulties by espn+.. perfect

Jack and the crew are really complaining about the officiating.. it’s not just us.