wheelsup

18 yd punt.. cmon

My guess is that this year won’t count against his eligibility since he left before the first game or something. Only thing that actually makes sense. Otherwise it would be obvious to stay to the end of the season.

I have to admit I was really hoping for the UND/NDSU game winning, Feeney to Belquist connection, in the fargodome this year. Would have been an altimer. I dont blame Feeney at all for leaving.. Although the most recent "day by day" was clearly cut before this happened. He spent last year as the 2nd stringer and got in so rarely even when the games were out of hand.. Im sure he saw that flashing before his eyes again. Im not a QB talent evaluator, and barely only a commentator on the internet, but have to assume he saw the rest of his career going by without ever getting to play meaningful minutes. My assumption is Danny saw him every day and picked Tommy over and over regardless of struggles.. Fruechte has likely seen more QB talent and knows what he wants way more than I will ever even think about and somehow picked Romfo over him (also a junior). I was kind of guessing that Romfo was picked as QB1 for the Iowa St football game and that 2-3 QB's would get meaningful time but they seem to be really pushing the Romfo thing. If back in January you would have told me that we would have ended up with a shorter QB than we had last year I would have laughed. Im excited with what I have seen out of Fruechte so far so am really hoping he made the right decision.. Im really excited for Romfo to see what he can bring to the table and hope he continues his winning ways, but was also really hoping that Feeney would get his shot this year. As long as Feeney doesnt end up in the MVFC Ill wish him all the success.

One of my biggest disappointments this year is not getting to find out if the offensive issues the last couple years was more of a Tommy thing or an OC thing. i bet we will see a little of Tommy in the big10 this year as it sure seems like he is 2nd string and we will sure get to see plenty of Danny this year. I’m also gaining excitement in this years team.. some great recent articles by Tom miller.. football 360 podcast etc. many things to be excited about while also concerned about the general youth of the team.

Pretty sure Joel has been the DC for only one year which I think makes it all line up a bit better. I remember holinka having a good year followed by a terrible year.. 22 and 23 were equally bad and poor from a defensive point of view. I feel we will be better on the defensive side this year although I would have said we were way worse than 26th last year.. felt more like 96th most games. Strength or schedule must be a big impact or something.

My guess is that we will be a top 12 MVFC defense.. maybe even a top 10 . looking on the mvfc website looks like we were a top 7 defense this last year.. from personally watching all the games it felt way worse then that.

Tommy was a solid QB.. in the list of problems last year he was a distant 3rd behind a terrible defense.. and OC who couldn’t commit to the strength of the team which would have also bailed out the defense by keeping them off the field. The Tommy bashing is always overdone. I would guess the offense will be serviceable again the year with lots of skill at the skill positions. Whether we win or lose will depend on if the defense improves.. luckily our head coach is a defensive coach so there is that…

Wasn’t there a year where we went smaller as an o-line to get better? I think it will be better then that year

I also was a big Danny supporter although he was certainly not without his issues. I felt the offense was going to be the strength of the team and likely still will be this year. I’m very hopeful for Fruechte.. skill positions will be as good or improved in my book.. I’m very nervous about our OL with all of the turnover. It’s gone from one of our biggest strengths to one of our biggest question marks heading into the year. Pawlak was awesome.. hopefully the new guy can step up. Defense is still the biggest question mark.. it’s hard to picture them being worse than last year but.. think our d-backs and LBs should be improved but I also don’t see how our small d-line doesn’t just get pushed around.

I love the optimism. I can’t imagine us being in the range of 15 this year although there will be many opportunities to prove it. i would like some of the same kool aid that you are drinking.. serious question.. what gives you optimism that we are a top 15 team this year?

Looks like we play all four of this guys top 4 this year.. 3 at home. Seems like as good of a setup as we could ask for and plenty of opportunity to prove the voters wrong. Looks to me that UND is ranked correctly.. while I hope I’m wrong (and will be at every home game.. along with my mostly empty other season ticket seats). Feel free to raise your hand and disagree but I don’t see us in the top 25 or in the upper half of the MVFC. I hope the new offensive coordinator totally surprises me and the defense has a pulse this year.. but I’m expecting our peak is somewhere in the “other teams getting votes category”. Hope I’m wrong.

Generally agree.. Im more amazed that WR stay at NDSU than leave.. maybe Landry will change that offense but I doubt it.. A dominant o-line, solid rbs and running QBs.. why throw?

Recent hockey performance (last 7 years) would say that job security is not all that tied to hockey performance either .

There is clearly a limit to where incremental funding provides value.. the hockey team is significantly overfunded and clearly underperforms the level of funding… the football and basketball teams are in the underfunded categories where I think additional funding would provide significant benefit.. comparisons with NDSU and SDSU are valuable. None of this is intended as an argument to have extended bubba.. but one can at least argue that he gets decent results with mediocre funding. After 2016 I believe the hockey and football teams have the same number of playoff wins.. by the way I want all und athletic programs to be successful and hope eventually the hockey team can perform to the level of funding they are given.

Agreed… I was really intending this to be more of a comment about UND athletics.. even when we have the best funded team in the country we still can’t get a playoff win. I think the football team has as many playoff wins as the hockey team since 2016.. would be nice to expect more of both programs.

If you are on the ledge with the bubba extension feel free to wander over to the hockey playoff thread.. most overfunded program in college hockey.. still can’t get out of the first round.

I’m hoping that our new S&C guy is a big improvement.. would be really nice to see some of our players develop from freshman to senior the way we have been seeing the bison and rabbit players develop.

I think this is true on the offensive side of the ball.. not so sure on the defensive side. We will see what happens after the spring sessions.

I will be really surprised if we make it to 5 wins this next year. I could actually see us only getting 3. I hope I am surprised.. Im interested in seeing what the offense will do.. Im scared to death for what our defensive minded head coach and defense will actually do! My biggest question with this extension.. is just WHY? Same exact question as his last extension.. Why? He still had two years on his current contract!!!! I understand the perspective of wanting to have continuity for recruits etc.. but that is a never ending death spiral of extensions for mediocre performance. I doubt there is a single person that regularly attended UND football games in person last season outside of Bubbas family that thinks this extension was needed or a good idea. The debacle that has been this off season did not suggest that an extension was needed.. so again WHY? I read the article today and was sick to my stomach.. I already was expecting this next year was going to be rough unless the defense somehow magically improved.. I still had hope for the offense but was really nervous with all of the turnover (nervous but optimistic). Now I see 4 more years of Bubba.. (we will never buy him out) and Im just totally depressed. The difference between us and NDSU and SDSU seems like the Grand Canyon. At NDSU there was serious discussion about getting rid of Entz after he lost to us this year.. He recovered and by the end of the year was arguably the 3rd best team in FCS with a couple of incredible road playoff wins that UND can only dream of. At UND we extend a coach with a barely above .500 record. The difference in expectations and results between our two programs is so substantial its hard to take right now. Another comment above was that somebody would take a 20 pt spread against NDSU all day.. here are the last few games 2015 away - 9-34 ((25 pts) 2019 away - 7-38 (31 pts) 2020 away - 13-34 (21 pts) 2021 home - 10-16 (6pts) 2022 away - 21-42 (21 pts) 2023 home 49-21 - yay us.. Based on the last 4 road games in the dome we will get beat by at least 20 pts and we are likely bringing one of the worst defenses in recent memory and a lot of new offensive players/staff. My guess is NDSU will score as many points as they want to on us. I still have nightmares about Hunter Luepke battering the crap out of our undersized d-line. I havent decided what Im going to do with my season tickets yet.. I love UND football and am old enough to remember when we were relevant, but its getting harder and harder to make the drive up to Grand Forks.

Even more than no social.. no emails.. no publicity.. pretty lame

I’m pretty disappointed in the effort UND champions club has put into getting more fans engaged in this tournament and making sure they are informed. I’ve received at least 3 well done communications from NDSU with schedule information and how to purchase tournament tickets and my only connection to them was I bought some basketball tickets online when there were some good games in Fargo. Meanwhile I’m decently high up in the champions club.. I’ve had season football tickets for at least a decade.. and yet it’s crickets with respect to any correspondence on the summit league tournament in a year that the basketball team has some serious promise. UND continues to hammer home the point that they don’t care much about athletics or even put in a pretty basic effort unless it’s a couple ounces of frozen rubber.

This is an interesting look at it.. and while Im not a bubba defender and certainly ready for a change.. its pretty easy to argue that he has significantly outperformed his contracts versus underperformed (4 yrs in MVC.. 1st, 7th, 3rd, 3rd). UND can and should fund its football program better than it does including the coaching pay. While Im a supporter of all UND athletics, this data continues to grind me. Significantly improving the funding for the football and basketball programs would have way more potential impact on UND athletics than hiring another cook or dietician or altitude chamber for the hockey team.

It would be interesting to see the coaching salary table by conference for all of our major sports.. Hockey.. football.. Mens Basketball.. Womans Basketball.

I was at every game this year.. this view of the Peterson porch was pretty typical. Although your pic looks like it was either before the game or after it.

Is this still the hiring process? Ndsu seems to be able to fill their open spots a heck of a lot quicker than we do. also any news on the strength coach?