bincitysioux

Congrats to Roebuck...................

My thought is that the last two recruiting classes make Jones look all right................ These guys will be juniors as we enter Big Sky play...............good things on the horizon I hope.....................

Going to ignore you now Dan....................... I'm Tivo-ing until I get the kids to bed. Don't take it personal.

I've got it on FTA satellite. Anybody get that has FCS from a cable provider?

On now. Attendance looks attrocious. Can't seem to find it on DirecTV................

Yes one auto bid

One thing is certain...............and that is that Tom Douple is an absurd little human being. Just watched Faison's press conference, to say the least he comes off as a tad more convincing than last time I heard Douple speak publicly back in January of 2009 when he told Dan Hammer roughly 6 times that he had NEVER, NOT ONCE discussed North Dakota's nickname with his presidents, and then 8 hours later told Jeff Kolpack that he'd been advising his members not to schedule UND.

Utah Valley, Chicago St., Texas-PanAm, and Houston Baptist are all still available to the Summit when they look to expand........ Douple had a vision of building the Summit League around the 4 Dakota schools. He saw it as the best way to fortify what has historically been the most unstable conference in all of the NCAA. It is quite possible that after the first expansion into the Dakota's, the core Summit schools would have preferred a more midwestern based school like SIU-Edwardsville. Douple eventually convinced them to see things his way regarding building around the Dakotas. UND squashed that vision when they joined the Big Sky. Losing SUU, despite claims that everyone in the league wanted them gone, leaves the Summit at an odd number of schools (Big Sky detractors will quickly point out the near insurmountable conundrum that an odd-numbered basketball league presents ). With SIU-E gone to the OVC, and UND gone to the BSC, the Summit is left with Chicago St., whom they jettisoned from the conference several years ago, as the most logical expansion candidate to get back to an even number of schools. The Summit president's want to see the contingency plan should another round of conference realignments take another bite out of the league. The Big Sky is encroaching on their turf. The Southland is being depleted. If Douple had never wanted to insert himself into the nickname issue "of his own volition", he wouldn't have at all. He would have simply forwarded UND's membership application to the President's Council and let them debate the issue. His own statements indicated that he alone decided to table the application. Again I ask, how in the world could the president of a university that isn't a member of a league, have the influence to convince the commissioner of that league to publically conduct himself in the manner in which Douple did, drawing criticism and antagonizing the stake-holders of that university to the point where many of us detested the Summit League long before the Big Sky ever came into play? As full fledged members of the Big Sky, just think of the things that Kelley and Faison will be able get Doug Fullerton to do for UND.

I agree, it was public knowledge that UND and the SBoHE wanted to speed up the process. Time was an important factor as far as the conference affiliation went, and things were looking rather dire when USD was included while UND was left out in the cold. No, it makes him look pretty bad.....................as usual. From Kolpack's article, Douple says: My, what a mighty sword UND wielded over Douple and the Summit League, which they were never a member of..............................with that kind of influence, Kelley and Faison's real crime would be having stopped with just that simple order.

He assumed he had UND in his back pocket for whenever he needed them and strung them along for 2+ years...............................then all of the sudden we were off the table. My, I wonder what his President's Council thinks of this grandstanding..................................

From Kolpack's article:

This is just comical...................... Douple is obviously jaded by UND's snub of the Summit League.................and Kolpack is prodding him for a story. The Summit League's "stance" on the nickname was first revealed to the public by NDSU athletic director Gene Taylor in response to the legislature exploring the idea of mandating a Sioux-Bison football game.....................that was several months before the Summit invited South Dakota to join the league. Why on earth would a conference official go out of his way to accomodate requests of a non-member school? This guy is completely preposterous.....................

Won't happen. The university wants/needs home games. You'd be hard pressed to find a low-major or mid-major program that doesn't play at least one and more often two non-DI teams. I don't know the requirements for getting into the NIT, but really the only access UND will ever have to the NCAA tournament will com from the Big Sky's autobid.

There are exempted tournaments such as the one in Idaho that we participated in this season. I believe you are allowed 4 non-DI games per year, but hopefully that will be reduced to just two with the Big Sky membership. Could still play non-DI exhibition games early on. I think in a perfect world a non-conference schedule in a given year could look something like this (home games bolded) USD NDSU UNI SDSU NAIA NAIA High-Major (Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10) Mid-Major (MVC, Horizon, WAC) 3 Game Exempt Tourney It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out, obviously alot probably hinges on the number of conference games the Big Sky ultimately decides on. If the 20 game model is adopted, perhaps UND will forget about the exempted tourneys and just try to load up on home games and maintain regional rivalries. I'm not so sure at this point though that a number of Big Sky schools, including North Dakota, would be in favor of the 20 game model.

No, I think most of us are talking about one game per year, alternating the home venue every other year.

I agree. NDSU comes to GF next year, and hopefully the past idiocy of both administrations regarding scheduling of non-football sports has been left in the past and this series will continue on an annual basis. I would also think that an annual game with USD will be continued on into the future. It would also be nice to get SDSU on the rotation and keep the series with UNI going. That would make for a very nice annual non-conference rotation, although I doubt that UNI would ever agree to annual home-and-homes, but would perhaps entertain coming to GF every 3rd year after we make consecutive visits, at least as long as Ben Jacobson is there. If marketed properly and provided we are competetive, home games against Montana, Montana St., Northern Colorado, and Weber St. have the potential to consistently draw "USD-ish" numbers, meaning the Sioux Center would be near capacity for those games. USD and especially NDSU every other year would give attendance numbers a huge boost.

The athletic department attributes any ticket sold prior to halftime of the first game to the women's attendance figures. Any additional tickets sold once the 2nd half of the women's game begins is attributed to the men's attendance figures and then added to the final attendance tally of the first game, which is why in the box score men's attendance is modestly higher than the women's game even though recent history suggests that many fans often left after the women's game.

I would kind of hope that USD would be coming back to the Sioux Center next season to return our favor of playing football in Vermillion two seasons in a row when they were desperate for a home game at the onset of the transition......................

Since the teams have only played a couple double-headers thus far, the better women's attendance seems to stand on its own. I think in recent seasons the men have been the beneficiaries of the double-headers as a lot of fans left after the women's game during the last few years of NCC play and DI transition years.................

Gridiron Power Index 1. Eastern Washington 10. NDSU 11. Montana St. 14. Sacramento St. 19. Northern Arizona 23. Montana 26. Weber St 27. SDSU 28. Southern Utah 29. Cal Poly 35. UC Davis 51. South Dakota 61. Portland St. 62. Northern Colorado 63. Northwestern St. 67. North Dakota 84. Lamar 91. Idaho St. Conference Rankings 1. Colonial Athletic Association (21.850) 2. Southern Conference (28.208) 3. Big Sky Conference (28.611) 4. Missouri Valley Football Conference (29.719) 5. Great West Conference (38.531)

The women have outdrawn the men in each of the previous 3 seasons. Kind of surprises me that the discrepency is so much larger this year than in the past though considering that the women had a horrid start, and the men are somewhat entertaining and more competetive than in recent years...................

Poor overall FG shooting, poor FT shooting, and poor perimiter defense were the reason this game was lost. It never should have gotten to one OT, much less the 4th one that was result of Chris Webber possessing Jamal Webb's body............ This was one ugly basketball game from the very start. But there are 5 freshman on this team that are all very fun to watch.......................

This is hands down the most idiotic piece of legislation to come out of Bismarck in quite some time..................................... I hope they also give my employees the authority to overrule me........................ Where's a good old Sioux-Bison football bill when you need one....................

I don't know anything about the Kueber kid, but heigth was a big reason I brought up Lindahl in another thread..................he seems like Pat Mitchell type player, and you never know, could end up being a surprisingly productive player like Brekke has been this season.......

New Voice For Sioux Football I'd love to do it....................... But my guess is it will be Paul Ralston.................