jimdahl

Illinois to review NCAA decision Statement from FSU president UND President's Statement

Here's what the NCAA says: As I feared in the other thread, encouragement for other schools to refuse to play teams with Native American names:

Though this particular rule may seem a minor inconvenience (wear special tourney uniforms if "Sioux" is deemed offensive), this really could turn into a Gettysburg for the name-change activists. It's the first time the NCAA has agreed to punish schools with Indian nicknames, so one could conjecture that future efforts could be far more successful now that the "seal is broken". This is not the first attempt to ban post-season hosting by the NCAA. Though this movement started a few years ago with SCSU trying to strip UND of its 2005 basketball tournament (later overruled), they've finally convinced the executive committee. Name-change vs. no more tournament hosting is going to be a tough question for UND moreso than the big-name D-I schools who don't play their marquee sports in on-campus NCAA tournaments. This current action and the South Carolina confederate flag rulings show a clear willingness on the part of the NCAA to use its control of post-season tournaments to propagate its notion of "cultural sensitivity". I could see this movement bear future efforts to ban NCAA tournament participation, encourage conference tournaments not to host with Native American nicknamed schools, encouraging schools not to play teams with Indian nicknames, etc...

Division I Board makes allowance for early departures.

I'm around (though people usually prefer I not notice their threads rather than notice them!) There better not be anywhere you can order SiouxSports.com merchandise or I'll have to unleash the mean SiouxSports.com lawyers I've never seen myself as one to take up the hobby of making the typical screen-printed fan t-shirts a la gvfootball.com because: There were always been plenty of people doing it at UND for big games, etc...; there is a huge student booster organization that outfits desirous students in matching tees; and I'm not really in the student scene / am really far from G.F. As I've said before, I have made some prototypes of some slightly higher-end merchandise with the goal of eventually getting some bigger lots. At this point I'm stalling until I figure out the next SiouxSports.com logo. Suggestions on logo ideas or contribution of artistic skill (I'm quite competent with Photoshop, but can't free draw at all) to prototype ideas are still welcome, though I do have a few ideas but have yet to engage talent to flush them out for me. One timing goal, still in the back of my mind, was to make some stuff to give away this season for the big 10th anniversary.

I believe this particular set of graphics was put together by the guys at doubleminor just last winter. However, there have been pretty continuous attempts at such mods -- the last full version I recall was for NHL 99, though once you've made the graphics you can drop them into new versions with substantially less effort. DaveK - I tried to port one of the earlier PC mods (around '99, I think, when the models were much simpler) to my chipped Playstation. The first 75% of these things goes fast, then the final 25% takes forever. Throwing together rosters and stats is a manageable text manipulation project. Putting appropriate logos on a jersey template isn't bad (the graphics are stored as 2D flattened representations that are then folded over and around the 3D models at runtime, but most of the warping occurs on the sides, so you get pretty good results treating the front and back as flat surfaces). Then you want to get more of the jersey details right, then the NHL ads on the boards start to bother you, and the NHL jerseys on fans in the stands, etc... Pretty soon you're noticing that even with Sioux logos, the MCI Center doesn't look much like REA... Great point.

Crazy Pittsburgh getting #1, #2, then #1. I like the divisional scheduling concept, but with the new divisions the Caps are rather separated from the old Patrick foes; at least we'll get to see Ovechkin knocking Crosby around 4 times a year. In that vein, the NHL still has to be pretty happy Crosby is landing in the Atlantic East -- Pittsburgh will play against the Rangers, Islanders, Devils, and Philly 8 times / year.

OK, I had nothing to add to the Fargo v. G.F. sniping, but this is just delusional. The real numbers, since your made up numbers were (stunningly) skewed in favor of your point, 2003 MSA population (1000s): Grand Forks 93 Fargo 179 Minneapolis 3084 Fargo is a small Minneapolis in the same way Crookston is a small Fargo G.F. has a symphony orchestra, as many per capita movie screens as Fargo, and live theater; but you've got them on minor league baseball (that explains 3300 people when a baseball game overlaps college sports, which happens... uh...). As Bison fans continually grouse about (all together now: but the Alerus operated in the red last year!), the Alerus and REA have also shifted quite a bit of national entertainment from the FargoDome to G.F. No doubt Fargo has more of everything, given the bigger population, but it's not night and day like Fargo - Minneapolis. Regardless, your claim that Fargoans are too busy shopping and watching movies to go to Bison FB games does NOT bolster your point that Bison FB is the "biggest gig in the state". Noted -- that wouldn't have been my guess, but such a revenue boon would alleviate almost all of my economic concerns with NDSU's reclassification, so I'll definitely check back in November. I'm obviously a big fan of the Red River Valley, but fact is, Fargo and G.F. are both tiny cities in the middle-of-nowhere. The people who live in both generally know that, love that, and prefer that to everything else that comes with the trappings of a true big city; further, Fargo is undoubtedly the king of the tiny cities in the middle-of-nowhere North Dakota, but G.F. and Fargo are a lot more like each other than anything in N.D. is like Minneapolis.

The purported reason for keeping GFAFB open, a new UAV mission, didn't make sense by itself (particularly if they choose to keep Ellsworth open, as I think is quite possible). BRAC naturally pointed that out and asked for a response from the Air Force, but they had very good answers in yesterday's sworn testimony: needing a presence on the Northern border for homeland security reasons and the possible future attractiveness of the site for a tanker missions. How stupid will the congressional reps look if they claim advance knowledge that it won't be added, but then it is? From what I hear, it would be very surprising if GFAFB were added (some say it may not even come to a motion). I guess we'll see soon enough.

It's live on CSPAN-3. I do appreciate the updates, though, since I don't get that at work. The whole point of these hearings is for BRAC to discuss with the Pentagon those bases on which they disagree. The hearings yesterday were an opportunity for the Pentagon to give testimony about why it made the recommendations it did (see my previous post for some info on what the Pentagon had to say about GFAFB). GFAFB is one of the bases for which BRAC questioned the Pentagon's reasoning, meaning BRAC will vote today on whether to add GFAFB to the list for closure. GFAFB being added to BRAC's closure list still wouldn't be the final word on it being closed, rather it would allow BRAC to further study closing it altogether. Not being added to the list would be a big step toward BRAC adopting the Pentagon's recommendations. Bases Could Be Added to Closure List also explains it well and lists the other items being considered.

For those who don't see the news elsewhere: Conrad says G.F. not expected on base closing list The commission is meeting today to vote on changes to the Pentagon's proposed list. This meeting follows a series of testimony, from which one of the most interesting extracts for GFAFB was:

Somewhat related to past energy discussions and, of course, agriculture, an ethanol study from Cornell and UC-Berkeley is hitting the wires today. The line pushing it into the headlines is: The cite their inclusion of energy contributed to growing the crop as the distinction between their study and previous government studies that show energy benefits from ethanol. Though the particulars of ethanol production are way beyond my knowledge, I do wonder if they're not putting the cart before the horse; that is, will creating a market for ethanol lead to future efficiency increases that would flip that number around? Regardless, my understanding is that our primary use for ethanol as a gasoline additive isn't to save energy, rather it's to reduce emissions and slow combustion (i.e. raise octane).

Lots of talk about this just down the page in the less intuitively named More NCAA regionals for REA.

Yeah, U-Wire is just a syndication agent for college newspapers. Their feed, filtered for college hockey, has been available for a while from a variety of other sources, including Yahoo! News. When I used to search for articles re:college hockey/UND more manually I used to check it now and then, but the syndication was quite incomplete, so I found it easier just to go to the specific newspapers of UND's regional opponents. (Now my needs are handled by hideous computer programs and backed up by the fact that anything on the web regarding the Sioux will be posted on this board within no more than 7 minutes).

No love for REA, though they only awarded Western regionals through 2009: 2008: Midwest: Kohl Center West: World Arena 2009: Midwest: Van Andel West: Mariucci Frankly, awarding these for briefer, more impending periods allows the NCAA to keep track of how they're going at various sites (e.g. the previously untested REA) and use that in their decision. Now that there are two Western regionals every year, REA should be right in the thick of the rotation every few years if they manage to meet revenue expectations.

Detroit is the one that surprised me. It's going to be about the spectacle rather than the games. The NCAA will have a STRONG interest in seeing Michigan and Michigan St in that Frozen Four (the forthcoming USCHO conspiracy theory threads about regional officiating already boggle my mind). D.C. and St. Paul seemed like safe bets for two. I had wondered if the third would be Boston or Tampa, but as D.C. is barely a non-traditional site, I guess that left the door open for Tampa. Once word hit the street that a fourth was being announced, I assumed it confirmed D.C., St. Paul, and Tampa, with the fourth to give a nod to Boston. Too bad for Philly because it's a decent site, but never stood a chance of winning the head-to-head with D.C.

When BRAC visited S.D., Ellsworth supporters not only fought to save their current B1 mission, but also lobbied to replace GFAFB as the site for future UAV missions. WDAZ: South Dakota targets GF Air Force Base Aberdeen News:

Herald's article from after the report was released reproduces a lot of the number-crunching/speculation from here. And, as discussed:

California has location to its advantage. The perceived threat is now warm/Pacific instead of cold/over the pole. My guess is that we're going to see mostly NE/Midwest locations closed and moved to the Southwest. G.F.'s traditional advantage of low cost and open spaces isn't as great compared to some Southwestern locations. If there's any remaining value to keeping cold readiness / Northern border protection, G.F. and Minot are among the last along this stretch of the border. Another often mentioned standard is usefulness in recent wars (if they're not in use now, why have them?), which would seem to favor G.F. with a strategically important refueling mission; howver, I've also heard of a strong desire to move refueling to the Southwest to be "closer to the action". It seems like GFAFB should be on the list, but I guess we'll see with round 1 tomorrow.

I've been meaning to hunt down the numbers all week, but the STrib article gave these: $379m/year in jobs, construction, and purchasing 7,900 personnel, family members, and civilian employees To benchmark those numbers, UND's budget is a bit over $300m (leading to a total estimated economic impact of about $931m). No one wonders about the economic impact of UND because its right there in the middle of town and its reach is obvious, whereas the base is a bit more out of sight; however, there's no doubt those dollars find their way into the surrounding economies.