jimdahl

Going to the Sunshine State Conference is certainly interesting. On the surface, it doesn't seem like an obvious move up. However, you never know what personal reasons people have for taking/leaving various jobs. One could postulate a lot of negatives behind this -- are there people behind the scenes unhappy with the decline in NCC membership/talent? Does he think he sees the writing on the wall of more/worse changes ahead (whither the NCC with one or two more defections)? Overall, from the little bit I notice a conference commissioner, he seems to have done a decent job at being the face of the NCC. I remember quite a few proposals and initiatives on his part to try to raise the stature and visibility of D2 at the NCAA. As the press release mentioned, a conference basketball tournament is certainly a big step for a conference in visibility and revenue. The new commissioner is sure going to have an interesting job ahead of him.

For comparison's sake, the new schedules:women men vs. the old: men & women In short, the 4 NC games that were going to be at Ralph were moved to Betty. I still think it would be nice if Betty were an actual home to the basketball teams instead of a practice / non-conference venue. Regarding photos, they're pretty obsessively photographing the construction over at REA's site.

SiouxSports.com Forums - Sioux on Satellite Perhaps we need to start a FAQ with things like "Sioux on satellite/tv/radio", "places to look for game tickets", etc... We could include links to the old discussions and just point people to the FAQ rather than try to search out the old discussions for them.

Big fan with a lot of free time... http://www.devilslakejournal.com/articles/...ts/sports01.txt

Dittos. Sounds like from airmail's advice and the error description that it's an incorrect file type. If you have an image that's in a type other than those listed, I can convert it. If you need that help or if the problem isn't any of the above, email the file to me at jimdahl at siouxsports com and I'll work on it.

I can't duplicate the problem and I can tell a few people have successfully changed theirs since this thread started. I assume you're trying to upload a new photo/image? After what action on your part does the error occur and what's the error message? If we can't get this to work, I can always just upload it for you, but I wouldn't mind trying to figure it out.

Potential NCC members is just a conversation that's been so common around here that it takes a lot to stir it back up (usually something like a legitimate news article as opposed to the discussion simply being raised on a different site). Here are a couple I found with not much effort; there's a lot more similar discussion buried in harder to find threads: New conference for UND? Future of NCC Mary seems like a fine NCC candidate; Dakota State strikes me as incredibly unlikely.

The Grand Forks Air Force Base has been making the news a bit lately as the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission is expected to reconvene in March 2005. I'm sure this will become a very heated subject in the Red River Valley in 9-12 months. South Carolina congressman says Grand Forks base in ideal location (GF Herald) Report says Fargo base could be combined with Grand Forks (Bismarck Tribune) That would be a boon to GF, though unfortunately at Fargo's expense, resulting in a net wash for the Valley & ND. The scope of the operation is impressive:

Couldn't find any spelling or grammatical nuances to nitpick? No biggie, I know you were just upset about my "NDSU was too easy to beat" crack, but couldn't really come up with much of a comeback for that. On the topic of rivalries, it is nice to see at least one NDSU fan hasn't lost his obsession with the Fighting Sioux. SCSU actually did cross my mind, but they just haven't been as consistently competitive over the last decade as UNO. Of course, the NCC membership is pretty shaken up, so who knows how the next decade will look. I agree with Clayton, and that's exactly what I was trying to say about how NDSU is a natural geographic/political rival, unique factors which make it impossible to replace (besides which, you can't just will a new rivalry into existence, no matter how much you want to pretend not to care about your "former" rival). However, a big part of what made the UND-NDSU game superhuge was that it was also often a competition for the NCC championship and a playoff berth. Whatever team steps into that role is going to be the team UND fans keep their eye on, and UND's biggest rival. For that position, I've made my guesses.

I agree that a big part of what makes a a rivalry is a fair chance of either team winning. That was the problem with the NDSU "rivalry", it was just too easy for the Sioux to win Seriously, though, part of what made the rivalry with NDSU so huge was that it had not only the geographic connection (which simply cannot be replaced by any other school), but also in that the h2h was often a battle for the top of the NCC and a playoff berth. That's what makes people start to really care about a particular opponent and circle the game against them on the calendar. UNO is the remaining NCC team that has shown the most promise of battling us year-after-year for the NCC championship and to deny each other playoff spots. UMD has a lot of potential because they're a big hockey rival and closest in geography, but we'll have to see how they succeed in the NCC.

For the record, anyone who writes anything about the Sioux is not only welcome, but encouraged to note it here. Pat's USCHO articles are even a bit of a special case in that he has extra access, and has a history of having written extensively about the Sioux for this site, USCHO, and others. However, a link to your opinion of last week's game posted on Bob's musings site would also be just as welcome. This is a message board, not the front page.

Though we're not in the football forum... that would certainly be a great game to get. Playing at the regional Big Ten opponent (albeit not a particularly strong one) would be great publicity and a blast for the players. We need to hold out for Wisconsin Back on topic -- nice to get the writeup in the "big city" paper. It seemed like half of it was about Blais leaving, which I guess is the biggest thing happening in athletics in North Dakota from the Minneapolis fan perspective. I liked this quote: In Gasparini's first year the Gophers won, but the Sioux went on to win in '80, '82, and '87. Under Blais we did win two more, but so did the Gophers (admittedly equal footing, but from a different disparity than the author implied). I'm sure the Sioux actually did fare better in the H2H under Blais, simply because Minnesota went through that horrible stretch in the late 90s whereas the Sioux had gone through a horrible stretch in the early 90s. The timing of those two slumps certainly made UND rise dramatically in stature vs. Minnesota under Blais's tenure.

The verdict is in: 3-years probation Restitution to MPD: $250 a month during probation. If she gets a job earning more than $20,000 a year, she must pay $400 a month through her probation period. She must not commit anymore crimes during probation. She must continue to seek mental health help.

Herald editorial in favor of casino. Pretty shy on substantitive support of the position, but a little useful background info. It does address the legality a little, U2Bad1, but not in detail:

You might also be interested in free Internet audio broadcasts of games (work over dialup) or paid video broadcasts (broadband only). Both are linked from the sports pages on this site and UND's site, fightingsioux.com. Watching the message boards is probably next fastest, people usually discuss the games as they occur. This site does have the hockey and football scores (and for hockey, box scores) up pretty fast, though sometimes slower than fightingsioux.com or uscho.com if it has to get them from a wire service instead of being manually updated in real time. On that note, I would encourage you to poke around this site a bit, it does also feature scores from around the conferences at http://siouxsports.com/hockey/thisweek.php and http://siouxsports.com/hockey/thisweek.htm and quite a bit of other information. As for other sites that will have scores, a partial list would include: fightingsioux.com uscho.com collegehockeystats.com d2football.com DI Hockey scores are widely available on the wire services so can be picked up from places like sports.yahoo.com, et al, also.

One game in the finals is all you need. If you didn't play at all in the finals, you need 41 games in the rest of the season (or you can petition the league).

Man, people have always hyped HDTV as hockey's savior and I've never been particularly convinced. In the past, I've gone out of my way to catch a few of the HDNet games, and still couldn't bring myself to watch a full NHL game if I didn't particularly care about the teams (contrasted with NFL, in which I watch every game I can). In fact, I'm definitely of the opinion that the Sunday afternoon football games on CBS pretty much tie CSI as being the most impressive difference between 480i and HDTV. However, tonight is the first time I've seen a hockey game in HD on ABC -- at least on my setup, it is so much better than the HDNet games it's unbelievable (I think it's a wash that HDNet, like CBS, is 1080i, whereas ABC is 720p; rather, I suspect it's more about the production/transmission facilities). Don't get me wrong, I still think the uninitiated won't be interested in watching hockey on tv regardless of resolution, but that's a discussion for a different thread (Go Southeast Division, representing the East in the finals with 3 different teams in the last 7 years, though still looking for a Cup!)

Sorry if this was discussed elsewhere, I didn't see it: SI column It's pretty hard to disagree with him, people just don't like watching hockey on television. In fact, I'd take it a step further and say that the NHL trying to pretend it's an equal to the NBA or NFL is part of what got it in its current mess. Player salaries have grown at a ridiculous rate, I think largely because the owners and players are using other sport with much much fatter TV contracts as benchmarks.

I don't question it so much out of sense of entitlement as I find it an interesting business question. Is REA really better off charging for tours than giving free tours as a way to build excitement among visitors and stay connected to the community? (Think of those people who bring every out-of-town guest to see REA and how this may change their behavior). Expand that question to a few different instances in which die-hard fans have questioned whether REA was nickel-and-diming them. It makes me wonder what will happen as the initial excitement continues to die down or if (God-forbid) the team has a down stretch. I find it entirely plausible that doing what you can to build the fanbase and create goodwill (even if it involves some incidental expense) could actually increase total revenue by increasing sales of the core products (tickets/concessions/tv contract). Don't get me wrong, it's $3 and probably wouldn't affect my behavior much, I'm just speculating on the overall business philosophy of charging to cover the costs of individual services vs. covering the costs of incidentals with sales of the core product.

Coming into the Spring run, here are the leaders: North Dakota State 147 South Dakota 140 North Dakota 139 Remaining sports: baseball/softball, tennis, outdoor track Reminder of scoring: Points are awarded on a 16 for 1st, 14 for second, etc. basis. The Sioux & Bison are neck in neck near the top in baseball; USD... less so. NDSU will get some good points off softball; UND and USD will finish last. UND will gain back that ground in winning women's tennis (NDSU fielded no entry, USD middle of the pack). None of UND/NDSU/USD fielded a men's tennis entry. The Sioux and Bison distanced themselves from USD, but didn't change much relative to each other up until that point. I'm not going to even pretend to know how to score track, but a glance through the records makes it look like NDSU would widen the gap over USD/UND. If interpret it all correctly (a big assumption), it looks like despite a strong Fall, the Sioux would have to fight for a distant second in the final standings. Congrats to the various Bison teams for leaving the NCC with a bang!

For anyone with way too much time on their hands, the details are somewhat interesting: State of Wisconsin v. Audrey Ruth Seiler

From USA Today: It's tricky, because they're measuring percentage of people who have had 5+ drinks within a "few" hours, which is not the traditional "who can drink the most" question, in which Grand Forks would be thumped by Madison.

Fascinating story in the Dakota Student: [url=http://www.UND.edu/org/ds/News/news3.html]Ex-parking officer: UND

There was a permissions error on some of the user-uploaded avatars (presumably caused by the server change in late January). I fixed that -- let me know if the problem still persists.