82SiouxGuy

Your knowledge of the inner workings of the UND athletic department is simply amazing.

I believe they moved them 1 section to the north.

And how much do you think your opinion is worth in the UND athletic department, or on this board?

The Media Guide lists most records. I haven't looked to see if they have sacks on the list. You can find the Media Guide at UNDSports.com under Football.

Dear Clueless in Fargo, University of North Dakota is more important than a nickname. The people of North Dakota have said so. It is time for the University to move forward without the nickname. That is the message that all 3 posters made. Not one of them said "good riddance" to the nickname. That only happened in your tiny mind. If you don't want to see the message then you may not want to read this board any longer. The majority of the posters on this board are happy to be moving forward, joining the new conferences, without having to deal with sanctions. It is a chance for University of North Dakota athletics to succeed at a new, higher level. Your petty rants aren't going to help your cause, and neither is continually misreading the attitudes of people on this board. Dr. Phil

I didn't say that he could be really good. He might end up that way, but that isn't what I said. The program has made improvements over the past several years. That proves he isn't horrible. Horrible coaches don't go 8-3 no matter what their competition is. Coaches aren't usually good automatically. Bill Belichick had a 36-44 record as coach of the Cleveland Browns. He had 1 winning season. How did he end up as a coach? Most people would consider him to be a pretty good coach. Mussman probably isn't going to be anywhere near as good a coach as Belichick, but you can't determine how good a coach can be during his first few years. Mussman has made improvements to the program over the past few years. The recruiting looks better each year. He earned his new contract.

Would a good coach allow his team to go 3-8 just after finishing transition? Good coaches aren't decided by a single game or a single season. Mussman had no head coaching experience before taking this job. He took a bunch of kids recruited for Division 2, slowly shifted the recruiting to D I athletes, expanded the recruiting territory, and got the program through the transition. Both his recruiting and his coaching have improved over the transition period. He has earned an extension by making improvements to the program. Is he a good coach? That's a little too early to know. But he isn't the horrible coach they think he is over at Bville. Only time will tell whether he is really a good coach or not. And a 3 year extension right before the last year of your contract isn't exactly huge job security.

That would be a weak argument. These are college athletes playing a game. Even good professional teams have games where they play down to an opponents level, or worse. Saying that a good coach can control that in every game is a false premise.

There are a lot of Wildcats, but I couldn't find any Wildcatters in college sports. The University of Findlay, a small private school in Ohio, is the only college I can find that uses Roughnecks. They only use it for their wrestling team. It looks like they use Oilers for the other sports.

Dear Clueless in Fargo, No one got murdered. A college sports nickname is being retired. The 2 aren't even in the same universe. If you really believe they are similar, you have a major problem. You have always seemed to be a bitter, resentful person. This is just adding to the problem. You might want to get some professional help to recover. It would also help with the above issue. And just because the nickname is being retired doesn't mean that people won't always have strong feelings for, and a strong bond to the nickname. We just can't use it as the official name of the sports teams. Again, not nearly the same thing. Dr. Phil

They had one to announce joining the Big Sky when it was originally announced. I haven't heard about a press conference to announce that UND has become an active member of the conference. It isn't necessarily big news when everyone has known it has been coming for 1 1/2 years. I might expect something about the time that UND is ready for the first conference competition.

The project is scheduled to be completed 1 week before the 1st game. As of 2 weeks ago they were on or ahead of schedule. I don't have a breakdown of when the pit was going to be done or the turf installation was going to start.

Midco is trying to build a regional sports entity. And they have a distribution system that covers the Dakotas plus part of Minnesota. The sports channel is a niche that they can fill, in part using UND athletics as an anchor. At best, Forum has an extended single market between Grand Forks and Fargo. Plus they would have contractual issues with ABC if they wanted to show games on Channels 6 and 8. Forum Communications has more limitations on where they could go with the product. Their only other option would be to go to Midco or other distribution outlets to move the product. It's just a better business fit for the Midco Sports Network. The other thing to remember is that the equipment that Midco will be purchasing will not be limited to use on UND athletics. They will get a lot more use out of the equipment than Forum could ever get. It's more cost effective for Midco.

No, the football never used the Sioux logo much. But that doesn't mean that they won't use the new logo, depending on what it looks like. The fact that it is a question mark might be the hangup. There have been people that want to move away from the interlocking ND logo because of the association with Notre Dame. It is possible that they just didn't want to lock themselves into using that logo for another 10 or more years if the rest of the department is moving to a new name and logo.

Maybe part of the reason that they didn't push to have the interlocking ND at midfield is the fact that UND will be looking at a new nickname and logo in less than 3 years. The turf is going to be in place for at least 10 years.

UND put up $2 million because they wanted to upgrade to the top of the line turf. The Alerus Center had budgeted for basic replacement of what was there. UND wanted the upgrade. So UND paid for the upgrade.

The Alerus Center is owned by the City of Grand Forks, not UND. UND is just a tenant. The tenant doesn't normally define the terms of the Naming Rights contract for the facility. The terms of the naming rights contract were pretty good for the city when the contract was signed, so putting a UND logo at midfield was probably not on their minds.

There is a difference in the naming rights agreements. Alerus Financial pays for naming rights of the Alerus Center. Gate City pays for naming rights of the theater at the Fargodome. That is a lower level agreement. If they called it the Gate City Dome it would probably be different.

Don't forget that the new Midco Sports Channel contract is going to pay UND $1 million over 5 years. The previous TV contracts paid nothing, and may have cost UND money for production expenses. As others have stated, Midco is going to try to work with FCS to broadcast at least some of the UND games in future years.

You play the games when they are available. It would probably be better to play K State a little later in the season so that UND would be more ready, but that was probably when K State wanted to play a lower ranked type team. The exhibition games are just a chance to work on things in a game situation. It is kind of like the hockey team playing an exhibition game in December, which they do most years.

Grand Forks Herald's updated story says that UND is getting $1 million over the 5 years of the contract. HD will be in 3rd year. Midco has listed a variety of openings for Midco Sports Network in Grand Forks, including on-air talent and producers. It sounds like they are growing the department and putting an operation in Grand Forks full-time.

Whatever the ceremony was, it happened on the UND campus. The vast majority of the delegation was from Standing Rock. It sounds like there were at least a couple of people from Spirit Lake in attendance. Whether it was actually a religious pipe ceremony is in question. The fact that tribal leadership at Standing Rock has not followed the wishes expressed at the ceremony, and in fact has been actively against the use of the nickname for 20 years, would lend credibility to the fact that it might not have actually been a religious pipe ceremony.

Is it wise to keep a gift if that gift is going to cause difficulty or damage to some part of the University? Kelley, Faison, O'Keefe and others are tasked with protecting the interests of the University. That is what they get paid to do. That is what they can get fired for not protecting. They did their job. It was time to retire the nickname to protect the University from the NCAA sanctions. Giving up the gift was the price required to protect the long term interests of the school.

All reports I've heard say that the 2 Presidents get along well. Bresciani works for the same board as Kelley, so it would make some sense that he protected a fellow employee. Especially if he believed that Kelley wasn't at fault.

As bin said, Nakota is a tribe. So are Dakota and Lakota. Nokota is a wild horse, http://www.nokotahorse.org/cms/.