82SiouxGuy

Two tickets for Friday are sold. Still have 2 available for Friday and 2 for Saturday. PM me with an offer.

I have some tickets available for the playoff series against Minnesota. I have 4 tickets available on Friday night and 2 tickets available on Saturday night. The seats are at the top of Section 306. Tickets are in Grand Forks and we can arrange delivery. PM me a reasonable offer (only Fighting Sioux fans need apply). I will sell the tickets when I get a reasonable offer.

I haven't looked very closely at the numbers, but my guess is that they win if you extend the numbers out another place or 2. Probably something like .55312 to .55309. They probably are not at exactly .5531.

Tickets sold.

My buyer had to change their plans so I have a pair of tickets available for the game tonight. The seats are at the top of Section 306. Tickets are in Grand Forks and delivery can be arranged, including meeting at the game. Asking $50 for the pair, but will take offers after 3 this afternoon. Send me a PM.

The logo can't remain the same. It has to go. Absolutely NO Native American symbolism is allowed. Schools that only used a couple of feathers as a symbol were forced to change their logo.

Tickets are sold. Thanks for the interest.

BUMP

BUMP

I have a pair of tickets available for the final regular season game of the year, UND versus Michigan Tech. The seats are at the very top of Section 306. Tickets are located in Grand Forks so we can arrange delivery. I will be at the game on Saturday and could meet you there with the tickets if that works. Asking $30 each for the tickets. Send me a PM if you are interested.

I have tickets available for the Michigan Tech-UND game on Friday night, March 5th. I will be out of town for work and not able to attend. You can purchase either 3 or 4. The seats are at the very top of Section 306 on the end of the aisle. Tickets are located in Grand Forks. We can arrange for delivery. Asking $30 per ticket or $110 for all 4. Send me a PM if you are interested.

They do have to complete a certain number of credits (I don't know how many) and they have been doing so by online courses since last fall. The girls were on the radio last fall and explained the entire process. They are both good students so they didn't sound too worried about getting the work done.

They are definitely taking classes. Maybe the jinx doesn't apply to international competition.

Friday - Vande Velde Saturday - Knight

I have gone on the record before saying that the 2 teams will play again when it makes sense, and that it probably won't happen until 2012 at least. But both schools have had trouble filling their home schedules with quality opponents. There are a lot of reasons that the schools should be playing each other in all sports including football. I don't care if Taylor is there or not. My point in going through some numbers was to show some of the visitors from the south that maybe their guy wasn't being totally honest with them, and that some of his reasons don't make complete sense. Financially it is better for both schools to play a regular home and home series and only have 5 home games during the years they travel rather than bringing in weak competition for a 6th home game each year. UND would make a lot more money with NDSU in the rotation than they do right now just like NDSU would make more money. If it is better for the finances of both schools it is better for the state of North Dakota. The Strength of Schedule will probably help some years and hurt in other years. But a regular series will be good for the fans and the people of North Dakota every year. And that's why it should happen.

Well, let's try a little math. You said that season tickets were anywhere from $100 to $130 per seat and approximately 9,400 season tickets were sold. Use the higher number and divide by 5 to get $244,400 in sales per game. Add another 5,600 tickets at $25 which is the highest possible price (not nearly all of them are selling for that. That comes out to $140,000. 4,000 students get in free. So ticket sales for a single game are less than $384,400 (remember I used the highest price for all tickets in this scenario while in reality a lot of tickets are sold for a lower price). An actual number is probably $325,000 to $350,000 at best. I won't go through Team Makers because those numbers may not change in either scenario. That $384,400 is gross sales. Out of that NDSU has to pay for an opponent, pay the Fargodome for use of the facility, pay for staff at the game, etc. We have a pretty good idea that any opponent is going to get at least $50,000 and probably more. Facilities and staff will probably cost $30,000 or more per game. So now we have a best case scenario of making $300,000 per game with a reality of probably making closer to $200,000 to $250,000 after expenses and maybe less. If they can average this for a 6th game every year you get a profit on 6th games of $400,000 to $500,000 for a 2 year period. If UND and NDSU started a home and home series the numbers would change somewhat. Let's say you add $20 to each ticket and only have a 6th game every other year. $20 times 15,000 is $300,000. Add that to the lower number listed above of $325,000 and you have a gross sales of $625,000. Expenses actually go down because NDSU doesn't pay for UND. So instead of $80,000 in expenses you would have $30,000. That leaves a profit of $595,000 a UND-NDSU game and for 6th games over a 2 year period. $595,000 is greater than the $500,000 listed above. These numbers are just estimates, but they should be in the right ballpark. My guess is that the actual profit on a UND-NDSU game is going to be a lot more than the profit NDSU would have for 6th home games in 2 consecutive years. And that is conceding that NDSU could find 6 home games every year. So far that hasn't been the case. It looks like Mr. Taylor is leaving a lot of money on the table.

We are playing them because we joined a "transitional" league to give us some games at a time of year when everyone else is busy with league games. Most schools don't like to schedule very many out of conference games in January and February. Plus being in a league, even a transitional league, gives the teams something to play for other than just pride. UND is still looking for an autobid conference home for the long term. The Big Sky and the Summit are the 2 that make the most sense, but the Big Sky doesn't have any interest in adding schools at this time or adding schools in the Central time zone. So the Summit is a more likely potential home.

It isn't speculation that you can charge more for tickets against rivals than you can against weak opponents. It is done all the time in college and the pros. It was done for UND-NDSU football in the past. UND does it for opponents like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Denver in hockey. Even if you add $10 per ticket for 15,000 tickets (non-students) that's $150,000 in extra revenue for that game alone with no additional cost. UND hockey adds $20 per ticket for Minnesota games, if NDSU did that for a UND football game it would bring in an additional $300,000 just by changing the number on the ticket. That is without any of the other potential benefits that star mentioned. $300,000 in additional profit for a 2 year period is probably more than the profit that they would lose by giving up that 1 home game every other year with a weak opponent (if they can get someone in to play that game). Remember, that is bonus profit for playing 1 game. Do you think they normally make more than $300,000 per game in profit? And they wouldn't have to pay for that opponent to show up which is an additional $50,000 or more in the account for NDSU. We know that the tickets would sell because not only would you have demand from the NDSU supporters, you would have all of the UND fans trying to attend the game also. The tickets would sell.

You still get unhappy fans, which leads to lower attendance, even if you are successful when playing a bunch of tomato cans. That's why always having a schedule of 8 conference games, 1 FBS game on the road and 2 non-conference games at home will not work long term. The only FCS schools that will agree to a single road game without a return game at their stadium are the weakest teams. They do it for the money (like the better FCS taking on FBS schools). If charters are running $80,000 they will want at least $100,000 to make the trip. So to get a 6 game home schedule every year you have to pay at least $100,000 for each of the non-conference games and you will still end up angering your supporters because of the weak schedule. It isn't a viable scheduling practice for the long term. It worked for Montana for a while because they needed the money to pay off debt and it was a new idea, no one else in FCS had tried it yet. But as I stated earlier, they don't even follow that practice now.

The fanbase isn't going to be happy playing a bunch of stiffs in non-conference games every year. It's basically the same thing as when UND used to play Crookston and NDSU used to play Moorhead. The first time or 2 it's amusing to watch your team score a lot of points and dominate the game. Then it gets boring and attendance starts to drop, plus fans complain. I believe that Montana learned that lesson over the past decade. The fans loved all the home games with weak teams for a few years, but then got tired of the blowouts. And now it sounds like Montana has started traveling again for non-conference on occasion.

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Tickets are sold again.

It's easy to forget why they moved several teams out of Canada in the first place. The economy in Canada during the 1990s made it almost impossible for the smaller markets to survive. They were paying salaries in US dollars and selling tickets for Canadian dollars at a time when the Canadian dollar was worth much less than the US dollar. I don't remember exact exchange rates, but I seem to remember times when the Canadian dollar was worth less than 2/3 of a US dollar. The smaller markets couldn't sell enough tickets to have a competitive payroll. Several teams were going broke. The choices were to move the teams to large markets that were not occupied in the US, usually places in the South, or to cut the number of teams. They tried to salvage the teams rather than cut them. Now the economy is much better in Canada than it was and the exchange rate is much closer to the US dollar. Moving a couple of teams back across the border is probably a good idea. Winnipeg is a good place to start. They were a borderline choice to move originally because they had a loyal following. The city just wasn't quite large enough to support the team at the time.

Someone had a change of plans, so these tickets are back up for sale. Send me a PM if you are interested.

These tickets are sold. Thanks for all the interest.