mksioux

I figured this would be a rough game, but I didn't think it would be this bad. Looks to be another long season. It'll be interesting to see whether this years team continues to work hard and gets better by the end of the year, or whether they fold and mail it in like last year's team.

SJSU 37 UND 13 I'd love to be wrong, but this team was abysmal last year and it lost a lot of its best talent. Yes, Bubba will be a marked improvement over Mussman, but he's not a miracle worker.

I have mixed feelings. The deal is awful obviously and UND does not look good in accepting such an awful deal. On the other hand, Bubba apparently wanted it and he knows what's good for recruiting purposes. The game being played as early as next season is a little scary. UND was brutally awful last year. I sure hope Bubba can make enough strides to make the game competitive by next year. That's asking a lot. I'd hate to see a blowout. And who knows what the landscape will be in 2019. That's a long way out and a lot can happen from now until then.

Except for the "Hail State" slogan on the front, the Mississippi State uniform looks perfectly acceptable to me. Change the colors and put "North Dakota" on the front, and I'd be happy with that design.

How did NDSU vote on the new exit fee? If NDSU has plans to leave the conference like you claim, why would they want the exit fee raised?

My sentiments exactly. This all sounds good in theory, but very few people outside of friends and family will take advantage of it. Maybe if they find a small venue in Vegas, it might work. Put it in Sacramento, Spokane, or Seatte and this idea will be a disaster. For a major conference, I think a pre-determined venue makes sense. For the Big Sky, it doesn't. I understand travel is a concern, but I still think having the regular season champion host the tournament is far and away the best choice for the Big Sky.

There was nothing remotely outrageous in Bulk's post. Not sure what you're wowing about.

We don't agree. Intrastate rivalries are generally the best in football. The reason I pointed to the UND-Minnesota hockey rivalry was to refute your point that interstate rivalries are not as toxic as intrastate rivalries. Sometimes they are. As to the Big Ten hockey thing, that's another topic. But the short answer is the Big 10 would never allow UND to be an affiliate member because those schools don't consider UND to be a peer institution academically. What are you saying exactly? We should be proud of each other's accomplishments? And you think the best way to achieve that is if UND and NDSU don't play each other? If that is what you're saying, I disagree. First of all, you can be proud of the other's accomplishments even if they are playing the game, or you can choose to not care about the other team even if you're not playing. I don't think whether the two schools play each other is going to change anything in terms of your "efficiency and productivity" calculation. If anything, it more inefficient to not play the game. And since you brought up the 70-80% of the State that you do not consider the Lunatic Fringe, I bet you most of them want to see the game played. In fact, it's the Lunatic Fringe (mostly on the NDSU side, but some on UND's side) that doesn't want to see the game resumed. So I guess I fail to see your point. I know hard-core UND fans that were rooting for NDSU to beat Minnesota because of a State-pride thing. Do you not think those same people wouldn't have felt the same way if the rivalry game with NDSU was still being played? I think they would have. Likewise, those UND fans cheering against NDSU did so even though the rivalry game wasn't being played. I know you're trying to come across as a moderate, and maybe you are. But your end-game sounds very similar to the NDSU Lunatic Fringe -- Everyone rally around NDSU football and UND hockey and let UND football fade into obscurity. But UND football will get better, and as they do, that pull for the two schools to compete will only get louder.

I don't really disagree with you on the bolded parts, but what do you propose be done about it now? You aren't going to merge the schools together. UND isn't going to drop football. There's really nothing that can be done at this point. So there's no sense it trying to deny or change the natural rivalry between the two schools - even if it is polarizing or "inefficient". If you are talking about practical efficiencies for the present day, you could make an argument that it is inefficient and waste of resources of UND and NDSU to be scheduling non-conference games with various teams around the country rather than the one that would generate the most fan interest 70 miles down the road. Ideally, for maximum efficiencies, UND and NDSU would be in the same conference, along with similarly situated state flagship schools in the region, but there's no way of forcing that to happen. As to your Ohio and Louisiana comparisons, NDSU fans would love it if UND became the "Ohio" of North Dakota and they became the "Ohio State." Some of them use that comparison when explaining why NDSU shouldn't play UND. But Ohio and Ohio State weren't arch-rivals for 110 years. In fact, they've only played 7 times in their entire history. The two institutions are not comparable either. Even though Ohio is older, the Ohio legislature made a conscious decision shortly after Ohio State opened that it would be the flagship university in the State and it has been ever since. Ohio was essentially relegated to Normal School status for several decades. Complete apples and oranges comparison. Same with Louisiana. Louisiana-Lafayette and Monroe are not flagship schools and are not peer institutions with LSU - either institutionally or athletically. Tulane used to be in the SEC several decades ago, but Tulane is a private school. Again, apples and oranges. Partisans can keep coming up with new excuses why the game shouldn't resume, but they can't change the simple and undisputable fact UND and NDSU are peer institutions 70 miles apart from one another with over a century of history between them. Eventually, that is what will get the schools playing each other again. It's inevitable. It might take some more personnel turnover, but it will eventually happen.

All good rivalries are polarizing. That's the whole point of them. UND-Minnesota hockey is about as polarizing of a rivalry as you can get and that is an interstate rivalry. In fact, Don Lucia wanted a cool-down period because he thought the rivalry had gotten too toxic. And, despite his feelings (which seem to be similar to yours), most fans of both teams were furious that the rivalry went on hiatus. I don't know many people who think the goal of a good rivalry is to be "efficient" or "productive." If you mean some sort of unifying rivalry game that the entire State can get behind, that's never going to happen with football in North Dakota as long as both UND and NDSU are both playing football at the same level. Your efficiency argument would have made a great deal of sense in the 1880s. I would have gladly supported only ONE public state university being established in North Dakota. But it's too late for that now. Your NDSU versus Minnesota example isn't on point. To be sure, there were some UND fans rooting for NDSU in that game. Maybe they liked the underdog angle, or hated Minnesota because of the hockey rivalry. But let's not kid ourselves, there were other UND fans that were rooting against NDSU, and there were many more that were genuinely torn. More importantly, Minnesota is not, and never will be, a "rival" of NDSU. Despite the recent games, Minnesota fans will never be as excited to beat NDSU as vice-versa. A more apt comparison of an interstate rivalry is NDSU vs. SDSU. And I don't know of a single UND fan that cares about that game or feels a sense of State pride when NDSU beats them.

Wow, that is some good tinfoil hat stuff. Impressive. I don't think any of us know why Schlossman decided to file an open records request and write the story when he did. It could just be that he has time on his hands now that hockey season is over. But go ahead and jump to conspiracy theories. It does make the internet more interesting. As to the rest, you'd have to be pretty stupid to be a highly-visible public employee in North Dakota and not assume that every email you send might one day become public. So I don't doubt that both Faison and Taylor draft their emails accordingly.

There has to be more to the story than the newspaper story conveys. The biggest question I have is that once an agreement in principle was reached in April 2011, why did it take until January 2013 for the draft agreement to be exchanged? It seems implausible that they'd reach a deal of that magnitude, and then just sit on it for 20 months before formalizing and announcing it. There must be more to the story.

I think he means he doesn't want students to think they can hide behind the 1st Amendment. You know, that pesky little 1st Amendment.

I tend to agree with you. The only thing that has me scratching my head is why Gene Taylor doesn't just come out and say he's not interested in renewing this series at this time. If he has as much clout and stakeholder support as the Bison posters say he does, then why doesn't he just say that and cut the pretense? It appears to me that he's trying to appease some constituency into believing he's making a good faith effort to renew the series, even though he has no intention of doing so. I really don't care what he does at this point. I just prefer clarity.

I don't have words to describe this. One has to read the whole thing to really believe it. http://www.scribd.co...Indian-Students Pass a resolution prohibiting fellow legislators from speaking an opposing viewpoint? Really? Can someone this openly repressive possibly get elected to the North Dakota House of Representatives? Has the Herald covered this guy's resolution? Did it pass? What was the vote? I don't care where you stand on the nickname issue or whether you are a Republican, Democrat, or Independent, Kyle Thorson is not fit for public office. Regular people in Grand Forks need to know about Kyle Thorson and actually get involved to make sure he never gets elected to anything outside of UND.

Well, yes, the objective was to get rid of fans waving confederate flags. But they were able to come up with a content-neutral policy to achieve that objective. It's not so easy to do that when you are trying to ban clothing. I guess it wouldn't surprise me at this point to see them try. It would easier to challenge in court than the Ole Miss example, but even if it's ultimately struck down by the courts, administrators will have at least taken the pressure off themselves and will have someone else to blame. I think re-education classes (in the name of diversity or sensitivity training) for incoming freshmen is a foregone conclusion. Who knows where it will go from there, but it certainly will not be kind to free speech and free thought. You don't create a "Associate Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion" position and expect that person to not do anything.

You're missing the point. While the obvious target was the confederate flag, Ole Miss' actual policy was content neutral. It did not single out a specific flag or image. Any flag with a stick or pole, or any flag bigger than 12X14 was banned under the policy. When a policy is not content neutral (i.e. targets a specific logo or image), it greatly increases the constitutional scrutiny.

Whether UND has the right to prevent entry to a UND function based on what a person is wearing (or not wearing) is a different issue than UND punishing students for what they wear. If kids wearing these shirts would have been denied entry to a UND event, I don't think anyone would argue about it. But punishing them after-the-fact (by suspension, expulsion, or re-education) is an entirely different manner. Regardless of whether these kids are UND students or where the pictures were taken, I don't think UND - as a public institution - should have a right to punish them. Nobody even seems to acknowledge anymore that, in a free society, the government has no business punishing people for wearing distasteful or offensive clothing. The remedy for this kind of speech is more speech -- and there has been plenty of that. That should be the end of it.

When the policy was first announced in 2005, Jeb Bush was Governor and Charlie Crist was the Attorney General. They both were very vocal. By the time North Dakota officials went to Indianapolis, it was way too late in the game. There was an initial public backlash against the NCAA when the policy was first initiated. That was the time to go for the jugular.

After the namesake exception was created, State officials didn't meaningfully engage the tribes. Even after the settlement, nothing happened until the 11th hour. You can say you can't negotiate with an empty chair, but sometimes you can if you do it right. If they don't want to engage you privately, you engage them publicly until they come to the table. The problem with the North Dakota officials is that they were afraid of offering the Tribes anything tangible. Apparently they thought it would look too much like a bribe. But that was the only way they could have gotten a deal done. They needed to offer the Tribes scholarships, a percentage of merchandise, etc. They needed to offer them something that they couldn't refuse. Offer real and meaningful things publicly if Tribal officials were not receptive to private overtures. Let the people on those reservations know what their leaders were ignoring. If they had employed that strategy, there was a decent chance that the people on the Tribes would have demanded that their officials listen. It's possible that the tribal government was so dysfunctional that it never would have worked anyway, but I would have liked to see more of an effort. From an outsider's perspective, it just seemed like people that had the power to do something didn't care enough to do what needed to be done.

Yes x 100. The difference between Florida and North Dakota politicians reacting to the original policy was night and day. Florida's Governor (Jeb Bush), the AG, and the Congressional delegation all raised holy hell and let the NCAA know in no uncertain terms that they were about to enter a fight they wanted no part of. North Dakota's politicians said virtually nothing. When Charles Kupchella is your #1 defender, you know you have a problem.

Exposure is good for the program. And I would have liked to have seen UND get a game or two on Root for the good of the program. But there is a silver lining. Most fans can't actually watch the games if they're on Root (including me), but everyone can watch them when they're not on Root. Given that UND is outside of Root's footprint, I suspect that the only time UND will be on Root is when they're playing one of the Montana schools. I'm not sure that UND's record plays that big of a role in the decision making.

While it would be nice for UND to get the exposure that a game on Root Sports provides, for those of us that don't have satellite that actually want to watch the games, it's actually good that UND didn't get a game on Root.

Apparently you were the one with less-than-stellar reading comprehension buddy. I wasn't the one who didn't comprehend a key component to the story. I saw your later post after I posted, but didn't feel the need to delete my post. Sue me.

This is a really tough situation and I'm not sure there are any right answers. I was very surprised when he made the decision to go back to Mankato. I thought he'd take the compensation to make up the salary difference and stay coaching at the place that gave him a chance when nobody else would. And perhaps he could have handled his departure at Minot differently. However, it's safe to say I don't know what it's like to have gone through what Todd Hoffner had to go through. I can't even imagine it. So for that reason, I can't blame him for the decision he made. I think he had the right to do what he felt was in the best interest of his family. And regardless of whether it was the "right" decision (if there is such a thing in this situation), these Mankato players are acting disgraceful.