jimdahl

The banner in the upper right is a non-paid advertisement for a charity I've followed for a few years, now. Ernie has run this program for about five years -- donations pay for low-grade U.S. military men and women travel home to see their families for the holidays, which they otherwise would not be able to afford. It has been certified as a non-profit. More background here. I know everyone is tight around the holidays; but if even 50 college hockey fans gave $10, that could reunite 1-2 soldiers (who are putting their lives on the line so we can worry about such trivial things as athletic nicknames and hockey scores, rather than attacks and invasions) with their families for the holidays. Your questions are probably answered in this FAQ. Thanks for your time. Jim

The changes to the RPI, while seemingly arbitrary, had two specific goals: 1) eliminate all the "negative" games 2) otherwise produce an ordering identical to that of the old formula Given #2, the change was obviously only superficial -- though the weightings seem to make even less sense, the result is the same. Frankly, the previous dropping of "negative" games only from conference tournaments was completely arbitrary (and hard to implement). Choosing the weighting to mimic the old result over a year or two is silly, but considering that RPI is 75% SOS, not ridiculously out of line. I do have the new RPI fully implemented (hopefully the above-linked page on this site will reflect it by the end of this weekend), and it humorously deviates wildly from the old formula early in the season (as there are currently about a dozen "negative" games despite there only being four by the end of last season), but it settles into the same result in the late season.

Post number 200,000 was on Nov. 18 by AZSIOUX. The discrepancy between post numbers and the post count on the front page is explained above.

A little more on jobs in N.D., and this company in particular: N.D. tries to lure workers back home And how G.F.'s job growth is finally back matching its regional peers post-flood: Job Growth: Equal among its peers With much more in-depth analysis on Mr. Tran's blog: More jobs = higher wages

The updates get sent to whatever address you put on the form. If you put a phone number / phone company, the text message gets sent there. If you put an email address, the message gets sent to that email address. That option is available in case your phone company isn't listed or if your mobile device has an email address that you want to specify. Just unsubscribe your email address (either reply to the note if you still have it, or fill out the form again with your email address specifying "no notifications"), and then resubscribe using your phone number/phone company -OR- the email address at which your phone receives text messages if you know it.

There's not a poor SiouxSports.com intern sending hundreds of text messages each period (though that's a funny thing to picture) The server sends them, they appear to come from notify@siouxsports.com. That address is unique to the text score notification because sending a text/email to it unsubscribes you. It worked pretty well last night. The final score went out almost simultaneously with the end of the game. There was an end of 2nd notification, but no end of 1st. All in all, not bad.

The response (in terms of enrollment for notifications) is somewhat overwhelming. To the point that I'm not sure everyone took "treat this as experimental" seriously enough. It'll be interesting to see how the 1am score updates from AA go tonight, but nonetheless, I still think this holds tremendous promise as a long-term service. I'm going to pin this thread because, well, I can. If you're having any problems with it, remember, you can unsubscribe at any time by: 1) Replying to one of the messages you receive (this may not work if your "from" address doesn't match the address with which you enrolled). 2) Going to the enrollment page and re-enrolling with the same contact information with "No notifications" as your desired level. While this service probably seems simple, I assure you the devil is in the details -- it has been in the works for a year now. If it works well, we may be able to offer it to fans of other teams (who visit SiouxSports.com), soon. Thanks to Kirk for the inspiration.

It's probably best to consider this experimental still: SiouxSports.com Text Message Score Notifications It's probably not particularly useful to people who regularly follow the game in other ways (whether attending, watching on t.v., or monitoring on the Internet), but is really cool for people (like me) who are often doing other things Friday or Saturday night but would like to get a notification of the outcome (even if a few minutes delayed). In testing, it has worked pretty well. Mid-game notifications are spotty (some games they're within seconds of each score, some games they're non-existent), but the final score notification has been pretty reliable and timely. Nonetheless, you have nothing to lose. It's free to try (except for any fee you may pay for receiving a text message), and easy to unsubscribe.

done.

Diggler can be very helpful. Just click "My Controls" at the top then "Compose New Message" to send him a PM letting him know what you want, I'm sure he'll respond quickly. How'd you send him an email if you didn't know who he was?

Mea culpa, you're right. It doesn't hurt us like it would have 3 years ago, it just doesn't help us like it would've the last couple years. I think the SOS this year is simply like the non-win% part of RPI, that is -- part your opponents' win% and part your opponents' opponents' win%, all D2 only.

A little more from the Herald. As many of us expected: And: Unfortunately, I remember this being true. After a couple years of the punishment for playing I-AA's being removed, and after UND scheduled UNI, I remember the rules changing (again) last Spring such that defeating a I-AA was once again worse than losing to a good D-II. That would have, of course, been incorporated in the weekly regional rankings as well, but it's one more way that the two teams could have appeared closer than we expected.

The Herald added this insight: I still think UND should be ahead of UNO, but I also still don't buy the conspiracy theory. I just think the regional poll people considered UND ahead of Omaha, whereas the national people thought it was close enough that they broke the "tie" with the head-to-head. Either way, as Dale Lennon said,

Awesome business to be in. It definitely seems poised for continued growth, 500 employees in G.F. will be great for the community. In addition to adding on to a solid manufacturing base, they will include some higher level jobs, too. I would guess that support for alternative energy will be steady in coming years; Repubs think America's addiction to oil is a security threat (as discussed in the last State of the Union), and the newly in power Dems view it as a conservation issue.

This was discussed in the football playoff selection thread, but probably ought to be noted here. UND is getting lonely on the list... NCAA says Newberry agrees to drop Indians nickname It's funny, because what Newberry actually says is: Guess they're just trying to let the fans down easy, telling them they're committed to "resolving the dispute" while telling the NCAA that they're dropping the name.

Earlier in this thread, I said:

Obviously we've seen WSU already this year, and experienced good success in that early season matchup. In an article before the matchup, Winona felt like their D was ready for whatever came: Warriors 'D' still stifling Of course, no one expected them to be coming to North Dakota

It's worth noting that this outcome is WORSE than if UND had held it's #2 slot but been prevented from hosting. In that scenario, we would've had a first round bye but then likely had to go to UNO (or possibly Winona), despite being the higher seed. In this scenario we would still have to travel to UNO for a second round game, but now we have to defeat Winona (at home thanks to the injunction) first.

I'm not ready to get out my tinfoil hat. I'm not sure I believe that the NCAA executive committee exercised some influence over the selection committee to knock us down a slot. I would think the selection committee would be very resistant to such meddling. However, it is a bit hard to provide alternative explanations. Sure, we (9-1) lost h2h against UNO (8-2), but UNO (8-2) lost h2h against USD (8-3). We had the higher regional ranking coming into this weekend, in which we beat tournament participant USD, while UNO beat Central Washington. It's a little baffling. They made a big point of noting how UND was hosting only because of today's ruling. That Newberry is hosting without comment is a little interesting.

Most stunning is that our win over USD had us drop a spot in the regional rankings since last week and allowed UNO to catapult ahead of both USD and us. We have to take care of Winona at home (again) to get the shot to face UNO on the road (again). Ugh.

Official pairings NW #1 GVSU (plays winner of USD/Northwood) #2 UNO (plays winner of UND / Winona) #3 UND #4 South Dakota #5 Northwood #6 Winona State #3 vs. #6 will be at Grand Forks.

It's a currently an above-the-fold headline on cnn.com:

Hell of a win. I only saw the 2nd half, my first Rutgers game at all this year, but that running back (Ray?) was amazing! He'd just take off from way behind the line and pound for 15 yards. The magnitude of the comeback and complete domination in the 2nd prove Rutgers deserves consideration for the championship if they win out. Way to go.

INCH's Nine College Hockey Related Ballot Initiatives ...

It will be part of the new FightingSioux.com, due soon. (Made by XOS Tech., who do a huge number of college web sites, so it will undoubtedly look like GoBison, GopherSports, any of these guys, et al.) There's been some discussion of it in the D-I forum.