82SiouxGuy

I didn't say that he should be benched the rest of the season. But if he's struggling as much as he has seemed to, a night or 2 off might not be a bad thing. Blood only played 31 games his first season so he sat on the bench for about 25% of the season. When you have a bunch of talented players it doesn't hurt to give each one a night off once in a while to keep them fresh and to keep everyone on the team involved.

I've got a single upper deck ticket for tonight (Friday) available because someone is out of town. Send me a PM if you are still looking.

One of the advantages of having quality depth is that you can give a player a night or 2 off if they are struggling. It also helps keep people fresher. Forbert has played a lot of games over the last few weeks, maybe a night or 2 off would help him out. It would also get someone else some needed playing time.

There is no way that anyone can try to pick odds on this topic right now with any kind of accuracy. The process for deciding a new name hasn't been announced yet, and may not even be decided yet. No one knows who is going to make the decision, or even have actual input. No one has a clue which names will actually be considered. Your list is just a guess. There are no actual facts that can be used to base anything on. So any "odds" that are thrown out right now are just a WAG.

Malone on Friday and Frattin on Saturday

Midco SN is the Midcontinent Sports Network. It is on all Midcontinent cable systems. The channel varies from town to town. In Grand Forks it is the same channel as the Fighting Sioux Sports Network. They use content like all of the FSSN productions, stuff from USD and high school sports. As AZ said, Direct TV uses 617 and 623 for Fox College Sports most of the time, and uses 625 at times. From what I have seen they usually list the schedule a couple of days out. In other words, you can usually find the weekend schedule on Wednesday. It sometimes gets changed with little notice. But I believe that the UND games always make it to one of the 3 channels. You should be able to find it on the Direct TV web site. You should also be able to figure out which channel your local Comcast system uses for FCS Atlantic, Central and Pacific. The 3 FCS networks will have their schedule posted about a week out. Figure out which channel is on which number for your system, and check the Fox College Sports web site to figure out where you can find the games.

They are still going to have to play another school most of those weekends. Because of the odd number of teams it is just going to screw up the rotation. There will still be travel issues, maybe more because UND is an outlier. Besides, the conference has all of its games on Thursday night, so they aren't going to make an exception for 1 school.

On paper your ideas look pretty good. In reality, not all of them are possible. First is scheduling. For one thing, UND doesn't control conference scheduling, so they can't set up whatever they like. It looks like the Big Sky has a Thursday-Saturday schedule for men's basketball, with 1 game on Sunday every week (for TV I'm sure). Women's has the same schedule, only they have 1 or 2 games on Monday instead of Sunday. The men and women's schedule are different, so it looks like one is on the road while the other is at home. Because of the large travel distances in the conference I would be surprised if they could go to a Friday-Saturday or Saturday-Sunday schedule even if they wanted too. Remember, the NCC was a bus league. The day off between games is at least in part set aside for a travel day. Another problem with non-conference scheduling is that the opponents have a say about when they want to visit. The bigger the school, the more drawing power they have and the more that they are going to want to play at home on weekends. That means transitional teams and teams from lower conferences aren't going to be able to get many home games at all against upper level teams, and very few of those are going to be on the weekends. Lower division teams are more likely to show up when you want, but they aren't a big draw anyway. Plus the travel thing causes problems again for teams, so I don't see any way that regular games on Friday-Saturday or Saturday-Sunday will ever happen at this level. The one thing you could do is develop a practice of having a home game from one or the other of the basketball teams almost every Saturday. But in most cases it would be the only game of the weekend at home. The other idea that sounds good on paper but may not be as easy to make happen is giving the students the good seats. First, are they going to show up? They don't seem to show up at a lot of basketball games now, and they don't show up nearly as much as they used to for football even though they have those seats. Even when they do show up, they leave at halftime in large numbers. It looks bad if those seats aren't used, and now it shows up on television all over the country with the Fox College Sports contract. It also could cut into revenue for the athletic department. People are paying good money for those seats. They may not be willing to pay as much for lesser seats. And that would be a shame if they are moved to another area, pay less money, and the seats sit empty for most of the games. If there was a pretty good chance the seats would be filled by students for most if not all of the games I may support that more. As it is now, especially when I sit in the section next to the students at the football games, I'm not sure that giving those seats to the students is really good for the program. Is it possible to add more permanent seating and still give the Betty the ability to be a good practice facility? I think it would eliminate the ability to go to side-by-side courts and have multiple things going on at the same time. They use it for both basketball teams plus volleyball, so in the fall semester it has a pretty heavy schedule. I don't know if putting in permanent seats would disrupt that or not. But you would think that they could get some better portable bleachers that could go on the ends of the court. That would help fill in the ends and make for a little better atmosphere.

There is actually about 4 1/2 feet of snow in Fargo right now, I believe that Newman Outdoor Field is quite a ways from the river and will be unaffected by the flood waters, and the average high temperature in Fargo on April 2nd is 46 degrees. I think it might be doable. I've seen high school baseball teams practicing outdoors in March and I've seen years when they have trouble getting games in before the middle of May. It just depends on how the Spring develops.

It's interesting how individualized the taste in music can be. If I were going to start a list of banned artists it would start with the Village People.

Hopefully more than just a few of us.

Trupp

You would have to ask at the Sioux Shop, but I would think that a player's eligibility would end either when he signed a pro contract or at the end of his senior season.

My guess is that the decision was either made because of contractual obligations, or because of total dollars. In other words, total sales of UND merchandise versus sales of a couple shirts. I think the total UND sales of merchandise far surpasses a couple of shirts.

You seem awfully sure of yourself. Unless you are part of the decision making process for the 2 schools in question, and were to remain in that postion for a long period of time, you can't be any more sure of that than anyone else is of their opinion. I'm not saying that it is definitely going to happen, just that it definitely is a possibility. Big Ten schools are more politically correct than most other colleges and that is saying a lot.

Minnesota may or may not make that decision. Wisconsin is pushing the Big Ten Conference and would gladly give up regular games against UND to play a Big Ten schedule. It isn't far to go from there to not playing UND at all. I don't say I told you so, but I wouldn't be quite so sure of yourself either.

How often has the NCAA admitted that they made a mistake? Did the NCAA want all of the facts, or did they just want a specific result? What incentive does the NCAA have to give up a win, and to give up a result that they originally wanted? Do they really care what the people of the reservations want, or did they just use the approval of the tribes as an easy excuse to get out of a fight with the really big schools like Florida State and Utah? What does the NCAA want in the long run? My opinions on these questions: They rarely admit mistakes unless they absolutely have to. They didn't want facts, they just wanted to eliminate all Native American nicknames and imagery and settled for eliminating as much as they could without causing too much trouble. No one has given any incentive that would tempt the NCAA into giving up a win and giving up ground in a battle. They don't care what the people on the reservations really want just like they don't care what the people of North Dakota really want. The long term goal of the NCAA is to eliminate all Native American nicknames and imagery, I don't see them giving up a win unless they absolutely have to. Sorry, I see nothing positive to hold onto any longer.

Both schools have a policy of not playing schools that are on the NCAA restricted list unless they have to because of league rules. They have moved on that rule once in a while, but have followed most of the time. If they leave the WCHA for a Big Ten Conference they could very easily decide to not play a UND team that is on a restricted list. No guarantee that they will make that decision, but definitely is possible. Don't fool yourself into believing that it won't happen. The decision may be made by an advisory council made up of faculty, not the athletic department.

The sponsors of the bill are Representatives Damschen, Bellew and Senator Erbele.

Maybe because they actually believe that there are good reasons to let it go. Many people that still support trying to keep the nickname and logo are doing it just on emotion. They don't believe that there are consequences or potential consequences for keeping the name. Others belive that the consequences they see, or the potential consequences they see, are not worth the risk. They believe that the consequences would damage the University more than losing the name. Those consequences include nevering being eligible to host playoff games in football, women's basketball and other sports, which would also hurt recruiting a great deal, which would hurt attendance and hurt the Athletic Department financially. Another consequence is not being able to play teams that would ban the nickname and logo. We know that Minnesota and Wisconsin would do so immediately for any sports where they are not in the same league as UND. Other schools would do the same thing. Again this would hurt the school financially. The NCAA would also not be happy with UND because they would be fighting the rules. The NCAA could make life miserable for a school with very little effort, and who on this board believes that they wouldn't do that in a heartbeat to UND after fighting about this issue for more than 5 years already. You may not believe that continuing this fight could cause major problems for the University. Others really believe that it could become a huge thorn in the side of the school and the athletic department.

The date that was always talked about was June 30th, but I've seen some conflicting stories that they might be allowed to sell out whatever product they have left at that time. As far as customization goes, they won't be able to sell the logo after whatever the date ends up being, so they wouldn't be able to customize anything that includes that logo.

Your posting style is very interesting. You call people names and tell them they're stupid if they disagree with you. Yet you don't seem to have a very strong handle on facts. A petition for a constitutional amendment takes more than 1%. To run for office you need 3% of the number of actual voters for that office in the last election. A constitutional amendment takes more than that. I don't remember the exact figure, but in the past I believe it was more than 25,000 signatures which would be more like 4%. I also heard that with the 2010 census that number would go up, and I believe it is around 28,000. Those are signatures of people qualified to vote in the state of North Dakota, not just anyone wandering by. It is possible, but would take more than a weekend at the Ralph. Once the proposal is drawn up, it has to be approved by the Secretary of State before it can go out for signatures. When the signatures are gathered the petitions have to be turned back in to the Secretary of State to make sure that the proper procedures were followed and that enough qualified signatures have been gathered. This past election a proposed amendment was not allowed on the ballot because the proper procedure wasn't followed. When all of that is done it can be placed on the ballot for the next state-wide election. That will be in June of 2012. The chances of such an amendment passing are hard to predict. There are going to be people that are against the name in general. There would be NDSU fans that vote against it because they don't like UND. There are people that will vote for it no matter what. But there is also a group that is hard to predict and that group will make the decision. Some of them really don't have an interest either way. And some may be swayed against it if they understand the potential harm of being on the NCAA banned list, not being able to host playoff games in football or women's basketball (or hockey if they ever go back to on campus sites) plus the threat of not being able to play schools like Minnesota and Wisconsin and probably others. This idea that the NCAA would back down is probably naive. They have absolutely no reason to back down. The majority of the country isn't going to back UND on this for a lot of reasons, mainly because they don't care. As Darrell has said several times, the NCAA is a private club. It is their game and UND doesn't have to play along if they don't want to. UND could go to the NAIA and probably not have a problem, other than the normal protests. But if UND wants to play with the rest of the schools in the NCAA they have to play the game. If this had been done 2 years ago, before the settlement date had passed, it might have been a different story. By the way, are you going to call me a plant too? I believe that I've been posting on here more than a month, actually longer than you. And I've been following this debate almost from the beginning, I'm not a late comer that just got involved in the last month, or last year, or even the last decade. So keep your insults to yourself.

UND t-shirt revenue is pocket change compared to the Billions they get from other places. They wouldn't walk across the street for that money.

The settlement is a huge problem with the proposed legislation. The NCAA has absolutely no reason to give anything back. They have a signed legal agreement to get what they wanted. What would be their incentive to change the agreement? The rest of the country isn't going to care. As a matter of fact, some would look on it as a sign of weakness if the NCAA gave in at this point. Unless someone can find a reason that the NCAA would benefit, they aren't going to change the agreement. The constitutional issue is also a large problem. The constitution gives the control to the State Board and removes the decision making from the legislature. It was put in because the legislature was trying to micromanage the colleges (kind of like this law would do). Politics doesn't mix well with something like education. That's why school boards are supposed to be non-partisan. Politicians can sometimes pick issues just to make themselves look good, not because they believe it is important or right. If our esteemed representatives really wanted to get involved they should have done something over the past 3 years. This is a case of too little, too late.

Right at the top of their home page they call themselves Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. As far as the settlement being a bad deal because of the requirement for 2 tribes, unless we know what happened in the negotiations it is hard to say if that was really a bad deal. I don't like the requirement, and I am not a huge fan of the Attorney General, but it is always hard to know whether it's a bad deal or not unless you know the details. The second tribe might have been what was traded to buy the 3 years of grace period. Or to get the NCAA to agree to apologize for the "hostile and abusive" charge. You have to trade something to get something. My guess is that the requirement of 2 tribes was traded to get something that the state wanted out of the settlement.