star2city

Illinois, Florida St, Utah, and UND all in a Final Four? So a DI move must be in the offing!! Actually, a “Tribal Festival” holiday BB tournament consisting of the above four schools, at a rotating location, would not only ‘cement’ relationships between the schools, but could raise scholarship money to tribal members and help UND successfully move to DI.

UND is to NDSU as U Virginia is to Virginia Tech.

Chester Daily: WCU looking to take next step after highly successful 2004 season

Daily Illini: North Dakota, Utah to appeal NCAA ruling

Minneapolis S/T Editorial: http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5579700.html

Why the big push? A Big Sky bid in 18 months is likely, so UND won't have to go through the pain, aggravation, increased indepedent cost, and loss of revenue of waiting around for a conference to accept us. (How's that for a preferred and most probable answer?) Also, thanks to NDSU/SDSU for doing all the heavy plowing and trailblazing so we didn't have to. If we had moved up at the same time as them, it wouldn't have helped UND's position until at least two of the schools were out off DI probation.

A major push to DI seems inevitable at UND with this news: DAC studying a possible move to the NCAA In order for the DAC to survive, they have to keep Minot State, which will only be satisfied with NCAA DII membership. Buning's statements on playing NDSU, and now this, would only seem to confirm the most serious DI inquiry to date at UND will be taking place. Quotes:

Perhaps the most salient points I've yet seen on the nickname issue are in the attached article: the opposers of Indian nicknames rely largely on emotional appeals to confirm their ill-formed logic. No one dares question the emotional health or idiosyncrasies of those claiming "abuse", as those questioning get cast as insensitive, abusive, and unenlightened. On the pro-nickname side, no existing political groups will expend the political energy to counter the emotional arguments. The Diversity Bowl: No admittance to the abusively named.

Prepare yourself, as Jerry Izenberg, the columnist here, appears to be a buddy of Nick Coleman: Ignorance fuels support for Sioux logo

IMO, the above comments indicate Buning is positioning UND for DI, with a strong probability that UND/NDSU/SDSU would be accepted into the Big Sky for 2008-9. For that to happen, UND would have a transitional year in 2007-8, when scheduling will be very difficult. That is the year that Buning needs to prepare for and NDSU games would be important then. Even though NDSU needs the cash from any games as much as UND does, they don’t want to sacrifice the DI pedestal they’ve established if they lose to a DII team, nor do they want to enhance any transition year for UND. If UND does indeed go DI, it would be interesting how former NCC schools schedule UND, especially during the transition year. With few exceptions, NCC schools blackballed NDSU and SDSU. largely, IMO, because of issues of how thing were handled at the presidential level.

Florida newspapers are reporting that the NCAA Diversity Committee met in an "unplanned" conference call last night. Appeals process on NCAA committee's agenda

Would Native American education programs be as prominent as they are on campus if it were not UND's sensitivities about the 'Fighting Sioux' name? The great paradox of this whole issue seems to be that the 'Fighting Sioux" name has advanced higher education for Native Americans. Perhaps schools that really ignore the Sioux tribes are in the state where the most Sioux reside: South Dakota. Indian enrollment at SDSU and USD is much less than at UND, but yet the Native American population in South Dakota is more than twice that of North Dakota. What fostered UND's commitment to Native Americans and why has it become a mecca for them? If UND dropped the nickname, would it still be as sensitive to the educational needs of L/D/N or other tribal members? I personally would hope that UND would continue to enhance its N.A. programs, but would it still happen without the name?

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news...4004622,00.html Already posted this in the media section, but this quote needs to be inserted into this thread.

Rocky Mountain News - On Point: Fighting back

This might just be one of the all-time great convenient backstabs that the Forum, that great protector of 'public' interest, just loves to send UND's way: just roll over and get screwed. The Forum conveniently doesn't comment on the morality of the decision, nor does it find the NCAA's bureaucractic process or agenda (in view of other issues) distasteful, hypocritical, or politically correct. [url="http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=99909

If anything good can come out of this whole nickname issue, perhaps some important issue to the welfare of Indians can be brought out for public discussion. Like this idea from this Belcourt author in American Chronicles: Alcoholism, the Reservation, and the Government But then again, some UND BRIDGES prof is probably licking her chops at the prospect of obtaining funding for a study entitled: “The effect of the removal of the “UND Fighting Sioux” nickname on alcoholism rates on Sioux reservations.”

The possibility of UND being accepted into a DI conference may have taken a hit by the Sioux name issue. Supposedly, Montana State has been an advocate of UND, NDSU, SDSU joining the BSC. With rhetoric like this, it might be less likely: Bozeman Daily Chronicle: NCAA Indian mascot ban praised at Montana State

Chicago Tribune: No blarney: Leprechaun must go Mobile Register: NCAA more contemptible than mascots Las Vegas Sun: Ron Kantowski: Would a Nole by any other name run as fast? Virginia Pilot: Hue and cry over nicknames cast in several shades of gray Lebanon (Pa) Daily News: Considering the years of violence in Ulster, shouldn’t “Fighting Irish” be considered at least as offensive as “Fighting Sioux?” Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports: Here is the simple solution for the University of North Dakota or any other school with a Native American mascot the busybodies at the NCAA have deemed "hostile and abusive."

Since there are a number of media stories about UND / Sioux name that have not been linked to other threads, thought it might be beneficial to have a thread dedicated to those links: New Orleans Times-Picayune: PUCK AND COVER

From a suburban Twin Cities paper: Bowenkamp working hard at Vikings training camp

Didn't realize Chad Mustard was now with the Carolina Panthers: Panthers' signing a moo-ving experience

KnowTheFacts: Perhaps you need to approach life from a whole different vantage point. Your “victim” politics creates a toxicity in our whole culture that creates needs for retribution. In life, everyone becomes a victim sometime/somewhere of disease, rejection, disappointment, ostracism, loneliness, isolation, and death. “White” people are not immune to those conditions, nor are they the sole perpetrators of them. I live in a majority black city in the South, in an integrated neighborhood. Among my black coworkers and neighbors, who are viewed as upwardly mobile, almost without exception they have rejcted the concept of themselves as “victims”, when in fact some of the garbage that life has thrown at them (and especially at their parents and grandparents - hearing some of their stories makes one shudder) should have victimized them. But they chose grace, and asked for mercy for the perpetrators, rejected being in a state of bitterness, and moved on. In both the poorer rural white and poor urban black neighborhoods, victim status is much more likely to be embraced, and there is much less hope. It seems you are looking for an external solution, when the answer is internal in each individual’s heart, if they have the courage to look there.