82SiouxGuy

Much better. Good luck with that.

This idea makes a lot of sense. I've heard of section yell leaders before and don't believe that UND has ever done that, at least not in my memory. Getting student involvement is a real key for all college sports. If this works in other places there is a good chance it would work at UND.

Football and basketball tickets are free until the student section is filled, it is part of the student fees. I believe that the first 1,900 students get free football tickets. I don't remember how many free seats are available for basketball. Students can ride a bus over to the Alerus Center for free, otherwise they would have to pay $5 to park. That is the only charge for either football or basketball. Hockey tickets for students are sold, and that cost is a consideration. It doesn't seem to slow demand for student tickets. Students don't have the cost excuse at all for football and basketball so that shouldn't be a consideration.

I'm sure he's referring to the part where Greg Schiano ordered his defensive team to attack the Victory formation in a desperate attempt to cause a turnover. That was the most interesting part of the piece.

A family pack type deal is interesting, but wouldn't be as easy for UND football to implement as it is at Duke. UND controls the tickets but the Alerus controls concessions, whereas at Duke I believe that the University controls the venue. They would have to negotiate some kind of deal to make it work. UND has tried low cost tickets to attract people to games in the past. I believe I remember $5 tickets for some games. It can help bring some people in temporarily, but isn't a long term fix. If the team is winning most of the games, people will come to the games. The Ralph is sold out every night even though every game is on TV. The Ralph is a great building, but people keep coming because the team is winning every year. Winning will cure almost all attendance issues.

Never said it was going to be easy, but good things rarely are.

Lighting, music and intro videos before the game have nothing to do with keeping people in the building at or after half time. It isn't about winning a single game. It's about building a winning tradition and a winning attitude. It's about developing a new tradition or reigniting the winning tradition the school had before the transition. People left at half time because that's what they're used to doing the past several years. They will stop doing it if the games are fun, interesting and competitive. The crowds didn't get smaller all at once. They won't get bigger all at once. NDSU didn't start filling the building on a regular basis until they were in the playoffs, and they're a football school. Grand Forks follows winners, just like most towns. The Ralph wouldn't be full every night if UND wasn't in the playoffs every year, remember the only bad year the hockey team has had since they moved in the building was the second year in the building. Attendance for football is going to continue to build this year if the team keeps winning. It will be better next year, much better if the team makes the playoffs this year. Anyone who is expecting that somehow they are going to sell out the building every game right out of the chute is not dealing in reality. Win and they will come.

The key to getting the crowd back has nothing to do with gimmicks. As Al Davis once said, "Just Win Baby!". Or, as Vince Lombardi once said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing". Lights, music, and all the rest are just window dressing. If the team keeps winning, the crowds will keep building. Nothing magical or mystical about it. Win and they will come.

It would be interesting to look back a couple of more years. I believe that UND took at least a little bit of a hit in 1997 after the flood. A little bit of the growth shown on your list might be a rebound from that loss.

The NCAA policy is just related to Native American names and imagery. Explorers, for example, can have a lot of meanings that have nothing to do with Native Americans. It would not be a problem. The tribe members that have problems with using Native American names and imagery usually complain that doing so helps perpetuate stereotypes or makes them into cartoon figures. Or else they are upset about non-Natives using their identity when the team members are not actually members of the tribe. Kind of like someone using your name for business without your permission. There has been no opposition to anything related to the US Army, Cavalry, Explorers or anything else that could be related to the white man expansion into Native home areas.

Keaton Thompson and Adam Tambellini are rated as B skaters also. It looks like I was late with this post.

If Hanson is healthy and ready to play against Cal Poly I would expect him to start even if Marcus goes 20 for 20 passing.

You said it was a given that if I was putting down the NDSU fan base I was saying the UND fan base were angels. That intimates that the 2 factors are dependent on each other. It wasn't a given, it was an assumption. Obviously they don't have anything to do with each other. And you should know what happens when you assume something. I wasn't comparing the 2 fan bases in any way, and I didn't have to in order to make a point. I feel that most fan bases are better to deal with on bulletin boards than NDSU's. And every fan base has their own problem children. The UND fan base has its own problem children and is far from perfect. NDSU has more of them per capita than any board I read. They also troll on other boards more than any fan base I see, lead by your pal Lakes. That's why I consider your pals one of the worst, if not the worst fan bases to deal with on message boards.

Hanson won the position in practice last spring and again this fall. He was 13 out of 14 passing in his only chance at playing time, and the one incomplete pass was thrown away on purpose. Hendrickson has played very well, but he hasn't been perfect. He was 54% passing against SDSU. Hendrickson will continue to get playing time, but I will be shocked if Hanson isn't starting when he is deemed healthy. The nice thing is that they don't have to rush Hanson back if he isn't ready.

There is no correlation between talking about your fan base and talking about the UND fan base. They are independent of each other. They are in 2 separate equations. They interact, but they are not dependent on each other. They don't add up to zero with bad countering good. There is nothing saying that if one is bad the other is good, or that if one is bad the other is also bad. You are making assumptions as usual. How did you get through geometry with that kind of reasoning?

What's happening is that kids have died because of hazing. A lot of the time it starts as something that everyone believes is harmless and then gets out of control. That isn't worth the right of passage. Alcohol usually contributes to the problem. Here is a link to someone that tracks hazing incidents, http://hazing.hanknuwer.com/hazingmain.html. He got interested in the subject because a football player died in a hazing incident at the University of Nevada in 1975 while he was a student at the school.

You will need to be a lot more confident with that answer if you're going to convince tSic.

I agree and will add that upper classmen should also be held to a higher standard than younger players.

That's too bad. But I was just pointing out that with the information you originally posted you were saying that it was an obvious conclusion to reach just because the captains were involved, when in fact if wasn't that obvious. Good for Hak for enforcing his team rules. Hazing has been a problem at many levels of sports and it really should go away.

Funny, I didn't mention anything about the UND fan base. That would be a separate discussion. But you have to try and bring it into the conversation to deflect the conversation away from the bad reputation that your buddies have. Who do you think this story is referring to when they say "officials" don't believe the crime is serious? Hasn't Bohl suspended players for missing class? So voter fraud is less serious than missing class? http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/ndsu-will-not-suspend-players-in-petition-fraud/article_dcf521ae-fa93-11e1-800f-0019bb2963f4.html And then the President had to try and clarify those statements 2 or 3 times last week, and never quite did make it clear whether the athletic department would consider additional actions or not. You should really be proud of the players and the administration for the entire situation.

And if they had someone ready to come in and tackle at 60% they would probably put them in. Hendrickson has done very well, much better than most people expected. But all evidence points to Hanson being more accurate and he will play when he is physically ready.

Did you ever understand that part about the NDSU football players interfering with the election PROCESS? Or the fact that the election PROCESS doesn't just mean putting ballots in the ballot box? Did you get that far in your civics class yet? Maybe you should take an online course from UND where you might actually learn something about government.

I'm talking about being on message boards. No one wants to deal with NDSU fans on message boards. However, I know from experience going back many years that dealing with NDSU fans, especially at games, is just about as much fun as dealing with them on message boards. By the way, ask Hayduke about Lake's behavior at CSU. Hayduke wasn't impressed and it sounds like the CSU fans weren't either.

That was suggested on one of the many threads where this has been discussed today. But that would be a supposition at this point rather than a conclusion. You are operating with a very limited amount of information. Here's another supposition. The team has already had 2 minors during the first couple of weeks of school. Perhaps Hakstol warned the team about alcohol incidents after that and then the team goes out and has a big party. Maybe Hakstol and Faison decided to get the team's attention by suspending the captains, the players that are supposed to be the most responsible on the team, hoping that there wouldn't be any more incidents during the year. I don't know if that's what happened, but it makes as much sense as any other theory thrown out today.

You just continue to live in denial. Obviously you will never understand how immature and childish you and your buddies appear to anyone outside your group. We're going to bring this thread back where it belongs. We are going to talk about the 10 NDSU football players, and the 3 former NDSU football players that are charged with forging petitions and committing voter fraud. You remember that Johnny? Did you ever figure out the part where they were interfering with the election PROCESS by forging those documents? We can also mention the part about the coach and the athletic director believing that the crime isn't serious, even though the crime is considered a class A misdemeanor which is just short of a felony. And that the Attorney General and Secretary of State both want to increase the penalty to a felony for future criminals. Or the part where the athletic director said that the players were basically victims, instead of admitting that they should act like adults. We could even throw in the other NDSU football players that have been charged with crimes in the past few months if you want. Which one of those facts would you like to discuss Johnny?