wheelsup

Dear bison dan .. please share all of the details of the mighty bisons road record during the playoffs.. I can’t wait to hear it. I could share the details but it’s more fun for you to look it up. You guys have a great record in the Fargo dome… and a great record in Frisco.. but those road games .. tuff for everyone I guess..

thats back when the MVFC was a dominant football conference.. Since UND got in and started winning it is no longer a dominant football conference .. by the way.. I think pretty much every year one 6-5 team gets in.. this year was no different.

7 wins is considered bare minimum.. until its not.. (we have a little experience on that one) I agree that we can and should do better.. I also generally agree that there is likely not a conspiracy against UND.. the issue here is the changing of the rules or at a minimum.. deciding which rules are important this year versus last year.. versus the prior year. In this case I would say the Big Sky rep was a lot stronger advocate than the MVFC rep.. The Big Sky rep was able to get 5 teams in with 4 having the ability to have a home game.. apparently ours could barely get 3 MVFC teams and was unable to defend the long-standing precedent of the higher bid prevailing when deciding who gets the home game.. one can argue why that was.. at a minimum he sucks and is terrible at his job.. a conspiracy theorist would argue that he had an ulterior motive and tried to suck at his job as it should have been an easy base hit. You guys decide.

And I dont think its even a 9 seed.. the committee basically gave Weber St the 13th seed.. so dont try to tell me its a close 9th seed.. total garbage.

well.. I guess this did happen.. this is total crap. The NCAA process is total garbage.. after this happens they should really seed teams from 1-24 and the highest ranked team should host. By rough math Weber was seeded 13th and we were 20th.. Using that same math, Montana had to be seeded 19th and they ended up with a home game. This is really a terrible look for the NCAA. I take back my previous comments apparently even though we are paranoid they are also out to get us.. Our MVFC representative in the room.. Mr. Bison AD should be able to answer these questions.

I believe all schools will deal with as well.. to me the timing is a bit odd. This year NDSU has had 4 players hit the portal before the season is over.. all four of them were considered to be reasonably decent and even key contributors (Sigel, Hart, Gonnella, Sproles).. My assumption is that none of them were kicked out the door but rather chose to leave.. and did not see the value in sticking with the program through the playoffs. If they were bad apples and you guys were happy to get rid of them then I get it.. my sense is that this was not the case. If these guys hit the transfer portal after the playoffs I would have a different opinion. The worst excuse is that football is suddenly too hard for these young men.. If you cant acknowledge that the timing is odd or that they were all bad apples that the team is better off without.. you should acknowledge that there might be some internal issues with the program.

So I 100% agree with what you just said.. if those things actually happened there is nothing we can do about it and I would be ok with the result. But.. I guess I dont believe that it actually happened.. "The supposedly money hungry NCAA decided to ignore a reasonably substantially higher bid and give the home playoff game to Weber State because they should have been a seeded team.." Heading down that conspiracy theory route where everyone outside of grand forks hates UND football is a bridge too far for me. The conspiracy theory last week was that we wouldnt make the playoffs becasue the NDSU AD and Fargo in general was going to do everything they could to keep us out of the playoffs.. obviously not true. The simplest answer is usually the right one and the simplest answer is that our bid wasnt better than Weber State's. Seems like its time for a little transparency to clear this up.. apparently FOI requests can be filed.. Chaves or somebody else.. should be able to file a FOI request with both UND and Weber State see what the bids are and embarrass the NCAA if this conspiracy theory is true. Seems like there would be a lot of schools/teams unhappy with the new precedent of.. well Weber state should have been seeded but wasnt so we promised them a home game regardless of their bid.

so here are the reasons I have heard.. Nichols got a bunch of money from their conference.. Doesnt the MVFC give some money? Seems like an odd excuse Weber state got the home game because the "should" have been seeded. Both of those reasons sound like crap to me and just more reasons for us to be ok with a mediocre effort on our part. I dont think we are nearly as unlucky as people would try to say to somehow take the spotlight off a failure by the AD to get a home playoff game. I would hate to hear the excuses that would come out if we were matched up with a school that actually had money to bid.. instead we are left with conjecture about back room deals and somehow trying to justify losing to a school without locker rooms and another school that doesnt match our attendance. I dont know why Im so annoyed by this.. but this is the second year we have had a good opportunity to help change the trajectory of the program and host some home playoff games. Im not a hockey versus other sports guy.. but we roll out the red carpet for the hockey team in vegas and all of the regionals.. we cant even beat out bids from 2nd tier schools in football for a home playoff game.

I refuse to believe UND cant outbid Weber State and also cant outbid Nichols state. If we actually arent outbidding schools like that then Chaves should be fired. If Chaves doesnt understand how important having home playoff games are to building the overall program then he shouldnt be the AD If its something other than money and its "other criteria" then Chaves also has to get his !@#$ together.. this is crap. I would totally understand being outbid by Montana, Montana St and some of the other heavyweights.. but the last two we have lost the bid to.. give me a break! If our goal is to be a top FCS football program then you have to be able to outbid the Nichols State and Weber State's of the world.. If our goal is to be mediocre.. By the way.. Im still excited about the playoff game

This is why all of this should be public and transparent.

I really hope the bids are made public.. it will be incredibly disappointing if we didn’t have a very competitive bid

yah.. its not my thing particularly when its North Dakota kids (I even still cheer for Wentz to do well in the Pros.. although I hated him at NDSU).. I should have stayed off this thread completely.. My apologies.. pass the vapors.

Ill add that I really dont enjoy the shots at the players.. take a shot at Entz if you want.. (Ive met him.. he is no Klieman) and also NDSU in general.. but the shots at the players are generally in poor taste in my opinion. Many area kids want to go to NDSU and UND.. anyways.. pass me the vapors.. Ill stay off this thread.

My hopes for tomorrow Make the bison throw the ball.. put as many in the box as needed and trust our d-backs to step up. I cant stand another bison game where one of their RB's has a breakout game and bludgeons us to death. There is nothing more demoralizing than multiple 10min series where the defense gets beaten to death while the offense falls asleep on the sidelines. Im ok forcing Cam to win the game on his arm and then letting our offense respond. I want to see Tommy and the gang rolling.. He has been an absolute difference maker this year with his willingness to scramble and I think tomorrow will be no different. I think our offense can keep up as long as they dont fall asleep on the sidelines.. see comment 1.. We need to survive the first quarter.. we cant do what SDSU did in the first half with about 5 or 6 false starts by the offensive line. The fargodome will be rocking right away but they get pretty quiet when the game starts turning against them. Im looking forward to a couple of icecold tailgaiting beers followed by a couple of high priced beers in the Fargodome. Im hoping for an Fn Hawks victory and I think this year we can do it. It will be a good game and Bubba and the gang should be fired up. Any bison fan that says this game doesn't matter is fooling themselves.. Maybe the really young kids dont feel it yet.. but these are the games that focus the programs.. meaningful games in November against a regional rival.. nothing better in my opinion.

so ive read two things that I can't understand or agree with somehow Youngstown jumps us?? that makes zero sense. Even if we lose to NDSU we would have the same record as them and a win against them on the road.. That seems like a 0% chance If we somehow beat the bison this weekend that they would still be ranked ahead of us. Again.. we would have the same record and a victory against them on the road. Neither of those make any sense to me.. I give them both 0%..

I would recommend not spending anytime on that site.. I checked it out a couple of years ago and then the other day to see if it had changed. I was hoping for a little insight on their team and maybe some interesting discussions. Instead I felt like I needed a shower after wading through that cesspool. That site is totally ruined by a couple of posters who spam the threads and make them unreadable. Its not representative of most of the bison fans I know and I know a few that are pretty insufferable. It would actually be nice if there was a different version of that site where the admins banned a couple of their posters..

So I think this year the polls are emphasizing the importance of being ranked early in the year. Im sure somebody can dig up the first couple weeks of the polls.. but it seems very hard to climb from the bottom and similarly very hard to drop when you start out high. It would be interesting to look at 4 teams that are currently ahead of us in the polls. #13- Montana (7-3), #14 - Elon (8-3), #15 - Chatanooga (7-3) and of course our friends to the south - #4 - NDSU (8-2).. Montana lost 3 games in a row and is still ranked ahead of us.. NDSU deserves a high ranking but I bet they wouldnt be #4 if they started the year unranked. Im excited for the game this weekend.. I believe regardless of the outcome we will be in the playoffs. We will be at a minimum the 3rd best team in the MVFC. I also dont buy the argument/conspiracy that Fargo is somehow talking UND down.. they need us.. if they beat us (and thats not a done deal).. we would be their signature win for the year. Its pretty hard to advocate for a higher seed when you havent won against any ranked teams.. if we beat them (dear sweet lord baby jesus).. they also need us as losing to a crap team doesnt do anything for the resume either.. This is what makes November exciting.. playing meaningful games. Man this is fun

I think #3 just means that a higher seed cant be outbid in the seeded rounds. The first round is all unseeded teams and after that as long as the higher seeded teams at least submit a qualifying bid they get to host the home games. Otherwise the school with more money would always host regardless of their seed. I think this happened quite a few years back to NDSU's benefit.. the higher seeded team didnt submit a bid or something and the bison were able to host a playoff game that they werent supposed to have

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!