jimdahl

It's also always smart to have the opponent's feed link on hand. Not getting anything from it right now, but it may pick up later.

And NDSU isn't nearly as good a school as Virginia Tech (an institution I think you're dramatically underestimating). Obviously neither UND or NDSU are as good as either UVA or VATech, rather the point was to highlight the relationship between the two schools: The University of ... is moderately higher ranked with a more elite/professional focus, houses the law and medical schools, and has a league-leading hockey team . The land grant institution has a traditional focus on agrictulture, and veterinary medicine, but has recently risen in stature in engineering, increased their focus on research grants, and risen in enrollment to the size of/surpass the University. The above paragraph works pretty well on UVA/VATech or UND/NDSU. No analogy is perfect, but you make it sound like UVA is Harvard and Va Tech is MSU-Moorhead, which simply isn't true.

Oops -- since my point was the effect on enrollment rather than the details of the actual standard, the Forum's misleading description of the admissions standard snuck by me. My apologies, any misrepresentation was the result of quoting a bad source rather than intent. UND makes it clear and it is understood on this forum that those are the standards for automatic admission, which meeting will grant admission with absolutely no further review required. Obviously plenty of people subject to subsequent review do get in.

[url="http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=101173

BRAC amendment vote could keep tankers at GFAFB until at least 2010 Conrad's contacts were good last time, so if proposed, we'll see how the commission votes on these amendments today.

Tentative agreement reached in coaches' contract dispute

I agree -- as a Gopher alum/season ticket-holder within the past 5 years (admittedly closer to 5 than 0), I definitely agree that the NDSU/UMN talent gap is not what the Gophers would like it to be. Frankly, neither UND or NDSU would have much trouble consistently being I-AA top 25, which is why I'd so like to see UND at least consider such a move. Minnesota is not Montana, a UND/NDSU vs. UMN game shouldn't feature a surprise come-from-behind win, but it also wouldn't necessarily be a blowout (though, admittedly, the score would be kept close by Minnesota playing scrubs).

These Buning quotes were from an AP story that's in the Herald: I agree with Diggler, the Bison fans who were ripping on UND's coaches for being immature about NDSU's transition must be a little embarrassed at seeing the NDSU coaches' and AD's reciprocal juvenile tirades. I'm glad to see Buning trying to rise above the fray and reaching out, I think we have ourselves a good guy there. Now that it's no longer punitive to UND's playoff chances to play NDSU, I'd love to see the game picked back up, no doubt it was and would again be UND's most important non-playoff game each year. If, as star2city speculated, it's part of a long-term plan to look at I-AA, all the better.

I think the page has a limit to allowed data transfer per day, so people trying in the morning are able to get it until the data transfer allowance is consumed, then people can't until the next day.

Isn't that what I just said? Your participation in the discussion could be a little more constructive if you did less reactionary recitation of talking points and actually read and considered what other people are saying.

Oh, and I love the line about does the NCAA think it can unilaterally modify contracts that have already been made? The formerly giddy UND-haters might want to rethink investing in G.F. duct tape suppliers... (assuming, of course, there actually is a binding contract that doesn't let the NCAA arbitrarily dictate changes to the venue).

Though I first saw reference to it in a post here by LetsGoSioux!, I thought this deserved its own thread so reactions to it wouldn't be hidden away amidst the ongoing discussion. An Open Letter to the NCAA - Charles E. Kupchella It sounding like Dr. K has been logging some hours on the message board aside, I was impressed by his willingness to point at the elephants in the room and say, "sure we can follow your (rigged) appeal procedure, but first, why the hell are there elephants in this room?" While most of the talk in the media and on message boards has been about whether Native American nicknames are appropriate, we've all realized the real weakness of the ruling is its disconnect from other uses of American Indian names throughout American society and from the standards by which non-Indian team nicknames are judged. Lines about how we couldn't call ourselves the Dakotans, and how the Office for Civil Rights declared there's no hostility stand a chance of prodding the NCAA to come up with a more clear position.

I don't know anything you don't, but had seen the same public statement you quoted, so my guess is that REA would work with UND to do whatever necessary. We're getting way ahead of ourselves here, but if the rule stands and if UND decided they had to change (big, far off "ifs"), REA wouldn't have much to gain by refusing to accomodate UND hockey. UND hockey is their primary tenant and raison d'

Yeah, I'm still kind of playing around with that (which is why it's only one page). A couple design notes: 1) Though the web is full of dubious-quality countdown tickers, I believe I'm correctly accounting for time zones (number of hours until the game is based on YOUR local time zone and DST) and not using any browser-specific gimmicks to make the dynamic content happen (for you Firefox geeks) 2) The dream is to have it function as a no-reload-required score ticker so if you left the page loaded pre-game and came back post-game, the score would be there The big problem with #2 is data quality -- still don't have a great data source for mid-game score updates, so rather than real-time like TV tickers, it might just update with the final score postgame.

Though I support the nickname and think UND should do whatever it can to fight this dictated political correctness, my support has kind of the taken the opposite path of PCM -- in 2000 I was in the fight to death for principle camp, whereas if it remains punitive, my principle may not extend to actually giving up home football playoff games. That said: It's not really clear why schools' sports teams need a nickname / mascot. Agreeing with engelbunny/Taz (though, as I explained, from a slightly different viewpoint), I wouldn't have a problem with the sports teams just being called the University of North Dakota. "Here comes North Dakota". "Goal, North Dakota". I prefer that to "Goal, Fighting Green". A nicer logo than the circa 2000 "North Dakota" jerseys would be required, but that's certainly doable. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Dakota itself is ironically "abusive" under the new standard, but such monikers are embedded in the team names of at least half the state schools in the West.

Recent media flurry as a deal is reached and people complain about the deal. A sampling... Devil's Lake water to flow this week 8/8 CBC News Critics call Devil's Lake deal "a joke" 8/8 The Globe and Mail North Dakota urged to again delay Devils Lake floodwater diversion project 8/8 CBC News

I needed to hit "Post" one second earlier...

It has to be a color (nearer violet than red) or (non-destructive) weather phenomenon so as not to offend anyone. "Red" is too angry, "Green" is taken, "Pink" would rile the McCarthyists against us, and "White", though evocative of N.D. 9mos of the year, is obviously racist. Though it makes you think of N.D., "blizzard" sounds like an MLS team (apologies if it is one). "Ice Storm" is properly ferocious, though people would just abbreviate it "storm", which sounds like a WNBA team (apologies if it is one). "Frozen Tundra" makes me think of N.D., and the treeless tundra sets us up for a future rivalry with the evil pine tree of Stanford. "Abominable snowmen" just doesn't fit in chants, though broadcasters would undoubtedly use "yeti" as slang. We could even bring back the bleacher creature after dipping him in white paint. Of course, two years after adopting the name, an abominable snowman would be discovered, taught English, and integrated into society, such that his first English words would be a demand that UND quit using his name.

This was precisely star2city's point when he said: "UND

Our point is precisely how amazing it is how well UND is doing for being D-II. To follow your DI-AA comparison, UND is on par with Montana and ahead of JMU (you might have heard of them?) UND fans think it's nice to see how well our team's logo licensing is going. I don't really understand why someone would want to try to make us feel less good about it, but it certainly isn't working. We can all see for ourselves the group of schools near UND on that list and a lot of us are pretty pleased with it -- no one is claiming we're UNC or asking anyone else to be impressed by it.

This is an interesting point I've never understood. When American Indian name-change activists claim the nickname isn't an honor, they often cite incidents of racism. I understand how opponents performing inappropriate chants against the name is a direct result of the nickname, but I don't understand how on-the-mean-streets of G.F. racism is increased by it. In contrast, I think the majority of educational information about the local natives and programs to increase awareness of them are a direct result of the nickname choice. Change the nickname and in 20 years UND students won't know a thing about the local natives, there will be no inaugural native dances at REA, there will be no informational events about the Sioux because all of those ARE directly tied to the choice of nickname. I certainly know my interest in and knowledge of the Dakota Indians has been dramatically increased by the affiliation of UND with the nickname. If we really thought that same change would somehow prevent mean intolerant people from discriminating on race, most of us would think it a great tradeoff.

Yeah, I had this quote from the FSU president in another thread: