82SiouxGuy

Anyone that has paid attention to tribal politics in the past could have predicted problems like this.

An interesting perspective by an SEC blogger. It gives his read on the situation for each Big 12 school. I liked this point:

Rutgers makes a lot of sense for the Big 10 if they decide to expand. It brings the New York City TV market into play, plus it fits in the academic mold that the Big 10 has developed. I am pretty sure that they would be on a short list of schools considered for expansion. If the numbers are accurate, joining the Big 10 would add up to $20 million in new revenue for the new schools. Rutgers could easily add 2 Division I sports with just a portion of that $20 million.

Here is your hockey arena. It is in Cedar Park, a suburb of Austin. This blurb is from Wikipedia.

If they pay for it out of the $20 million in added revenues they will receive just for joining the conference, then anyone they get to show up for games is just gravy. And as others have said, Lincoln is a sports town. The USHL has done well there. I don't think it is out of the question that Nebraska would consider adding the sport with the right incentive.

$2 million for a men's hockey team and $1 million for a women's team each year would go a long way toward paying for new sports (as long as they have some kind of facility to play in already). The discussion seems to be moving away from Texas and on toward other schools like Nebraska and Missouri, or some of the schools further east. But why couldn't Texas put together a competitive team? The Dallas Stars have had some good teams in the NHL so they can attract hockey players to Texas. They wouldn't have much for local recruits, but they could attract a lot of players to play for a name school like the University of Texas.

If these schools can add an additional $20 million in new revenue just by joining the Big 10, using $2 or 3 million to add hockey would not be a huge cost. They still add at least $17 million in new money to the budget without having to increase fundraising. I don't know how it will figure into the discussion for the schools, but I think that several of them would take a hard look at hockey if it were made a part of the process.

They didn't like the way it was worded because any future tribal council could change their mind. After the next election they could vote against the name. A specified time period and a contract would be easier to enforce, although people with experience will tell you that enforcing contracts with tribes can be difficult at times. Some SBoHE members have stated that 30 years isn't a magic number and that they would consider something else. But they want something specific.

There are only so many FCS schools in the West. Depending on how the conference scene changes over the next couple of years, they may have to rethink how they operate and do some things that they haven't done before. Having football only affiliates could be one of those things. The Athletic Director at Montana recognizes and acknowledges that possibility, why can't you?

Rain will do nothing to them. They are fiberglass or something similar (it has been 10 years since I sat on them so I can't remember for sure). I don't know if extreme cold will do anything to them or not.

Standing Rock has had an interest in this issue since at least 1969. I believe that was the year the elders from Standing Rock held a pipe ceremony to give UND permission to use the name. Tribal Councils since then have come out against the name. So saying that Standing Rock had been uninvolved for 80 years is not accurate.

A little bit of clarification. The 1,000+ signatures represent approximately 1/2 of the number of people that voted in the last election, not 1/2 of the population of the reservation. According to this web page the actual population of enrolled member is approximately 6,000 and total population is over 10,000. So the 1,000 signatures is a significant number and is pretty impressive, but it is not 1/2 of the population.

Mr. Faison has said that they are hoping to make an official announcement this fall that would involve tearing down the old Ralph. There were 6,000 seats in there so they have to move some of them and they might as well make some money. I find it interesting that people automatically look for a negative reason for things.

I believe that the limit for SBoHE approval was raised to $250,000 in the last couple of years. I saw a quote earlier in the week that said the UND office project totaled $233,000. It was done when the limit before approval was $100,000. The limit was changed between the time of the UND project and the NDSU office project. From the Grand Forks Herald:

I think I understand the problem now. The NHL is only going to do national marketing campaigns. They are selling "The Game" itself. It would be very hard and very expensive for them to also do regional campaigns. The teams do their own regional marketing. And they use their own players in their marketing. So the Wild use Backstrom, Burns, Koivu and even the Boogie Man for marketing purposes. I'm sure that the Blackhawks use Toews, Kane and maybe a couple of others. But you are in a market without a regional team. Not one of the teams is going to spend the dollars necessary to do a good marketing job in a region so far away that they won't get a decent return on their investment. So you only get the national campaign, you don't see the regional campaigns of any of the teams. If Kansas City had a team it would probably be different. I would guess that you see a lot of Kansas City Chiefs football and Kansas City Royals baseball stuff in Omaha. It is similar to Grand Forks and Fargo being secondary markets for sports out of the Twin Cities. Since Kansas City doesn't have NHL hockey you don't get that connection. My point with golf was that even though it is an individual sport, they feature only 1 or 2 individuals at a time. They use them as the face of the game. And as I mentioned about the NFL, they are large enough, and have been for many years, to get the time to promote more than just a couple of players. The number of players that a sport can use to promote itself is usually proportional to the amount of coverage time they get on sports broadcasts. If you get 2 minutes you use 2 players and if you get 20 minutes you can use 20 players (the numbers used are only for example purposes and are not meant to be an estimation of the popularity of any sport or even to be an exact representation of the current marketplace). But even in the NFL they usually have a handful of huge names and then a next level of stars that get publicity. As far as the NHL advertising on ESPN, ABC, CBS, etc., that isn't going to happen. Television networks almost never allow advertising for something on a competing network, unless they own that competing network. I only remember a few occasions where it has happened, and it was usually for a fundraiser of some kind that many networks were participating in. So you will never see Versus or the NHL Network advertised on ESPN. It wouldn't be good business for ESPN. But it does make it tough to break out of the box.

Doesn't it get annoying when we have to adjust our football schedule to fit some National TV contract?

For marketing purposes you simplify, not diversify. Especially when you are struggling or trying to break into a market. Putting too many people out there loses the focus. If people aren't interested in the game right now they aren't going to learn who all of those players are. But if you keep putting a couple of people in front of them that might catch their attention, they might start watching your sport. If you tried to publicize all of the players that you listed you would be able to watch eyes glaze over all around the country and the NHL would never have a chance to get bigger and stronger. The best example is the NBA in the early 1980's. The league had done pretty well in the 1960's, but had lost its luster. There were drug issues, other problems and the league was struggling financially. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird came along and they became the focus of everything. It was Magic and the Lakers against Larry and the Celtics. It didn't matter that there were other really great players like Kareem Abdul Jabbar playing with Magic, Julius Erving, Domique Wilkins, Moses Malone, Isiah Thomas and Robert Parish. Magic and Bird were everywhere and probably saved the NBA. But it took the best basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, to break into the spotlight with them. Golf is another sport that usually uses 1 or 2 name players at a time. Right now it is Tiger and to a lesser extent Phil. Jack Nicklaus was the big dog for years and there was usually someone trying to chase him down, like Tom Watson. Before that it was Arnie Palmer. You have 1 or 2 faces in front of people and that gets them to watch. Even soccer knows this. That's why they tried bringing Beckham over to play in the United States. They needed 1 big name to sell the sport. They tried it in the 1970's with Pele. It worked about as well with Beckham as it did with Pele. But they know that the only way to sell the sport is to have 1 or 2 well known players as the face of the sport. As far as that list of talent in the NFL, you do realize that the list covered 90 years of league play don't you? When you are on top you can then diversify your message and try to get talent recognized in every city. But when you are low man on the totem pole you have to use your few minutes to sell the same thing over and over. Repetition is what makes the names familiar. If SportsCenter is devoting 40 minutes out of an hour to the NFL they can try to sell 30 or 40 players. If they are giving 2 minutes to hockey you better use the same 2 players as often as you can to get them recognized.

The NFL started using star players to sell the league from the time they started the league. Ever hear of Jim Thorpe? Or Red Grange? The league was ready to fold before college phenom Red Grange was brought in to the league. After that there were guys like Bronko Nagurski and Sid Luckman of the Bears, Slingin' Sammy Baugh of the Redskins, Don Hutton of the Packers, Otto Graham of the Browns, Steve Van Buren and Chuck Bednarik of the Eagles, Johnny Unitas of the Colts, Bart Starr and Paul Hornung of the Packers, Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers of the Bears, Dan Marino, Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, John Elway, on and on. Have you noticed how much publicity Peyton Manning gets, along with Brett Favre as someone else mentioned. The biggest problems that the NFL and NHL have using this theory is that the faces aren't quite as recognizable. The players wear helmets when they play so it makes it a little harder for people to make the connection. But the 24 hour sports stations and the Internet help them overcome this. Your problem is that you don't like Crosby, so you magnify everything they say and you don't notice the amount of time that they mention some other players. But selling Crosby, Ovechkin and a couple of other players is the best marketing strategy to increase the visibility of the league. You get people interested in seeing specific players and hopefully they will like the rest of the product.

Selling a league by using star players is a proven way to attract fans. Almost every league and every sport tries to promote their stars. Especially if they are young. Crosby is a natural. He is talented and accomplished at a young age. The NHL would be foolish if they didn't try to use it.

A no-huddle offense doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to speed up the game. They can take all of the time they want changing formations or setting up. But it does force the defense to commit more quickly, they can't risk running as many players in and out since the offense could snap the ball at any time. But you need a quarterback that can make decisions on the field to make it work.

REA was not a party to the lawsuit and they are an independent organization so they can't be forced to change anything. Mr. Faison has even mentioned that fact. It is possible that they will make some changes at some point in the future. But the cost to make changes at the REA in the near future is probably not going to be large.

That is the best summation I have seen on the subject. I agree with you 100% and I wish I could have said it half as well as you did.

The River Queen was a bar in downtown Grand Forks. It was kind of a rough place at times and had live bands a lot.

If you look at the date of the post you quoted you will see that it was from 2006. The thread was brought back because of the Grand Forks Herald story on Perry this weekend.

We get it, NDSU always wins recruiting battles. If a kid decides to go anywhere else it's because NDSU didn't really want them. Congrats on winning all of those recruiting battles. Obviously it has done wonders for the football program with all of the great press the past year, plus all those wins last year. Keep winning those recruiting battles.