jimdahl

You will read the ads Seriously, though, we don't have advertising from any "WinFixer" and certainly don't have any ads that either popup in front of the current window or employ any trickery to refuse to close.

I generally try not to. Plenty of Sioux, Bison, and other fans no longer post here because they were unable to stop themselves from making crap posts like the one you quoted. However, we do give long standing members who make lots of legitimate posts a little more leeway to make an idiotic post than newly registered drive-by-trollers (my content to noise ratio). There is still a limit, though, of how much "noise" is tolerated from any member. Beyond noting that, I don't generally like to comment on the specific status of individual members. I do appreciate people bringing offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive posts to my attention (PM is probably quickest because that pops up any time I visit any page). The board seems to double in traffic each year -- there are literally hundreds of posts per day, and GDM and I admittedly don't read them all very quickly.

Thankfully, we having Bison fans around to lead the airing of grievances.

Weird, they still seem to own that domain. I find intentionally branding oneself as "theralph" when "ralphengelstadarena" is a viable option to be somewhat boggling, but GrandForkers seem to like it, so who am I to argue? Thanks for pointing out the broken link, though, I'll fix it soon.

This topic seems to have become more about which posters don't like each other than anything related to UND or NDSU football... feel free to complain if you think I'm wrong.

Yeah, whenever either school gets any national press, they always mess it up. Maybe that's why I cheer when NDSU does well on the national stage, I know UND will share equal credit

Hmmm... obviously I (and others) don't see it, which makes it seem like something specific to your account. That makes me think of things like having a PM and it trying to popup the PM window, or something like that. Try logging out and see if you still get the message.

How unlucky to get the big win on the day Duke and Pitt lost -- any other day it would be the lead basketball story. Nonetheless, definitely the first time I've ever heard "North Dakota State" mentioned in the national sports media without having had to seek it out. Very nice. To tie it to the UND division classification question, this is exactly the type of scenario I've claim UND would prefer (at least for basketball). There's no chance that UND would ever go far into the tournament, or even regularly beat ranked teams, but I still claim the average basketball player would be more excited to get an infrequent win over a ranked/Big 10 team or even just appear in the Big Dance than going deep into the D2 tournament. (Of course, UND hasn't done that lately, either...)

Remember that I did introduce those quotes by saying that suggesting Ovechkin for the Hart was an overreaction in the other direction, but technically: "The Hart Memorial Trophy is an annual award given to the player judged to be the most valuable to his team." It's hard to argue that there's any single player more valuable to his team than Ovechkin; however, I agree that it will almost certainly go to someone like Jagr who managed to lead a nothing team to the playoffs. Frankly, it's even a huge leap to assume that Ovechkin could keep up this pace through the second half.

For the video impaired, "Shot Heard Round the World" (Washington Post), includes a frame by frame description.

Yeah, I was watching that game myself. The kid is unbelievable. Higher res video available at the Caps site and the NHL. It dominated the ESPN replays and local media for days afterward. The media that annointed Crosby the Calder before the season even began are tripping over each other jumping off the bandwagon. Now everyone is overreacting the other way, suggesting Ovechkin not only deserves the Calder, but perhaps even the Hart. He could slump and Crosby could rock and everyone will jump back over, but if he does manage to come up with a 2nd half that matches the 1st, he'll certainly be getting plenty of votes for both trophies.

This article reminded me of this discussion... Alerus seeks $500,000 driveway - Grand Forks Herald

Hmmm... it's not quite the front, but there is a link on the stats tool page, which is itself under "Info" on the front. You could argue that "stats tools" should be under rankings/polls instead, but there is a place you can find it once this thread fades away. Interesting how much the split benefitted the Gopher but hurt the Sioux. Now I want to see which comparison flipped for each; time to get working on the 3D version...

Mandatory shameless, though infrequent, plug -- one good way to find such articles is to look at the siouxsports.com hockey page, where you would have found this particular article posted early this morning.

Come on guys, he's just trying to be the first to challenge an obviously unjust law. The best posts always seem to come at 1am.

I first posted this on the front page about a week ago, but it's to the point now that it works pretty well and has some interesting data behind it. We stats geeks often focus a lot on potential future rankings, but while developing this I've found that visualizing the historical trends also provides some interesting context to the current rankings. Rankings history charts Select a team, teams to which to compare, and your favorite ranking to see your team's historical performance in that ranking this season. Hover over a data point to see the team's ranking and numerical rating as of that date and any games since the previous data point (past week). Why would you want to see a chart of past rankings? You probably don't -- as I warned, for serious rankings geeks only... I spend enough time in my real job visualizing data that I actually think this is fun. Updates weekly before you get up on Monday.

I had considered that just an idea that Buning proposed to address the location problem (to the benefit of both schools) to help get things moving. Had NDSU said they didn't like that idea and instead proposed a reasonable home/home ratio or offered suitable guarantees, negotiations would have at least continued. Instead NDSU ran to the newspapers to declare they had absolutely no interest in playing those meanies at UND. I was just giving the other side of the story to the new member who suggested that it was UND that was currently unwilling to play NDSU. Back on topic -- in moving all these posts, I didn't notice any of them claim I-AA is no better than II. In fact, the majority of Sioux fans bent over backwards to acknowledge that there's more talent at the top of I-AA. I think most were just claiming that there is some overlap between the two divisions so UND (one of the very top D-II teams) may be able to quickly fit into I-AA. We take the immediate, though perhaps modest, success of NDSU as supporting evidence that. Why does that get Bison fans so riled up?

Well that's kind of unfair to raise an old offer when more contemporary negotations have occurred; Buning specifically raised the issue again this summer now that D-II playoff rules don't penalize UND even for defeating I-AA teams, as they used to. The situation, as it currently stands, is that UND has expressed interest in playing NDSU but NDSU said, "hell no". I reiterate that NDSU's refusal to schedule UND is a combination of spite (UND refused to schedule NDSU when they began their transition) and fear of scheduling a lower division opponent that could beat them. Admittedly, a loss in such a game would hurt UND far less than NDSU, but if the gap were already so wide that NDSU's win was as guaranteed as some Bison fans speculate, the administration would jump at the guaranteed sellout.

Mea culpa, I've honestly never heard that. Admittedly, the last I saw on the topic was late summer when NDSU's stance was adamant refusal. Do you have a link to NDSU making that offer since then?

UND's AD actually expressed an interest in playing NDSU just last summer, but NDSU said "hell no". A big part of it was certainly just spite (UND's previous AD refused to schedule NDSU when they began their transition), but I also heard plenty of speculation from Bison fans was that it was too risky to play a lower division team that might actually beat you. This is a great point -- trying to compare teams is all speculation beyond actual outcomes on the field. UND has met NDSU over 100 times over 100+ years and leads 62-45-3. NDSU fans speculate that two years of removal from playing UND has grown them to a team we couldn't possibly compete with, UND fans aren't so sure; no surprises from either side. I personally believe that NDSU's scholarship advantage would tip the scales in their favor, but if Bison fans' speculation about being being in a completely different league from UND were completely true, the NDSU administration wouldn't be afraid to schedule us. Finally, I haven't seen a single UND fan claim there's no difference between the two levels. The scholarship difference alone would make that an absurd statement. Those of us who favor UND reclassifying to I-AA are just saying there's ample evidence that the top teams in D-II could fit into D-IAA; we say that out of interest in I-AA, not to put it down.

GF city asked to foot bill (GF Herald) Could they write a more misleading headline? No wonder those altruistic champions of the G.F. taxpayers that depend on online newspaper articles get confused...

Yep, you have exactly the same right to public records as the Grand Forks Herald. Just make an open records request to the University.

The way I read it, the quoted portion provides a hypothetical scenario that the NCAA decided to avoid by pushing back the decision. The following, previously unquoted, portion makes that a little more clear:

Here's a link: WCHA Midseason report, and the UND relevant excerpts. By linking instead of copying, the author is getting full credit, the source web site is getting the hit, and it's presented in whatever context they choose (advertising in tact, etc...).

Dream becomes reality for Nicole Linkletter as TV show crowning fuels passion