82SiouxGuy

When I heard Faison talk about basketball, soccer and volleyball that is exactly what he said. He said that they are working on the schedule and the games should happen, but that the contracts have not been signed yet. He also said that women's basketball would not happen this coming year but he thought that they could get the games scheduled for the following year. At no point, while talking to the group I was in, did he ever claim that the contracts were signed.

That kind of thing happens all of the time. The simple thing to do is go with something like "It's too early to talk about that" or "We've had some discussion but nothing is official yet". Or maybe just say "We will only discuss games that have signed contracts. We will let you know when that happens." These guys have been doing those jobs for a while. They have a pretty good idea of which contracts are going to be signed and which won't, especially when they are down to the final details.

Faison didn't make any kind of official announcement. He was just keeping interested people aware of what he was working on. Generally an official announcement comes with a press release and often with a press conference. Faison mentioned some things during a conversation when he was asked a question.

Earlier this week I had heard that soccer, volleyball and men's basketball were in the works and the agreements were almost complete for next year, but contracts were not signed. Women's basketball won't start up again for at least another year. Taylor must feel like he is losing a little bit of control since he is going with the "It's not official" stance rather than "We hope to be able to announce something soon" position.

If he is caught up academically he would be a senior in the classroom for 2010. That may be why he is listed as such on the roster.

I would have to go search to make sure, but I heard that the basketball contract is up soon and ESPN is going to go all out to get it. If they got the basketball contract they would have no interest in having the hockey Frozen Four the same weekend as the basketball Final Four. Or else they would just dump the hockey part of the contract.

No Native American imagery is allowed. No feathers would be allowed in a new logo.

That would give you a better comparison. I don't have time to go find that information, but would be interested in seeing the results. The last time I looked into scoring deflation it seems to me that scoring was down between 1 and 2 goals per team per game.

Sorry, but it isn't like that at all. In your example you have 1 person, Bob, who has control over everything. He owns the company. He hires the staff. He make the decision about the materials. With the change in broadcast team in Minneapolis you have 2 different organizations. They have a working relationship, and one has influence on the other, but you have 2 different people in control. Maturi decides on who is in charge of the hockey program. But he doesn't make the actual decision on the hockey announcers for FSN. And the execs at FSN control who they have broadcasting games, but they don't control who coaches the team. The hockey program at UMTC has run into more than its share of challenges lately. Lucia is responsible for that. But the broadcast has also been worse over the past few years. Now is a good time to make a change on air. That's why FSN has chosen to do something at this time.

I've been watching for well over 30 also and Hrkac in 1986-87 was the best I've ever seen at UND. In 1984-85 he was good. But 87 was one of those years where everything just went right, and Hrkac could do no wrong.

You can't compare scoring between eras. Scoring as a whole has gone down significantly over the past 20 years. Therefore you can't compare scoring totals by Duncan and Oshie with scoring by Johnson and Hrkac. That being said, Johnson was one of the better players in Fighting Sioux history.

If you are talking a Division I basketball title, then I think a majority of Sioux fans would take that over an 8th title in hockey. The media gives basketball more attention than hockey because a lot more people care about basketball than hockey. They give the people what they want because that's how they pay the bills. So winning in basketball is a much bigger deal than winning in hockey. And that's coming from someone who rarely watches basketball of any kind, and only really pays attention to UND basketball.

Penn State seems to find a way to sell a lot of tickets. They are in State College, PA, a town smaller than Grand Forks. Pittsburgh is about 135 miles away and Philadelphia is close to 200 miles away so they have a lot of people in the state, but not within your 100 mile range. They put 100,000 people in the football stadium every game and play in a 15,000 seat basketball fieldhouse (although the last season I could find numbers for they averaged about 7,000 per game and 8,000 for conference games). They get plenty of winter weather and that doesn't stop them from competing in one of the major conferences. UND sells a lot of hockey season tickets to people more than 100 miles from Grand Forks. There are season ticket holders in Williston, Dickinson, Bismarck and the Twin Cities, along with a lot of other places in the region. If UND can develop a quality basketball program, they will sell plenty of tickets to compete at the mid-major level. It won't hurt football ticket sales or hockey ticket sales as long as those problems continue to have success. But several losing seasons in a row will hurt ticket sales in any of the sports.

Don't forget that Zajac had surgery and missed several weeks at the same time Hextall was out. And Knight went out during that period, just as he was starting to score. And shortly after Chay's injury, Vande Velde wasn't supposed to play because he was injured. All of those injuries, plus probably others that we don't know, happened between mid November and mid January. It's kind of hard to build some momentum when you keep losing key players to injury.

The tribes have repeatedly said that the name isn't for sale. They don't want money. As is mentioned above, Florida State does not pay royalties is spite of the fact that everyone assumes that they do. The only people that believe UND should pay for use of the name are those that don't understand the situation or the culture of the Native Americans. If the tribes would like a payment of some kind I wouldn't be opposed to discussing it. But it isn't on the table right now, it hasn't been put on the table by either side, and I don't think that it really will be discussed.

Nothing is a sure thing. Someone has always wanted to show the games in the region. I don't know if a "request campaign" would help or not. But I would be surprised if FSN or someone else didn't show the games in the Dakota's and Minnesota.

Usually someone like Fox Sports North will pick up these games and show them live. That's where the ESPN Syndication part comes in.

Since the Gophers aren't playing this week we don't have to root for whoever they're playing.

I drove back from either the Cities or St. Cloud to Grand Forks on 4 straight Friday nights in February and March. One of the games was against St. Cloud so I could listen to them for the first period plus (maybe the worst color announcer in history). Otherwise I could get 96.1 the Fox in little spurts between Alex and Fergus Falls, and then picked up the game on KFGO just west of Fergus. The KFGO signal isn't nearly as strong in Minnesota after dark. One night I was only about 30 miles out of Fargo before it came in pretty well. I think the signal is stronger going west.

Have you ever heard of guys named Magic Johnson and Larry Bird? How about Michael Jordan? They played a little game called basketball that's popular in some places. You may have heard of them because an organization called the National Basketball Association used those players to become popular in the 80's and 90's. Before 1980 the NBA was in about the same place as the NHL. They had their regular fans, but were not a huge player in the sports world. Major League Baseball, the NFL, college football and college basketball were all much bigger than the NBA. Two young guys named Johnson and Bird entered the league after becoming stars in college basketball. They ended up on major teams and on opposite sides of the country. The NBA took advantage of that and made them the focal point of promoting the league. A few years later Mr. Jordan followed them and was even more talented. The NBA built their reputation and made billions of dollars from promoting those 3 players. There were other players in the NBA that were very talented, but the 3 mentioned above had the right mix of talent and appeal to the general public. Bettman was working for the NBA at that time. When he started with the NHL they didn't have obvious players to follow a similar campaign. Crosby and Ovechkin are similar level players with appeal. There are probably other players that are on or near the same talent level, but under this model you need to find just a couple of players that you can focus on. Bettman and the NHL are trying to do something similar with Crosby and Ovechkin. They want to use these 2 guys to build interest in the NHL. It would have been better for them if one of the guys was in the West, but you work with what you have.

Tickets are sold.

BUMP

I have a pair of tickets available for the Sunday night game against Minnesota. Seats are at the very top of Section 306. Tickets are in Grand Forks and we can make reasonable arrangements to get tickets to you. Game starts at 7:07. Would like to have tickets sold by early afternoon. First decent offer takes the pair. Send me a PM and we can make arrangements.

Tickets are sold.

Are you sure that this became law? According to this it says that House Bill No. 1058 will be part of chapter 51-07 of the North Dakota Century Code. But the full reading of chapter 51-07 of the North Dakota Century Code after the 2009 Legislative session does not list that provision. So either they moved it to a different section or it failed to pass. The last I heard on the subject was that the state of North Dakota left it up to the individual cities to decide on whether scalping was illegal or not, and Grand Forks had not made any move to do that.