jimdahl

I'm really with Aff on this one. Sure, specifics of the grievances between the two would be nice message board fodder, but otherwise only matter in the battle of egos. What happens next doesn't really depend on whether Potts is 100% in the right and Chapman has been flagrantly ignoring and disrespecting the Board, or whether Potts is 100% wrong and Chapman has been the consummate team player. Potts is demanding the Board to affirm and clearly define what authorities he has over the System and Chapman. If Chapman has been playing by the rules the whole time, reaffirming those rules would just serve to placate Potts' baseless concern. If Chapman hasn't, reaffirming those rules would bring Chapman in line. Either way, we hit the desired outcome of the Board's authority being well-defined; the only real difference is whose ego is most bruised on the way to that outcome. On the other hand, if Chapman hasn't been playing by the rules, the complicit Board may refuse to reaffirm Potts authorities and continue to let Chapman flout the system. In that situation, Potts would understandably resign from the demonstratedly dysfunctional system which promised him certain authorities and refused to uphold them.

Generalize much? I certainly don't have any antipathy towards NDSU and can't imagine what would lead me to be jealous of a University. If you can honestly defend Chapman as being on the right side of this situation, contribute such to the discussion; throwing blanket insults at all of us who dare discuss it doesn't really accomplish that. Chapman attempting to improve NDSU is his job and its good for the state. Attempting to do it outside of North Dakota University governance is bad for the state. A potential breakdown in governance is a bad thing for everyone, every man for himself is not the way to run a state university system. The news articles are ridiculously vague as to the actual situations and alleged transgressions. However, if Chapman is operating like all the other Presidents within the guidelines of NDUS governance, he should have absolutely no problem pointing that out and acknowledging Potts role in those areas over which he has authority. Purportedly, that's all he's asking for.

That's actually not a horrible analogy, there are some similarities. In both situations, autonomous institutions belong to a larger organization which has authority over certain areas of the institutions' activities. In both there's a clash between the organization's desire to regulate and the institution's desire for autonomous operation in its own self-interest. However, there are some notable differences. NDSU is owned by the state which created the NDSBoHE explicitly to exercise certain supervision over NDSU, whereas the NCAA is voluntary organization run by the member institutions. More to the point, the NDSBoHE's rules grant it the authorities in question over NDSU; where the NCAA's rules specifically grant the authorities in question to the member institution (in this case, UND).

Makes sense to me. If one of my bosses demanded that I recognize his authority, it would be a no-brainer to say "of course he has authority over this and this; sorry there was ever any confusion". On the other hand, if the rest of the organization allowed me to disregard the authority granted to him and permitted me to act autonomously in those areas, I would expect him to want to get the hell out of this demonstrably dysfunctional organization.

I guess 2005 really is over now, so the 1995-2005 banner is starting to look a little old. Let's go with this classic for a little while.

Oshie?

It really sounds to me like we generally agree -- Piper's message was meant as a flame, and a non-flaming thread about whether Engelstad threw the parties is legit. The difference seems to be that I think the discussion about whether Engelstad threw the parties is still the same legitimate discussion, whether it was spawned from the flame or not. I guess I could have just started a new thread about it (which you would have thought legit) and just told people to go there, but moving the existing posts seemed to make sense as people had already begun discussing it in earnest.

The unacceptable post was the one in which Piper flailingly attacked the Sioux, all Sioux fans, and UND's hockey arena by calling it a Nazi palace. Calling his opponents Nazis was a random, off-topic, personal attack on those with whom he disagreed. His demonstrated inability to politely have an on-topic conversation with those with whom he disagrees is why he's not welcome to post here -- I think the message board is better without him. That post is actually still in the original thread. The unacceptable post did lead to a secondary discussion of whether Engelstad really threw birthday parties for Hitler. The question of what actually happened is certainly not something we're trying to suppress, it's a relevant community discussion, and many people seemed anxious to have it. So, I split that topic to free the hockey discussion of Nazi accusations, but to allow people who want to discuss Engelstad's parties to do so in an appropriate forum. Its also now clearly labeled so others who are disinterested can more easily avoid it. So far, it's been rather on-topic and not resorting to personal attacks. I think our response to this situation was self-evident. Anyone (Gopher fan, Sioux fan, even Caps fan) who starts shouting "Nazi, nazi, nazi" when they feel the argument isn't going their way will be immediately banned, as was Piper.

Original post (note member status) Our response Place for further discussion of policy regarding such incidents

Seems not: Washington Post's Going Out Gurus Ahhh... memories of North Dakota.

Washington Post Express Agraria Restaurant

Moderator Note -- Discussion of "Engelstad Hitler birthday parties" moved to a new thread. It's sometimes hard to strictly classify a post as to which thread it belongs; sorry for any discontinuities this may have caused.

Moderator note -- Discussion moved here from a thread in the "hockey" forum. Some messages may now be slightly out of context (e.g. those saying this conversation has no place in this thread), but this is probably still an improvement over the old organization.

I'll treat it the same way I do all of McFeely's columns -- not waste my time by reading it. McFeely is just a contrarian who likes to criticize everyone and everything. Those (few) Bison fans who deride him continuously, until an occasional article targets UND instead, and then love him for a day are comical. Anyone who wants to read McFeely knows where to find him, but I personally don't think it's worth rewarding him by discussing his rants here.

Tip for posting images on message boards... PhotoBucket is your friend, it allows you to upload any image and link directly to it. Photo albums like Yahoo or MSN often require tricky configuration to make photos accessible to the public without a login.

It's been suggested that if the approval of local Cherokee tribes could be obtained, "Cherokee" would be an option that wouldn't require millions of dollars of logo-removing facility renovations.

I agree. Buckysieve's last post in this thread was smack-free, reasonable, and directly on-topic. Community policing can help, jump all over bad posts AND report them; but don't jump all over a good post because it comes from someone who's said things you didn't like in the past. Any chance we can stop discussing each other and get this thread back to being about the NHL draft?

I found the A10 expansion to Charlotte & St. Louis entirely superfluous for both being completely outside the conference footprint. So, you're probably right that league officials are probably more interested in expanding into new urban markets than maintaining a single conference identity. Still, guys, BU. Update... and the rest of the conference considers Dayton and Xavier to be in the Midwest

As an A-10 alum (it's important to throw out useless credentials when speculating wildly), the school most frequently mentioned in the last expansion was BU. Mass has rumbled wanting to go D-I football, but I'd be somewhat surprised to see them leave otherwise. Though the Big East split would certainly echo through the A-10, keep in mind that we're currently at 14 so wouldn't necessarily need to replace two lost schools immediately. Only because of recent underperformance in the A10 and overachieving by UW-Milwaukee could Horizon look close to A10. Atlantic 10 has 20 years of consistent top-tier tradition. Given that, the reason top Horizon schools would want to jump to A10 is to gain stronger conference opponents. Just look at how GW got robbed in this year's tournament seeding to realize why...

Q&A with Pittsburgh sportswriter Bob Grove:

I agree. That's personal smack, pure and simple. People who repeatedly make such posts or whose posts are primarily of that nature shouldn't be allowed to continue to post.

Brown eyes another title

In reviewing the last couple pages of the 2 legitimate threads that were closed, I see what the moderators were thinking and don't see it as quite so one-sided. Neither thread had really been about Sioux hockey for a while, but had devolved into Sioux fans bashing the Gophers. It's not stunning that Gopher fans retaliated. I think in the regular season such things quickly get drown out by other legitimate things to talk about. In the off-season, they seem to just hang around until they get out of control. I'm not sure interfering before they're out of control is what I want to do, either. I know a lot other team-specific sites quickly ban anyone who doesn't tow the party line (e.g. daring to say something negative about the "home" team). While that can keep smack to a minimum by keeping all the discussion homogeneous, I'm not sure that's an entirely positive attribute either.

Reading threads more fully, though a lot of people have been talking about June 1 as a decision date, I think it's because we were concerned about the window to withdraw from the NCC. I don't see that anyone knew June 1 was a new NCAA rule; in fact, just a month ago Tony quoted the NCAA manual as saying September 1.

No kidding. I'm with CDog on this one. Haven't we all (on the board) been talking about June 1 since this Spring? I thought we had always been discussing 2007-08 as an exploratory year because of the 18 month NCC withdrawal window.