82SiouxGuy

I don't think anyone named Sue would be able to beat a full football team by herself. Now if you want to talk about the University of North Dakota football team you can at least learn how to spell correctly.

A courtesy phone call would still have been a good business practice. It's better than burning bridges. And developing a reputation of not treating business partners well can hurt you later. As far as UND being on WDAY, I believe it was KFGO and their owners that ended the relationship with UND. That was also with little or no notice. UND joining with WDAY was a reaction since WDAY had been dumped by NDSU. None of these are crimes, but they aren't always the best business practices either.

I didn't say that they were right, just pointing out what their thought process was. You've got to know what the enemy is thinking so that you understand how to counteract them.

Not being "diverse and inclusive" wasn't why your so-called "wise and knowing" wanted the nickname gone. They believed that the "underprivledged and downtrodden", specifically the Native Americans, were being taken advantage of and marginalized. They consider NA nicknames dehumanizing and racist. They went after all Native American nicknames at the collegiate level, not just the Fighting Sioux nickname (although there were local people that just worried about the local name). If they wanted to end nicknames that weren't diverse and/or inclusive they could have gone after a bunch of other names. A lot of people are going to have input into a new name. The people in charge are going to determine how the new name is chosen. That is part of their job, to decide how things are run. Your paranoia about the "wise and knowing" is going to cause you a lot of problems if you don't get it under control.

The ticket says 7:07, just like every Saturday game.

I don't remember anyone saying that the name had to be both diverse and inclusive. I believe that both terms, or something like them, were used to describe the process. Something like "there is a lot of diversity in the different groups of stakeholders for the University of North Dakota and we want to make sure that they are all included in the process so that they are able to provide feedback". Not exactly the same. One says "we want to find some 'ideal' name that everyone will love" which guarantees that noone will like it. The other says "we want to give everyone a chance to have a say and then we will pick the best from everything that is said". It doesn't guarantee a great name but it leaves the possibility open.

That adds to the difficulty. But I've had trouble selling exhibition tickets in Grand Forks during past years.

Diverse and also inclusive is a pretty high bar. It will get you something like the Human Being mascot on the TV show "Community".

Exhibition games are always tough. They aren't as much of a draw as regular games.

Aviators has the same number of syllables as North Dakota. That would give you the cadence you mentioned. I like the idea of a prairie theme also, but not crazy about Dust Devils, or using Devils for short. Plus it could become an issue for some in the religious community.

I think there's a rule someplace that not even the Gophers can host the Regional and the Frozen Four in the same city during the same year.

At first glance I like it better than Pilots also. Is it too long a word for chants or a good fight song?

It depends on who the other number ones would be. For instance, if Wisconsin and Notre Dame got number one seeds I could see Wisconsin going to Green Bay and Notre Dame going to St. Louis. Also, the host schools automatically stay in their regional, and if they are number one seeds they would take the spots. Attendance does matter but it isn't the top deciding factor. They might decide that UND will add enough attendance to an eastern regional (say the same regional as BC) and if they can pack the western regionals with good draws they could move UND east.

Pilots --- Bethel College (Mishawaka, Indiana) Louisiana State University-Shreveport (Shreveport, Louisiana) University of Portland (Portland, Oregon)

UND could get a number 1 seed and still go east. Now if they are the highest ranked number one seed the chances are pretty good that they would stay in the west.

Good players and good coaching are probably what cause the clusters. One really good class getting multiple titles.

Tournaments are rarely reseeded. The schools need some type of structure. People need to make plans, they set up alumni events, etc. Reseeding after the first round would just confuse everyone from the teams to the fans.

What a sad and pathetic life you must have if the only way you can get pleasure is to go to a sports forum, for a school that you don't care about anymore, just so you can insult people that you don't know, just because they like a school that you don't care about anymore. Your class is showing all over.

The talk back in July when he first committed was that he would probably start as a 3rd line type player, but had enough talent that he could become more. I believe that he is a tough, 2 way player that is much like so many of the Fighting Sioux players coming out of the western junior leagues. Probably not going to be a scoring leader, but has a chance to be a solid contributor.

Malone

If you look at UND's history, they win titles in clusters. They won iin 59 and 63, then not for 17 years. They won 3 titles in 8 years, then not again for a decade. Then they won 2 more in 4 years. Statistically that would tell me to probably expect a decade or more after the cluster ends before winning the next title, followed by at least 1 more within 4 years. Last year was the decade mark. Clustering of titles seems to be prevalent in the history of college hockey. A lot of schools have won multiple titles in a short period and then go through a drought period. By my count, a school has won 2 titles in 5 or less years or 3 titles in 8 or less years 14 times in the history of the NCAA DI ice hockey championships. UND fits the profile. The big difference between most of the top programs and several others like Lake Superior State is that the top programs have multiple clusters of titles. It also explains why schools like Denver and Minnesota caught up to UND. It was their turn for a cluster of wins. UND should be in line for a cluster of wins again in the near future. Also, if I'm looking at the average period period over time I would either start at the beginning (getting the average of winning every 9 years) or use the first title as a base line, which would mean winning an average of every 8.5 years since 1959. But even if you use your figure of winning every 7.5 years, this is Hak's 7th year. Yo u can't blame the entire decade drought on him since Blais was the coach for the first 3 years. So Hak hasn't even reached the average period for titles. The problem is the perception that UND wins titles all of the time (every 5 years no matter what). That is just a perception, not reality. If UND wins 2 titles in the next 5-7 years (the cluster effect) it will follow the actual pattern more closely than the perceived pattern.

Hopefully they will be able to say the same thing after almost every game. We did better against Mayville. We did better against Houston Baptist. We did better against NDSU. We did better against UNI. If they keep playing better against all of their opponents they will start winning more and more of their games. This thing isn't going to get fixed overnight. You need benchmarks to measure against.

You can measure progress against almost any opponent that you have played against before. Did your team play better than last time you played that team. Did you make fewer mistakes, more shots, get more rebounds, etc. The point is that you have something to measure against. It isn't whether UND is better than Mayville, the question is did UND play better against Mayville this time than they did last time. That's how you can measure improvement. It would be hard to measure improvement against Montana unless you played them last year or earlier this year.

UND won in 1959, 1963, 1980, 1982, 1987, 1997 and 2000. That's 7 titles in about 63 years. They don

Not to mention that there is a lot more competition in college hockey now than there was before Gino took over. There were dominant teams a lot of years back then, not so much anymore.