[UND - Idaho Game Day Thread]

It’s been terribly frustrating to be a fan of this program over the last 10 years. Always 1 step forward, 2 steps back. I think a change at the top is needed. 

[ISU Bengals Look-A-Likes]

DJ Hagler

1990s Justin Timberlake

 

[President Kennedy Candidate for UCF President's Job]

29 minutes ago, Godsmack said:

Story in the Herald today about Kennedy’s interview. Small sample size quoted but the student rep who sits on the committee and asked how Kennedy would deal with a potential DACA issue at UCF and apparently he gave a “politician’s answer” that didn’t sit well with her. 

Quote

"I tend not to get involved in political issues unless they directly impact UCF and are a priority for UCF," Kennedy said, adding that he would apply two tests: "Is it directly related to UCF? And is my involvement going to make a difference? If it doesn't meet both those tests, I stay being president of the University of Central Florida, because that's what I get paid to do. And so you'll find that I am not anxious to engage in any political debate unless it meets those two criteria."

His response was actually very good, and refreshing, in my opinion.  A typical politician would have pandered to the young woman who asked the question.  It does not appear Kennedy did that.  His answer will probably end up working against him in the politically correct environment of higher education, but it was the right answer.

[UND to cut women's hockey]

This thing has jumped the shark.  Whether he said it or not, calling it a boutique sport is simply not sexist. I am sorry to say this, but if your mind goes straight to a small women's clothing store when you hear the word boutique in any context, you simply do not have a strong vocabulary.  Or you are being shamelessly opportunistic.  I don't know the twins, so I will refrain from commenting on which category they fall into.  

[UND to cut women's hockey]

Just now, dlsiouxfan said:

UND really doesn't need to do anything.   People overestimate the effectiveness of a social media campaign.  The Lammy twins aren't even coming up with a plan to help defray the costs.  They are going to tweet and facebook about it and somehow that's supposed to convince UND to cut $2 million in costs someplace else.    

They will also have a lot of the print and TV media establishment in their pocket.  That, along with a social media campaign, worked very effectively against USA Hockey.  Granted, they also had a boycott at their disposal in that dispute, but they still "won" the battle by obfuscating the facts and by playing the gender-equity card.  I wouldn't underestimate the situation.  The propaganda needs to be countered with facts and reality.  

[UND to cut women's hockey]

32 minutes ago, sprig said:

It's time for UND to clear up the mess and put out exact numbers for costs and needed savings and how dropping other sports other than women's hockey would not work to stay in line with title 9.. There was nothing given at the news conference last week, unless Faison and Kennedy were more forthcoming in the 1 on 1's with the press afterwards. I've seen many numbers here but the athletic department has made a mess of this. I think Kennedy and the AD did what they had to do, but please explain. Anything I know or don't know comes from this forum, and while many of you know a lot more than me concerning the cuts, ti's time to hear if from the horse's mouth. What sport's exactly do the Lammy twins want to cut to make up for the budget cuts? 

I've been saying this since the press conference.  Faison and Kennedy needed to get out front of this.  They needed to be factual and present the cold-hard numbers in an articulate and persuasive manner.  They needed to make the public know exactly how much money this program was losing.  They needed to articulate how any other alternative would have resulted in more women losing the opportunity to compete. They needed to explain that prior to these cuts, UND was in Title IX compliance problems weighting in favor of the women.   They need to explain that there is no way to reinstate women's hockey without cutting multiple other women's sports.  I don't think most people even know that Title IX is a two-way street.

Some said it would be impolite to talk about the specifics at the press conference, like talking bad about someone at their funeral.  I say B.S.  Because they didn't hit this straight on, a false narrative has now developed and it could lead to a bigger problem for the University.  

The Lamoureux letter is chalk-full of emotion and entitlement, and completely void of facts.  They offer no viable alternative solution.  They got a victory against USA Hockey by playing the gender-equity card and it's gone to their heads.  They think they can do it again.  And why shouldn't they be confident?  USA Hockey did not fight back with facts and figures and caved because they were terrified of bad publicity.   Kennedy and Faison needs to take this seriously.  Start fighting back with facts and clarity.  Do not let this false narrative take root.  

[UND to cut women's hockey]

1 hour ago, The Sicatoka said:

As someone stated here yesterday: Be careful tossing around "Title IX". 

UND was unbalanced for M/F participation before baseball was cut. UND had too many FEMALE athletes. Then they cut baseball making bad worse. 

UND was prime for a Title IX suit ... from MALE athletes. 

That is absolutely true, but far too few people actually know that.  

We can criticize the Herald for not properly covering it.  That's fair game and I've done it.  But let's not forget that transparency should demand that a public institution should make this information more accessible, and to actually talk about it and explain it.  Faison stumbled around the Title IX issue at the press conference, but he didn't directly address it head-on.  He didn't make it known that UND had a Title IX problem from the men prior to this decision.  I know it's impolite to talk about unflattering numbers when you are cutting a sport, but I always prefer clarity and facts.  Explain your decision in a way that is concise and direct.  You don't need to take shots at the program, but be honest and transparent about why it was cut.  Don't beat around the bush. Explain that any other alternative would have resulted in more female athletes losing opportunities.  Don't let false narratives take over.  Faison was a little better on the radio this morning, but still fell short in my opinion.

[UND to cut women's hockey]

17 minutes ago, jk said:

Maybe I'm too far away from it, or maybe you guys are too close to it.  To people not there,  it looks like a Mickey mouse operation.  Just completely embarrassing.  Und is a hockey school, it should have both programs. 

Almost all college sports programs are money losers.  Track, swimming, etc.  Everything but select football,  basketball and a few hockey programs.  But schools still have them because it's part of being a major university.   Especially in their headline sports.  Like hockey at UND.

To those people who are not following this closely, I can see why this might look like a dumb decision.  The University has never really publicly admitted how much money women's hockey loses.  They even went out of their way to allocate expenses to the men's team that should have been shared by both teams, all in an effort to make the women's teams numbers not look as bad as they were.  Even today, they didn't talk about the numbers.  And you certainly won't read about it in the Herald or other media sources.  But the people who dig into this stuff and follow it closely know this was the right decision.  Others may seem mystified.  I personally think the University did not handle this well in the sense that they should have publicly justified their decision better with cold, hard numbers to better inform the casual observer on why this decision was the most logical one.

[UND to cut women's hockey]

2 minutes ago, jk said:

Maybe I'm too far away from it, or maybe you guys are too close to it.  To people not there,  it looks like a Mickey mouse operation.  Just completely embarrassing.  Und is a hockey school, it should have both programs. 

Almost all college sports programs are money losers.  Track, swimming, etc.  Everything but select football,  basketball and a few hockey programs.  But schools still have them because it's part of being a major university.   Especially in their headline sports.  Like hockey at UND.

Not all money losers are created equal.  Some lose a little bit of money, some a lot.  Women's hockey hemorrhaged money. 

[President Kennedy Message on Athletics]

1 hour ago, UNDColorado said:

1) I do. He is a public figure and good journalists put their feelings and personal opinions aside and report facts as is. Show me where he broke down the actual figures. His main argument is about placing women on the olympic team. He is playing off of emotions as evidenced by his posting history ever since the budget issues surfaced. Not even once did he reference how much this program costs the university. You don't have to like it but I believe UND made the correct decision today and Brad is publicly pouting.

Schlossman has shown numerous times that he is a great reporter when he wants to be.  He can dig, find facts, break them down, and put together a very informative and enlightening article.  Even when he's presenting an opinion piece, he has the capability to back up his opinion with a comprehensive set of facts.  That is why his shoddy coverage of the US women's national team story has been so disappointing.  He can have an opinion, but he omitted key basic facts and failed to give his readers a complete picture of the situation.  You are absolutely correct, he played off people's emotions.  He's a better journalist than that.

[UND to cut women's hockey]

1 hour ago, jk said:

Judging by the unanimity of the comments here, I guess I'm in the minority.  I'm not close to the details, but from a distance, the state appears to be incredibly poorly managed.  In the 10 years since the oil revolution began, the state is unquestionably massively more wealthy than it had been. How they managed to turn that into a higher education funding crisis is beyond me.  

During the oil boom, higher education spending was increased to unsustainable levels.  I don't think there's much debate about that.  

Quote

Hockey is the school's flagship sport.  It should have men's and women's teams.  In addition, the school is the state's flagship university, and should have a full roster of sports.  That they are not investing in the education system after having a mountain of money dropped on their heads is embarrassing. 

Smarter posters than me have shown that most flagships sponsored fewer sports than UND.  UND was actually an outlier in Division I for how many sports it sponsored.  I believe UND will now be in line with most flagships.  

[UND to cut women's hockey]

1 minute ago, Wildfan said:

They should've announced numbers at the press conference, it was the time to do it, not in individual one on one interviews. 

I agree with you.

[UND to cut women's hockey]

19 minutes ago, UNDBIZ said:

SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS per student athlete to keep WIH!

I can't repeat that number often enough.

Hopefully the right people at UND repeat this enough so that the public knows just how much money this sport loses on an annual basis. They should specifically compare the numbers of women's hockey to other sports to show the disparity.  Make sure that information makes it way into the papers and on the radio. This is a time to be factual, not polite.   I think many have a general idea that women's hockey might lose money, but most people don't understand just how much it loses compared to other sports.   

[UND to cut women's hockey]

5 minutes ago, jdub27 said:

The people criticizing UND are completely ignoring this. The other option was to leave WIH and then cut 2-3 more sports, impacting even more student athletes. These cuts weren't done for fun, they were done out of necessity, meaning something has to go. Cutting WIH by and away makes the largest financial impact and while impacting the fewest amount of student-athletes no matter how you measure it.

I agree.  The alternative to cutting women's hockey would have involved cutting additional women's sports that undoubtedly would have involved a greater number of female athletes.  By the numbers, this was a no-brainer decision.  It reached the budget goal while cutting the fewest number of athletes as possible, all while bringing the school back into Title IX compliance.  Nobody has presented a coherent argument on why women's ice hockey players should have been protected more than other female athletes at UND.

[President Kennedy Message on Athletics]

Wow, that was short.  Kennedy didn't even talk.  

[President Kennedy Message on Athletics]

1 minute ago, The Sicatoka said:

That won't be Kennedy. That'll be the consultant that they hired. Gay-ron-teed. 

Kennedy will make the initial statement; Faison will make some words about "informed teams"; consultants will explain the numbers. Takers on that prediction? 

You could be right, but I would prefer it if Kennedy showed some level of command with the numbers and demonstrates that he was involved and invested in this decision.  But if there is a consultant who provides some of the accounting details and Title IX concerns, that would be good as well.  

[President Kennedy Message on Athletics]

I hope Kennedy is studied up on the numbers and is prepared for this press conference.  The numbers, if forcefully argued, can effectively defend the decision.  He needs to not only explain how this decision alleviates the budget concern, but also why it the best (if not "only) decision to make.  He needs to address other options that were considered and why they would not have worked, or why they would have been detrimental to more athletes, etc.  He can't take an approach of not commenting on other sports that were considered.  He needs to go full frontal on accounting issues in this presser.  If he's not prepared on the numbers and does not perform well in this presser, things could get a little ugly for a while.  

[President Kennedy Message on Athletics]

When all the tweets and facebook posts start coming in from players, alumni, politicians, famous people, etc., we need to keep in mind that everyone who disagrees with this decision is likely to make their opinion public.  However, the people that agree with it, or at least understand it why it happened, have little or no motivation to publicly express their opinion (or be called callous, or even sexist).  So what we see on social media today is not at all indicative of public opinion.  

[US vs Canada - Women's Hockey]

1 hour ago, Yote 53 said:

100% agree. 

I pay about $100 a year in registration fees for my son's player membership and my coaching membership.  Add in the cost of Level 1-4 coaching certifications, with Level 4 costing me about $300 in registration not to mention 2 nights hotel and travel expenses (probably close to another $500), and paying for coaching modules at each age level, enough is enough.  I guess I just look at it as the cost of playing/coaching and am willing to bear it.  You know who isn't?  Mites.  New families.  They see a $50 registration fee to USA Hockey and they gripe.  Heck, we only charge new Mite skaters $50 for the season (which our foundation picks up the tab so it is essentially $0) and $100 for returning Mite players...but USA Hockey requires $50?  What the heck?  Something is not right with that picture.

 

In case you're scratching your head at the low cost of Mite hockey, fundraising picks up the difference.  All included we need to generate about $500/year to put a Mite player on the ice for a season.

Trust me, I know.  I spent more money and had to spend almost as much time to become a certified mite hockey coach as I did to get licensed to practice law.  It's ridiculously out of control.  USA Hockey seems to go out of their way to try and make hockey as expensive as possible.  Yes, some associations are able to subsidize mite players, or at least first year mites, but others aren't wealthy enough to have much of a subsidy.  Either way, it eventually catches up and it gets really expensive. I don't have a problem with mite subsidies.  If we're going to subsidize any group of hockey players, it should be mites.   That's why on all of these issues about lack of support of the elite athletes in hockey (boys and girls, men and women), I just roll my eyes.  

[US vs Canada - Women's Hockey]

12 minutes ago, fightingsioux4life said:

I don't think the salaries in this agreement can be compared to the millions of dollars that professional men's basketball and hockey players get. Get the NHL and NBA players out of international competition and offer amateur men's athletes a similar deal to what the women's hockey players got. That would level the playing field and allow our amateur athletes who have full-time jobs to be able to afford to compete in international tournaments.

Bottom line: I want the best athletes the United States has to compete on the international stage in every sport. Winning is good for national pride and for the development of sports at the youth level (the 1980 Miracle on Ice did that for hockey in a big way).

Don't your two paragraphs directly contradict each other?  Maybe I missed your point.  

[US vs Canada - Women's Hockey]

17 minutes ago, fightingsioux4life said:

This whole thing is an unintended consequence of allowing professional athletes into the Olympics. It has trickled down to the IIHF level as well. Get professionals out of the Olympics and things will even out.

It's not about whether professional athletes should be allowed to compete in the Olympics.  It's about whether the governing body should be the employer.  I have no problem with an athlete who is paid by a private company being allowed to compete.  But I do have a problem with the governing body being the employer.  

[US vs Canada - Women's Hockey]

17 minutes ago, AJS said:

I've ripped Hakstol in a couple of my posts on this subject since I saw his tweet. It all comes back to my feeling that it's really easy to spend other peoples money. Hakstol (like Schlossman) want to play hero. Not look at things objectively and kind of pick it apart (i.e. wanting Travel / Companion to equal men's makes sense, the $70,000 salary doesn't). Hak isn't brave for his stance, he just wanted to feed his own ego by having tell everyone what a great guy he is for standing up. I mean who cares who has to pay for it, it's not coming out of my paycheck.

100% agree.  The last person's opinion that matters to me on stuff like this is someone making a 7-figure income.  Hakstol can play hero, tow the politically correct stand, endear himself to media and lose nothing.  Same goes for the NHL players.  Why do they care if USA Hockey starts paying women?  They're making millions.  It's the little guy with young kids in hockey that pays for it.  I care about the family that chooses not put their kids in hockey because it's too damn expensive.  Yes, I realize that this ONE issue is not going to make or break someone deciding whether to play hockey, but it's the mentality of spending other people's money and making the sport more expensive based on deception and obfuscation by wrongfully claiming that the women weren't being treated fairly.  

[President Kennedy Message on Athletics]

9 minutes ago, The Sicatoka said:

If the public knew the real costs (and losses), there'd be a big push to eliminate non-revenue sports. 

State Sen Blowhard J. Rumpwarmer*: "Why are we supporting all these sport programs? What value are they giving to my constituents who are 350 miles from campus and have no jobs and broken streets and infrastructure in their town? Why are we taxing fixed-income widows in my district so some college boys and girls can travel around the country playing games?"

I still say the NCAA is the issue. I fundamentally disagree with the NCAA notion that if you want to play Sport X at Level N you must sponsor Y other (total) sports. 

 

*Yes, he does sound like Foghorn Leghorn, I say, I say. 

I think on an even deeper level, universities know they need to keep athletics because it creates an emotional attachment to the university for a lot of alumni and the community.  Without that emotional (and sometimes illogical) attachment, people would be taking a lot closer look with a critical eye at everything that universities do.  

[US vs Canada - Women's Hockey]

2 minutes ago, Yote 53 said:

Ehh, probably an increase of a couple of bucks unless they get some sponsorship to cover the cost.  A couple more bucks on hockey isn't that much.  It's a matter of principle though.  Just wrong if this is funded by the youth hockey playing membership.

I don't know how much dues will have to be increased because of it.  But if it's $1, that's $1 too much. USA Hockey should not be employing elite athletes who cannot find work as professional hockey players.  That is simply absurd and a slap in the face to all of us paying real money to belong to the organization.   

[US vs Canada - Women's Hockey]

USA Hockey completely caved.  Get ready for dues increases and the average stiff having to subsidize the lifestyles of grown women.   This situation was a farce from the beginning.  But our culture is a mixture of political correctness and ignorance, so this result was foreseeable.