82SiouxGuy

Most people understand the NCAA policy on home rinks. It has also been reported that they have had discussions about changing that rule again. Using Scheels Arena as an alternative venue for the regional tournaments is a great solution. It still gives UND a home crowd in a real hockey facility without all of the extra trouble and expense. If the rules on schools hosting in their home arena changes, then UND can bring regionals back to REA. UND advised the Alerus not to put in the permanent coils because they were working on the plans for REA. The original plans included coils and made the Alerus Center a very multi-purpose facility. But it would have been a waste of city money to put the coils in when UND was going to get a state of the art hockey facility on campus. And it would have been expensive to put those coils in plus maintain them while only being used once or twice a year, if even that often.

As someone else mentioned, viewing angles are always going to be difficult on a football field because of the large difference in size. Most of the arena is going to be a bigger distance away from the playing surface than in a regular hockey arena. Plus the angles are wrong. It can be fun for a novelty, but wouldn't be a good experience for a tournament.

Number of seats would be similar to REA, but the viewing angles would be much worse than REA. ND State High School tournament only needs about 1/2 the number of seats that the Alerus or REA have, so why use an arena with poor viewing angles when you can use one with great viewing angles. One of the factors that convinced the NDHSAA to move the hockey tournament to Fargo was amount of money they can make. Adding costs to bring in ice making equipment can't be more cost effective than holding the tournament at REA or Scheels Arena. The quality of ice on temporary rinks usually isn't really good, especially in a building like the Alerus where it would be difficult to keep the floor level cool enough for ice for several days. That wouldn't be good for tournament play for high school or the NCAA, you need at least 3 days of good quality ice for either kind of tournament. And I don't think it makes a lot of sense to use a make-shift arena when you have quality facilities in REA and Scheels Arena.

The affiliates are free to run whatever they want. They choose to run Beyond the Pond. Not every affiliate runs the same thing. The best example is that 740 the Fan out of Fargo runs a local hour at noon Monday through Friday with Jack Michaels while the network has the first hour of Common Man.

Seats would probably be done near the end, when any real construction is already completed. They would probably be a finish item, like carpeting. You don't put in the finish work until near the end because you don't want it covered in dust from construction work.

It isn't either or. There is probably some waste, there is in pretty much every organization. But you can also create savings and reduce expenses in a lot of ways without cutting entire programs. As they state in the article, the goal is to minimize the negative effects on students. Cutting programs would be a negative effect on students.

The fact that WDAY/WDAZ also has the channel for the CW, and possibly 1 more, that they could potentially broadcast on during those very busy weekends makes it very possible for them to handle the load from a broadcast time perspective. Whether you want to admit it or not, they can be a legitimate option if they want to be.

WDAZ was a big part of the Fighting Sioux Sports Network. Now they supply productions for WDAY'Z Extra which is available in Grand Forks, Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, Williston, and Dickinson. That would be a good start at building their own regional sports network. They are on at least some cable companies in the state. They have the capability to broadcast online, they do on a regular basis. They bid on the last broadcast rights, they may very well bid again now that they have outlets across the state. They could put the football games on the regular ABC stations along with select hockey, basketball, and volleyball, with the rest of the hockey and more basketball and volleyball on the Extra. They could also work with Fox College Sports or another outlet to get wider reach. That is at least one entity that would have the capacity and probably the interest to put in a bid besides Midco. There may be others.

I don't believe that UND pays for airtime. If I remember correctly, UND provides the broadcast production and FSN sells the advertising (UND gets a few ads for the school for each game). If UND were paying for airtime they would also be selling the advertising space to cover costs. FSN gets the product at very little cost to them and fills in gaps in their schedule, while UND gets the PR value and has games that are available to many alumni and fans. FSN likes the UND product because they get a very professional looking broadcast, much better than most school productions.

There's plenty of interest in UND sports in Grand Forks. Thousands of tickets are sold each year. Millions of dollars are spent on sponsorship and advertising. It is a major topic of conversation, even among people that don't follow sports. It is the major topic in the Grand Forks Herald sports section. WDAZ always spends time covering UND sports. Every radio station that has a local show talks about UND sports at some point. The only stations that don't are the few that don't have local hosts. KFAN 1440 has Tim and Swyg every morning from 6-9 am, and UND sports is their biggest topic. Other than having a dedicated sports station that covers the local area, I don't know what you're looking for. If the people running the radio stations (2 different companies with 5 stations each) thought they could make money with such a dedicated station I'm sure they would go for it. But they don't even make that work in major markets with large schools, so it probably isn't practical in a smaller market. I believe that the sportswriters said that they didn't have time to do a weekly live chat, especially getting all of them together at the same time every week.

How about jumping back to NDSU again, just like they did last time. There isn't a guarantee that the new NDSU arrangement is going to work out, and it isn't going to last forever. KFGO has plenty of options besides giving UND some kind of sweetheart deal. They could play professional sports. They could broadcast major college sports. They could become the home of smaller local college sports. They could expand their news broadcasting. They could broadcast one of the national sports channels in the evening and on the weekend. They aren't going to roll over and hand the keys to UND. But they might be interested in working with UND on a mutually productive contract when the current UND deal is done.

Right map, wrong station name. That is the map for 96.1 The Fox in Grand Forks. Here is the map for Cat Country, which I believe is the home for Men's and Women's basketball. http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=KSNR-FM

Here are some rough coverage area maps for radio stations being discussed. Remember that AM radio stations have to cut power and often direct their signal at night. Most games are broadcast at night, so these are the most appropriate maps to consider. 96.1 The Fox Grand Forks, the flagship home for UND Men's Hockey in Grand Forks. http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=KQHT-FM KFGO night signal, notice how limited it is to the southwest, southeast, and even to the south. Much of it's coverage area overlaps Cat Country, so it doesn't help expand the coverage area nearly as much. http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=KFGO-AM&h=N WDAY night signal, much better than KFGO especially to the south and west. http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=WDAY-AM&h=N 107 The Fox, NDSU loses coverage to the north but gains coverage to the southwest, southeast, and south, all areas with more NDSU fans than the northern valley. http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=KPFX-FM

FCOA is part of the entire budget issue facing the state of North Dakota. The Athletic Department has to cut approximately $1 million out of the proposed budget for next year, and that budget includes the dollars for FCOA. You probably aren't going to hear a separate solution for paying for FCOA. You may hear where they are cutting dollars or where they are going to add new revenue that will equal the needed $1 million.

Top seed will probably play the early game to give them the most time between games.

The entire country was watching Maris and Mantle chase the home run record the summer of 1961. Everyone knew that Roger grew up in North Dakota. Yankee baseball was the number one sport and team in the United States at the time. There is no comparison to hype about a potential NFL draft selection.

Only Denver and Colorado College are close to the Big Sky territory in the NCHC. All of the other schools are east of UND. Moving the hockey program to any other conference probably wouldn't have any effect on the Big Sky Conference membership.

From the forum guidelines found here, http://forum.siouxsports.com/guidelines/:

My guess is they'll settle for winning the conference tournament and being the only conference school in the NCAA.

You are now trying to compare apples and oranges. Under the current situation, the state projected that they would collect X number of dollars from all sources. They are now projecting that they are going to collect 96% of X, thanks in large part to less oil tax revenue. Under your savings plan, the state would have to tax at the same rate to take care of what will be the new 96%X spending level, plus take an extra 5% in taxes to build your savings account. Either that or they would have to cut the current 4% from the budget, plus cut another 5% that would go into the savings account. Either way, extra dollars would be going from taxpayer dollars into a savings account. But there are no taxpayer dollars involved in funding the tax deficit, the deficit exists because of a lack of taxpayer funds. The Rainy Day Fund, or Legacy Fund, has very strict rules. They were approved by the voters of the state. The money can't be touched at all until next year. Only a limited portion (15%) can be spent in a single year. The spending has to be approved by 2/3 of each house. The state has a couple of other funds that also can help smooth these gaps, but they aren't going to cover large gaps. "Thought they were getting" refers to the process of estimating the number of dollars that the current taxes will bring in based on the expected economic conditions. It isn't some nefarious plot to take more money from taxpayers. They either decide how much they are going to spend, then figure out a tax structure that will bring in those dollars based on the expected economic conditions, or they set up the tax structure and then spend the money (more likely somewhere in the middle). Either way, the results are going to be the same. As I said before, the results happening now, budget cuts, would be a necessity whether the state had the money in the bank or if they are working the budget process and planning for dollars coming in through June 2017. The only thing that changes is the timing of the cuts, not the facts that cuts would have to be made. This isn't the Federal government, this isn't deficit spending.

The current budget cuts aren't coming from anyone, they are dollars that the state thought they would be getting but instead won't have available to spend. So they are making plans to lower spending. In your example, the extra 5% would be extra dollars coming out of taxpayers pockets now that wouldn't be spent for up to 40 years. Do you want the state to take extra tax dollars out of your pocket for the next 40 years just to change the accounting system?

You want the state to cut spending an extra 5% for at least 40 years to set up this cash basis scenario. That sounds practical. There is no guarantee that they wouldn't have to cut programs or lay off people in your scenario. They would just do it at the end of the current biennium rather than in the middle when they found out that they had collected $5.5 Billion this biennium rather than $6.5 Billion. Spending is always going to have to be adjusted based on the dollars coming in. The only difference is when you make the adjustments.

Is that possible for the majority of people? Are people working in retail stores, or as labor on farms or in most normal industries going to be able to save up funds like that? Or is that something you can do when making large sums of money in a normally unstable industry like oil? Do people realize that the State of North Dakota can't run a deficit? The only time they normally borrow money is for long term projects like buildings and roads. Otherwise they aren't allowed to borrow money for everyday expenses. They have to pay for everything in cash, and have a limited time to pay those bills. They make spending decisions almost 2 1/2 years out because the Legislature only meets every 2 years, but have to decide how much to spend during those sessions. The choices are to save up 2 1/2 years worth of expenses to have on hand when those spending decisions are made, or use budgets to plan money coming in and going out. Then they have to adjust the budgets throughout the spending period to react to actual money coming in. And would it really be practical to have more than $17 Billion sitting in the bank at all times? That is a rough estimate of what it would cost to cover 2 1/2 years of spending by the state.

Do you have 2 years worth of living expenses saved up at all times? That's basically what Cratter is suggesting since North Dakota only holds Legislative sessions every 2 years, and makes their spending decisions during those sessions.