82SiouxGuy

UND Football Fanfest on Thursday, August 23rd at 6:00 PM in Memorial Stadium. Watch practice, meet the players and coaches, free food and giveaways. Great chance for the kids to meet the team.

No, they are doing you a favor when they play you because they are in FBS and you are in FCS. MVFC is not equal to Big 10, even U of Minnesota Big 10. Not a comparable situation at all. You and your Bville buddies need to get over yourselves.

A rumor out of Idaho says that they have most of their 2013 schedule arranged. They just couldn't actually sign contracts until the State Board gave them permission to go with the independent schedule. We will see if the rumors are true.

This is basically correct. There are 12,238 seats in the seating area. This does not include the suites. UND does not sell the suites, those are sold as a package deal by the Alerus Center. People that lease a suite get tickets to all events held in the arena including games and concerts. There is a little flex room in the suites so they can sell additional tickets, that is why they round the capacity off at 13,500. This also doesn't include standing room tickets. So they could probably squeeze almost 14,000 in the building if they really forced it.

Grand Forks is famous for selling tickets the week of an event. The main exception is if people believe that the event will sell out. Since crowds have been down the past couple of years, most people don't think that will happen. A lot of people will buy tickets right before the games, unless UND loses several games at the beginning of the season. The crowds will be much better this year than they have the past few years.

I think that luck and timing are involved. But I think that focus and maturity and consistency are often what separates the ones that make it from the ones that don't. That's why goalies often take longer to make the NHL. The good ones have to be on 60 or more minutes per game, 60-80 games per year or even more depending on the playoffs. A lot of goalies have enough talent to make it. They just have to learn how do it night in and night out.

I've been in Section 216 since the building opened and we decided to stay again this year. Good group of people and decent seats. The only bad part is that the marching band doesn't usually play to that side of the field, but that's a pretty small price to pay.

The fact that people were paying lots of dollars to watch the games, and UND got none of those dollars, probably played into the decision. College sports is a business. UND is going to get 6 figure checks every year for broadcast rights under the new situation. They have increased their athletic budget and are looking for ways to continue increasing it. So they cover a large bulk of the viewers while making a bunch of money that they weren't making before. That alone might have been the deciding factor in the process. Losing some viewers is the cost. That's the way business sometimes operates.

I think we may be on the edge of a revolution in television similar to the introduction of cable. Cable changed the way we watched TV, but it didn't totally destroy regular TV. The major roll out happened pretty quickly. I can see IPTV happening much quicker because much of the infrastructure is in place, and it will get much better as fiber optics are installed. But fiber optics won't be required to make the system work, it will only enhance the system as it becomes available. UND could be on the forefront of the new TV age. I'm sure it is going to happen, the only question is the timing.

My point exactly. Except that naked lady picture might help increase attendance, especially among teenage boys.

Maybe you've heard of the Pride of the North marching band? There are rumors that there will be a bunch of college girls in matching green and white outfits running around, too.

I've had very few problems, only on a couple of games. The advantage is that they give you multiple camera angles to choose from. They have 1 feed that gives you the same feed as they send out on television. They also give you several other dedicated camera feeds such as a sideline camera, an endzone camera and a camera dedicated to a specific player or area. You can switch back and forth between the cameras. I believe that you can also go back and create your own replays if you want by clicking on the timeline. That would be similar to a DVR without the cost. If you are interested in watching the line play or something specific you can usually find an angle to watch that action. That is something that isn't available on television.

Funny, earlier you said that you didn't know of any FBS or FCS schools that had a field with the logo of the facility at midfield rather than the logo of the main tenant. Two regional schools were pointed out to you. Obviously, the Alerus Center having the logo at midfield is not unheard of. In fact, it was probably fairly common at some point if 3 Dakota schools had something like that. Sorry you're so disappointed. Like I said earlier, it doesn't even register for me. I'm going to pay attention to the action on the field, not the artwork. If UND had a great logo they were using, maybe I would have some feeling on the subject. But even then it wouldn't be that important to me. And I have a feeling that it isn't very important to a lot of people.

Some feeds for UND away games have been fair but I couldn't tell you which ones off the top of my head. I don't watch much NHL hockey. I've probably watched mainly First Row. Hockey is the toughest sport for the internet just like it is for TV. But if they can bring the technology that NBC used for Sunday Night Football it would be much better. That was in HD and the picture was very good. I just had some minor freeze up problems. Part of that is because I need to increase my internet speed, I just use a lower speed DSL.

Midco was talking about finding outlets in places like the Twin Cities. This has been a quick ramp up for them so they are probably still working on that.

I'm over 50 and I watch TV mainly online. Most people wouldn't call me a techie, but I'm not afraid of technology. I gave up cable 4 years ago because I hardly ever used it. It wasn't worth whatever I was paying at the time. I watch some over the air local channels and just about everything else online. I have seen huge improvement in access and quality over the 4 years, and I believe that it will improve at least as much over the next few years. The main problem I have with my set up is the lack of access to sports. Some of the networks are starting to realize that. Look at what NBC did with Sunday Night Football last year and the Olympics this year. Big Sky TV and other online content will actually improve access for me and for a lot of others that either didn't have access to Fox, or didn't want to pay for the additional sports packages. And I attend almost every home hockey and football game along with a few basketball, volleyball and women's hockey games each year, so having the home games on television do little for me anyway. But having a lot of away games available will be important to me.

It isn't that hard to hook up. Or their kids and grandkids could hook it up for them. The quality is getting better all the time. They had to pay for the extra sports channels. It was great to have but it wasn't the only solution. Games on the internet are available to a lot more alumni. And is probably less costly until they start charging for broadcasts. As the technology to broadcast over the internet continues to improve, this will become a much more viable solution. Plus, more games in more sports will be available with Big Sky Television. I trust people that are paid to make these decisions more than people on the internet that may not know, or take into consideration, the entire picture.

And breakin face has a perfect example for you, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2010_GSMB_Star.jpg. My guess is that there are others.

The FCS deal may have been costing UND money. They were part of the production process and I don't know if that was costing them money or not. For instance, satellite time costs a lot of money. The national availability was great, but most of those 50+ million homes never watched a minute of a UND game. Yes, alumni and other fans around the country will be losing availability and that hurts. But I am still convinced that the changing technology will make most games available in more homes in a decent quality product over the internet during the length of the contract. That plus the income could make this a win for the athletic department over the next 5 years.

I would guess that restrictions from new and upcoming conferences plus 5 annual checks from Midco Sports Net had something to do with it.

Don't forget to blame Title IX for requiring equal opportunity to athletics.

I usually go to 1 or 2 a year. It is a different game than the men's game, so it depends on what you are interested in watching. As was mentioned, you don't see the big hits. And the skill level isn't the same as the men's game. But it is usually very competitive. The skill level has gotten much better the last few years, especially with the twins. You can see some very good plays. And at times it seems like there is more team play rather than individual plays. Bottom line is that it is much better than it probably was when you attended a game, but it may or may not be your cup of tea.

There is one other factor that may have played into this process at some point. When the Alerus Center was proposed and before the election, there was a very vocal group that opposed it. One of their complaints was that the city of Grand Forks should not be building a football stadium for the University of North Dakota. As a counter argument, the group supporting the project had to show that it wasn't a "UND" stadium, they had to show that it was a multi-purpose facility. The anti-Alerus Center group is still around and still vocal in the community. Finding a balance between UND facility and general use facility was, and probably still is, a struggle. Putting the Alerus Center logo in the center of the field may have been a concession to that discussion at some point, either during the naming rights contract discussion or just during the design of the new turf. We have to remember that this isn't UND's facility, and that means concessions. This one isn't going to bother me much because I go to watch the games rather than critique the look of the field. For the question about the projected life of the turf, the plan is to have this turf last at least 10 years. That was the projected life of the last turf and they used it for 11 years. I would expect this discussion again in about a decade. And I'm pretty sure the UND contract with the Alerus Center was adjusted to go through the 10 years expected life of the turf. So UND will be playing at the Alerus Center for at least 10 years. Anything past that is up in the air, probably depending on how the next 5-7 years go and whether some very large donors step forward. Planning and building a new stadium would take at least 3 years, fundraising would have to start well before that.

The upgrade had nothing to do with the look. The Alerus Center had budgeted about $2,000,000 to replace the turf. That would have paid for turf of similar quality to what was in place only newer. UND wanted to upgrade to a better quality turf that was thicker and had more cushion. They wanted it to help cut down on injuries. The turf itself was approximately $1,000,000 more just for the turf. It was almost another $1,000,000 to rebuild the pit where the turf is stored. The new turf is much thicker and much larger so it would not fit into the original pit. UND agreed to pay for the extra costs so they could get the quality of turf they wanted. The City Council would not have approved the upgraded turf. The look of the turf was not a factor in the upgrade.

In my post I said that UND had input. But they had no deciding power. The only part they had actual control was over use of their name and logo. They had to approve the appearance, and the use. But they didn't make any decisions about the overall look of the turf. Actually, the commission spent quite a bit of time looking at the design. The Alerus staff came up with different design options and the commission spent time looking at the options. This was a major purchase for the facility. It even had to be approved by the City Council, although I don't think they spent much time looking at the appearance. They were more concerned with the cost.