bincitysioux

As far as football and the other sports go, I think North Dakota has a pretty good deal with the arrangement with Midco, especially since they are still affiliated with Fox College Sports. Where they really screwed the pooch is allowing the NCHC to broker the "exclusive" national deal with CBS. It's unfortunate that Cable One subscribers don't have access to MidcoSN, but, hey, lots of other people don't including me. If you can't get service from Midco, your next best option is DirecTV. The biggest negative to me of going with Midco vs "in-house" is the fact that the weekly coaches show (the one that Pat Sweeney has hosted state-wide on Sunday nights my entire life) went from being available in about 600,000 North Dakota homes to about 30,000 North Dakota homes. That hurts in my eyes. I understand that Midco has like 3 weekly shows devoted to UND, but only fraction of the former potential audience has access to it right now, unless they want to watch online. Grampa doesn't want to watch online, and neither do I.............................

Along the same lines, I'm curious as to what happened to Northern Colorado............ In their best years, SDSU was a middle of the pack NCC team. UNC, along with North Dakota and NDSU, and to an extent UN-Omaha, were always the top football programs in the NCC. Northern Colorado has had an astonishing fall from grace, just as SDSU has had a meteoric rise.................

I'm a bit surprised by the score of the Montana-App St. game................... Not at all surprised that Montana won, but that they did so easily.

I'm watching the volleyball fame on bigskytv right now. The video quality is much improved from last season.........

Big sky football preview playing on Root NW at 1:00

I'm a bit concerned about our ability to stop SDSU's run game.

Impressive win for the Bison. Congrats. I don't like them, but I respect them........

I thought the Alerus finally got the intro right last night. Best I have seen in years.

Run defense is still a concern it seems to me. Special teams were shakey.

Start winning games and being competitive in the Big Sky, and the Alerus will rocket up the list. The environment and fan participation is what makes a stadium for the most part IMO. From 2001-2006 or so, the Alerus was a raucous and rowdy place. We get back to that, and I say only Wa-Griz and Bobcat Stadium beat it.................

My family of four is heading to the UC Davis game in November. We're gonna fly to San Fransisco, do some sight seeing, visit some family, and drive to Davis for the game. Gonna make a little 5 day vacation out of it.....................

Thursday 8/29 Southern Utah @ S. Alabama Valparaiso @ North Dakota Monmouth @ Montana State Sac State @ San Jose State E. Oregon @ Portland St Friday 8/30 NAU @ Arizona Saturday 8/31 UC Davis @ South Dakota Langston @ Northern Colorado Eastern Washington @ Oregon State San Diego at Cal Poly SFA @ Weber State App St @ Montana

Ira, you always have awesome insight, so when you speak, I listen. You are usually right on the money. I hope whoever does not get named the starter doesn't bail at the end of the year. On the other hand, a 4 year long QB controversy probably wouldn't do anybody any good. I haven't seen either guy play, other than in the spring game, but given all the hype surrounding Molberg (which as been down right exhausting over the last year), if Bartels beats him out in camp then I assume he must be really impressing the coaching staff.

Once you put on the North Dakota uniform, you are a North Dakotan...............

North Dakota makes the playoffs.

Dan Hammer tweeted that Ryan Kasowski will be the color analyst for football this season. Probably explains why he has been hanging around at practices..........

The feeds on Big Sky TV from Northern Arizona last season were hands down the best on that platform. Hopefully since many North Dakota games will be on TV in HD, that means ours will be of similar quality on the webcasts.

Talked to Dexter on the phone this week and he said season tickets are just a shade over 4,500.

IT IS GETTING A BIT PERSONAL IN HERE, KEEP IT ON TRACK, AND KEEP IT CIVIL PLEASE.

Big Sky TV carries any game that is played in a Big Sky venue..............

THERE HAS NOT BEEN MUCH DISCUSSION OF THE NICKEL TROPHY IN THE LAST FEW PAGES, WHICH IS WHAT THIS THREAD IS FOR. GET IT BACK ON TOPIC.

I bought my tix on March 6, the day they went on sale. According to the AXS site, I'm sitting in Section GA2, seats 1105-1108. I don't see a section "GA2" on the seating charts that are available. Anyone know where the heck I am going to be sitting at?

Last I heard, it gets moved around amongst the coaching staff for safe-keeping. It made an appearance a couple years ago for a commercial for UND that Coach Mussman was in. I think it should be on display at the Alerus Center, along with the National Championship trophy. Where is the National Championship trophy by the way? It seems to me that the two most prized tokens of North Dakota football history should be able to be easily viewable for the fans on game day. You walk by multiple championship and Hobey Baker trophies on the way to a hockey game, why can't we pass by the NC Trophy and the Nickel on the way to a football game?

I tend to agree with most of that. The NCHC should have bent over backwards in every way possible to get Notre Dame into the league. They may not be a "traditional" hockey power, but the school itself is certainly the most recognizable brand name in NCAA sports. Having said that, I don't agree that staying in what has become of the WCHA would be preferrable to the NCHC. The admission of St. Cloud is an eyesore, but at least they do emphasize hockey. Staying aligned with Denver and CC, and then adding Miami was a great shift under the circumstances.................... On a sidenote, I see that there will be no TV coverage for the 3rd place game of the NCHC tourney.

I can't speak to this year or 2005, but I can tell you that in 2006 there were 3,730 season tickets sold, so it is apparently above that number.............