dlsiouxfan

I oftentimes wonder if for some nickname supporters this is the first time they haven't gotten their way on something in their entire lives. To spend years continuing to piss and moan about this really makes me wonder how much time some of you have on your hands. Are you not adults? There are toddlers who are more resilient. Every argument I see from the pro-nickname side on this seems to boil down to if we all would have stuck together, crossed our arms, and called the NCAA "Big Meany's" they would have eventually backed down. What world do you people live in?

I'm no fan of Dr. Kelly, but if these students have an issue with the loss of the Fighting Sioux nickname shouldn't they have had a "Fire Stenehjem" banner instead? I mean he is the one who actually negotiated the settlement agreement with the NCAA. I understand that would be pretty inconvenient for the one kid since he's head of the college Republicans but he should at least be accurate when assigning responsibility for the loss of the nickname. Not that the pro-nickname supporters have ever concerned themselves with accuracy.

Did NDSU fire their football coach who got a DUI right after being hired?

OK and when Harvard comes out with studies showing it can aid in recovery from concussions and other head injuries, we should just ignore that? Personally, I'd much rather have had a doctor prescribe a bag of weed for pain after my surgeries than have given me a bottle of Oxycontin.

In my opinion indecent exposure, DUI, and petition fraud are all worse. Indecent exposure should result in being kicked off the team as it takes a pretty screwed up individual to expose yourself to underage girls in West Acres. DUI should result in a suspension for a couple games because it's a serious screw-up that can cost people their lives. Petition fraud should also result in a suspension because it points to a lack of character and outright dishonesty that I think deserves a higher level of punishment. I consider marijuana possession and minor in possession for people over 18 as crimes that really shouldn't be crimes anymore and are basically around as an excuse for municipalities to have more jobs in law enforcement.

Actually pot is for a variety of reasons, not even close to being as bad as alcohol. Also, this is 2015, for all we know he could have stopped in Colorado (or Washington or Oregon) and legally bought a bag. It's going to be legal in 10 years in this country and, it would be nice, if we as a society stopped ruining young people's lives over it.

I actually think it would be wrong to kick him off the team for this. A Class B misdemeanor is the same level as a DUI, minor in possession, or a noise violation in North Dakota. Couple this with the Grand Forks Police Department's wanton disregard to the 4th Amendment when it comes to UND students and I think this warrants internal team discipline vs dismissal.

Fair enough. I don't begrudge UND hockey any of it's success but you have to admit that it's far less impressive due to the fact that only 64 teams compete and only half of those even finance scholarships for the sport. Don't even get me started on the athletic participation rates compared to football nationwide vs. hockey. Earning a division I football scholarship takes pretty impressive athleticism. I'm not convinced it takes impressive athleticism to play Division I hockey. In fact, when I played at UND we used to get a pretty good laugh at the athleticism displayed by our "World- Class" hockey team when watching them workout.

Honest question for the hockey fans on this forum. If all of the schools that sponsor FBS and FCS football, also sponsored hockey and financed it like it was the focal point of their athletic department (like they do football now), do you think UND would play at the top level of collegiate hockey? If yes, do you think they'd be at all competitive? I say they'd either be in a lower level (an "FCS" level) or they'd be the equivalent of a Wyoming or Idaho in terms of relevance to the division I hockey world. The fact is anyone who denigrates UND football because of their level of competition needs to at least own up to the fact that UND hockey can only succeed to the level it does in Division I hockey because most of the other NCAA schools either don't sponsor the sport or care very little for it.

You're posting in a UND football forum, calling the level UND football competes at JV. Get your head out of your ass!

In their defense, there isn't really anything for a donor to donate to at NDSU that would do any good in advancing academics. Saying that, I predict that absolutely nothing will happen. The fact that Port brought it up makes it even less likely to get any attention as the guy and his blog have zero credibility. He's a political bomb thrower know for his hatred of higher education and thus has marginalized himself. UND might as well start doing this same thing. NDSU plays fast and loose with the rules constantly and suffers zero repercussions.

Also has a cameo role in the film Sudden Death with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Just take my word for it and do not watch this movie

Ralph is dead so we shouldn't really care what he wants anymore.

When I played it was 4 for a home game and 2 for an away game if you were on the traveling squad. If you needed more there were always other players who weren't using all of their tickets and were happy to let others use them for their family members.

Most studies I've seen put the market value of the average FBS football player at between $178K-$435K. The average value of a basketball player is slightly higher. Right now for a larger share of those players than we'd like to admit, that difference is being entirely made up by the black market. Essentially boosters funneling dollars and improper benefits to these athletes. It's a system that is just asking for trouble as the universities have no control over these actions and it can result in steep penalties for the university and other student athletes.

So this huge pot of money is being created by student athletes in FB and MBB which is largely being spent on coach and administrator salaries, facility improvements, and subsidization of athletic opportunities for generally more affluent student athletes (i.e. lacrosse, rowing, skiing, insert other Olympic sport here) and you have issues with a larger share of the pot going back to the athletes generating it? Is it really that greedy that these athletes would like to be compensated at their market value? Especially in football where we know a not insignificant share of the athletes will face debilitating conditions later on in life as a result of injuries suffered during their playing days?

I spoke with one of my former coaches at UND a few years ago and we started talking about a coaches clinic that he had attended that summer at an SEC school. During his downtime he toured the stadium with one of the assistants from that program and he couldn't help but notice what was essentially a full practice going on inside the stadium. He asked the coach about how they were doing this with NCAA rules on practice time. The coach told him that the practice was player led and if a few of the seniors ask for practice scripts on the last day of spring ball there is no rule that prevents the coaching staff from providing them a few. The coaches can't watch the practice while it's happening or supervise in any way, but the cameras in the press box and around the stadium run 24/7 for security reasons so there is film of the practice and there isn't any rule against someone watching that film later on. He also asked if any of the players had to miss these practice for summer jobs and the coach just said "This is there job".

I'm sure there isn't a way to determine this but is the aviaition school skewing that number? I know they pay a ton of flight costs and other expenses over and above tuition that really no other major has.

Pretty much the entire SEC, Big 12, and PAC 12. Ohio State as well. It's not padded and it's run by the players themselves but they are happening and make no mistake about it they are not "optional".

It's pretty obvious from Faison's comments that the plan is to fund the stipends for men's hockey and probably women's hockey and then nothing else. More of the crap thinking that has gotten this athletic department in the hole it's in. Do we really need to fund the stipend for men's hockey? Outside of the Big Ten programs, I don't see really any other schools in college hockey funding the stipend for their hockey programs. If anything, I see a few dropping the sport altogether to fund stipends elsewhere. Furthermore, why do we want to get in a hockey arms race against Big Ten schools that we will ultimately lose, as opposed to entering into a winnable arms race with our regional peer universities (NDSU, SDSU, USD)?

At the P5 school level, the season isn't over in the summer. At most P5 universities there are player led two a days and film studies that go on all summer long in addition to "optional" off-season workouts. These are optional in name only as the coaches definitely know who is and is not in attendance. This does not leave time for a job in the off-season, other than "no-show" jobs provided by boosters which is one of the underneath the table ways these athletes are being compensated right now. It sucks for the students who's working two jobs to pay for school, but the fact of the matter is that someone is going to compensate that student-athlete for his efforts. This is just the NCAA finally admitting that they'd prefer it be the universities themselves as opposed to the Nevin Shapiro's and Luther Vandrosses of the world.

I understand this viewpoint, but the P5 schools and the NCAA do not have an option to not start providing full COA. The dynamics for those schools is that they have a large percentage of athletes coming from backgrounds of extreme poverty who are now participating in athletic events that are multi-million dollar revenue generators for the university. The athletes are more or less disallowed from any other outside employment in both the season and off-season and come from families who do not have the luxury to cover additional expenses that their athletic scholarships do not cover. All this creates a situation where boosters and other nefarious individuals will cover those shortfalls underneath the table and in violation of NCAA regulations. This is a situation that would only continue to get worse if not addressed and lead to more and more frequent scandals (Miami, USC, etc.). This is a dynamic that doesn't exist at anywhere near the same extent for FCS football programs or for college hockey programs.

Hockey is much more than a psychological hindrance. There are multiple times over the past decade where the success of the other sports was compromised in order to further the hockey programs interests. Here is just a short list off the top of my head of both big and small items over the last decade. 1. Shortly after the Ralph's construction, Ralph throws a temper tantrum after finding out that the state of the art weight facility in REA was used for a football workout. Ralph pisses and moans and UND football never again sets foot in the REA weight room. UND football continues to work out in a facility at Memorial Stadium that is sub-par in comparison to every other regional program and will continue to do so until Phase 2 of the the new IPT is completed. 2. UND turns over all marketing for the entire athletic department to REA which leads to a questionable allocation of advertising dollars such as a full scale ad campaign for the world junior's tournament in 2004 being rolled out a few weeks before UND football begins the FB season in a year where UND Football is coming off a trip to the Division II National Football Championship. Advertising for UND football and the other sports can best be described as below average to non-existent ever since REA assumed control. 3. In order to finance scholarships and shore up losses incurred by the start-up of women's hockey, Buning cut the recruiting and travel budgets for men's and women's basketball and football. This was when football and WBB were still financially viable and supporting their own costs. We cut funding for a successful program that was only a few years removed from a national football championship to finance women's hockey! Women's hockey was started in the first place because REA was hired to do a study on which sport on campus had the greatest potential for future growth and came back with women's hockey, which should have been met with laughter by Thomas and Kupchella if they would have had even a shred of objectivity. 4. Kupchella sits on his hands for four years following NDSU's decision to move to Division II in part because of the concerns that a move to Division I in every sport would have on the hockey program. Finally caves and agrees to move to Division I after a near mutiny of the football alumni who had watched their contributions continue to be allocated to shore up general fund deficits created by women's hockey and other poor spending decisions made by the REA. 5. When SIU tendered an offer to Dale Lennon (the most successful FB coach in UND history), UND refused to match the terms of the contract because it would have made him the highest paid coach in the school and upset the salary hierarchy as he would have made more than Hakstol. I have no doubt that if Schweigert can engineer a turnaround of the football program and another team within our division comes calling, that Faison and Kelly would make the same decision. 6. When Big Sky affiliation was in jeopardy due to the Sioux nickname controversy and the idiotic workings of the ND legislature, Hakstol goes rogue and comes up out urging hockey fans to contact their representatives to encourage passage of the nickname law. The law passes and negatively impacts every other sport on campus for 18 months until the law is finally repealed. Hakstol, who should have been terminated in my opinion, receives next to nothing in discipline for his actions. Most of the posters on this board to this day will defend his actions to this day even though it nearly derailed UND's entire Division I move. I'm sure there are many more instances that i"m forgetting or do not know about, but all in all it's decisions like the above that have gotten us to today. I've seen nothing that indicates that the thinking within the athletic department or UND's administration has changed one bit. Until we acknowledge that UND needs to change it's entire thinking in terms of the athletic department, the other sports will continue to struggle to have sustained long-term success.

I agree it's not just a UND issue. At least placing emphasis on basketball is financially justifiable. Hockey is a niche sport with a declining fan base. Also, I'm sure Kansas was re-thinking their emphasis a few years back when it looked like the Big 12 was going to implode over football and Kansas was going to be left behind. Football drives the bus in college athletics. Even Duke doesn't have any pull in the ACC if they're opposed to conference moves that benefit football at the expense of basketball and they're the premier basketball program in the country.

I know there are a number of fans that do this. They do this because they view UND's program as inferior and not worthy of their entertainment dollar, which is primarily because UND doesn't fund it to comparable levels or place anywhere near the emphasis on it that NDSU does. If UND invested in their program at a comparable level to NDSU this would change but UND is unwilling to do this. UND chooses to write off these sports fans entertainment dollars while at the same time writing off the entertainment dollars of thousands of other sports fans across the state who would much rather follow a strong football program. Why is UND not competing for the entertainment dollars of these sports fans? If UND invested half as much as they do in the hockey program, where would these fans go to get their hockey fix? UMC Crookston? What other regional competition for their hockey entertainment dollar is there? The rest of the UND's hockey rivals seem to get by with half of the amount of spending that UND does and from all appearances get better results.