jimdahl

The way I remember it, the ag school didn't have enough men to field an 11-man team (all you needed in those days) so wanted to substitute in a couple cows as linesmen. Despite that the cows were enrolled as degree-track students (pharmacy, I believe), UND stood by its firm policy of competing against only all-human teams. It wasn't until the great flax famine of 1910 that the ag school's human interest was once again high enough to field a team (though rumors still persist that at least 2 of them were very hardy frontier women).

2002 RPI 2002 Bradley-Terry (KRACH) I just reran both with the 2002 data to help with this question, though I'll have to wipe that out soon and tie it back into 2003. They include all games played, including the complete NCAA tournament.

Newberry seems to have the momentum, having snapped their 10-game losing streak with a 54-20 drubbing of North Greenville. They're now 1-1, having lost last week in the final seconds to newly D-IAA Coastal Carolina. Keep in mind that North Greenville is hardly a power, having lost to Newberry College in all of their five meetings, including 3 shutouts. Coming off an OT loss to Mesa State, the Sioux really need to get on track with this game. I'd like to see the Sioux play strong in the first couple possessions out of the gate, better ball handling, and better running opportunities if we're going to improve on last year's mark when we enter conference play. Every team in the NCC seems to have weaknesses so far, so hopefully UND can use this last opportunity to shore theirs up.

Week 2 UND Bowenkamp 23/40 244 1TD 1INT NDSU Stauss 20/31 187 1INT Edge: Bowenkamp. Stauss had a noticeably better completion percentage (.65 vs .58), but the significantly higher overall passing yards, yards per completion, and touchdown give a definite edge to Bowenkamp. (BTW-- Shoutin' Ed Schultz, the official Golden Arm spokesman, is welcome anytime).

You're becoming a bit irrational in your Sioux hating. UND visiting has sold out the FargoDome, I'd call that drawing in the football crowds. Further, since Sioux games have sold out the Fargodome, how could Montana outdraw that? I'm not saying that NDSU can't get additional sellouts from some of its newly scheduled competition, but that would be no reason to discontinue bringing in the high probability sellout from a contest against UND. NDSU's administrators aren't so irrationally Sioux-hating as so many of their fans that they would want to give up that kind of the revenue out of hatred or pride, especially after putting themselves a situation in which they desperately need increasing revenue.

Mesa State forces 4 turnovers in the 1st half and completely shuts down the heavily favored opponent's running game -- didn't I already watch this game today with UNLV? I hope Coach Lennon has a good half-time speech prepared. 0 net yards rushing. Ouch. FYI-- In an interview with Gene Taylor at half-time, he indicated that Roger Thomas was anxious to schedule NDSU for the next couple years but he noted (as a member of the tournament selection committee) that playing NDSU would be worse for UND's playoff chances than playing an >.500 in region team. He said he expects the contest to continue for at least a few years.

Calder to Wichita Thunder

A bit more scouting on Mesa St (note: DS link will expire Sep 16)

In modern times: 1979 Cal-State Sacramento 31-0 @ SDSU 13-0 Illinois State 20-0 For the next 3+ you have to go back to 1940 and there are quite a few instances of 3 before that, including a shutout against Montana. When you go back far enough it gets crazy -- there are years in which UND had 5-6 shutouts and allowed as few as 3 points all season.

I've checked out Massey's ratings before because he has been doing college hockey for a long time. College football presents unique problems in that hundreds of football teams often play only 10 or so games each, far too sparse a matrix to get a significant result from a Bradley-Terry comparison. Further, people want comparisons immediately, when each team has only played 1-2 games! So, he attempts to mathematically immitate the process that human pollsters use to produce "meaningful" polls with sparse data. He tries to correct for too little information at the beginning of the season by including last season's results and reducing their weight as the season progresses. Also, for each game he calculates a likelihood of that outcome being repeated (based on the scores). Recognizes the problems that can create (some teams could always play close games, or play up/down to certain opponents), he measures each team's actual deviation about the likely outcome and incorporates that, so a team which always finds a way to win gets credit for that. Basically, over enough games, his model should settle into something close to a Bradley-Terry analysis, but in the short term he tries to correct for sparse data by incorporating many of the factors that human pollsters consider other than just wins/losses. Such "corrections" are necessary in football because there aren't enough contests to assume that random events are reasonably evenly distributed between helping a team win/lose.

As I said here: I can see how some would be concerned about more bars near campus, but I think it's the right thing. Students are going to drink. UND students will go to bars, but having to go off campus just increases the amount of drinking and driving. UND is one of the few campuses to which I've been that doesn't have drinking / eating / shopping options within walking distance. Add to my list of desired improvements (see above) a sandwich shop and a couple nice restaurants (for when mom & dad visit, and to draw the local businesspeople to campus). I guarantee that when students visit campuses they notice what ameneties are locally available; an accessible commercial district would increase the attractiveness of the school. Also, making the campus area more of a destination for the community reinforces the college town feeling (the locals are a big source of revenue for the school, particularly in athletics).

Oh, how wrong you are. An NDSU fan brought it here first (before he realized the humiliation NDSU's quarterbacks would suffer by such a direct comparison) -- I just kept it going because NDSU fans became mysteriously quiet last season. Comparing quarterback stats to the former football power at NDSU should not be confined to a for-fee site to which most Sioux fans do not subscribe.

Here are the stats from week 1: NDSU Stauss 22/31 165yds 0TD UND Bowenkamp 12/15 177yds 1TD Edge: Bowenkamp. It's worth noting that NDSU played a much more difficult opponent, unfortunately that can't be factored into the purely statistical golden arm measurement. If it's true (as some Bison fans claim) that the 2003 Bison are the best team in the history of D2 rather than Montana just being highly overrated (as seemed likely to anyone who watched the 2nd half), we'll see that excellence reflected in coming weeks when the Bison begin to play lowly NCC competition. Regardless, one has to tip his hat to the Bison for their win this week that few thought possible. It's also worth noting that UND played 4 different quarterbacks over the course of their game.

Sounds good to me. The elite of the NCC have certainly kept up with Montana alright the past two seasons. Unfortunately, as discussed in the NDSU-UND rivalry thread, UND administrators have made it pretty clear they're not very interested in playing D-IAA teams while in D-II (and I suspect Montana will avoid scheduling D-II teams for a while )

I don't think anyone is upset with UND for putting out video broadcasts; I think most of the people discussing the quality live far from the ND broadcast area and are anxious to get more Sioux coverage (that's why we're all here!) So did I. The big difference is that we all tuned into the Montana game for free. I think UND has every right to charge and gain revenue for the program, but then the broadcasts are no longer a fanbase/good-will building gesture but rather the sale of a product. When they purchase a product, customers will talk about their problems and concerns so UND can address them and so others can evaluate the product and decide whether it's worth their money. Nothing anyone says here will prevent you from purchasing the product if you like it, but it's certainly legitimate for people to discuss their own experiences. I'm looking forward to the free hockey preview because by then UND will have put on whatever polish is possible and we'll see how the video quality can keep up with hockey.

For those who discriminate by thread title, there was a lot of NDSU discussion in the Crookston webcast thread. Congrats to NDSU, this is great for the NCC and D-II. UNC's game last year and this win for NDSU definitely showed how much overlap there is between the top of D-II and D-IAA. Montana didn't look any better than many NCC teams (I only saw the 2nd half, of course).

Nah, I'd love to see NDSU win -- it would help the image of D-II and the NCC. As has been discussed ad nauseum in the D-IAA forum, there is a lot of overlap between the top of D-II and D-IAA.

It sounds like we're getting the "cut outs" at the same time, which makes the problem seem to be on their end instead of ours. The commercials don't work at all. I agree that only diehards are going to pay $9/game for this -- though I'm not yet sure if that includes me I'll definitely want to see the hockey demo before paying for a hockey game since it will be so much faster moving. On the business side, the demo doesn't seem to have come close to "selling out" the 300 free views.

Yep, that's the highest quality you'll get, then. They're broadcasting at 222Kb/s. I was hoping it would be a bit better, too, but I find it a bit more watchable than you do. Like I said in my first post, no one is going to confuse it with tv. I am starting to get more and more of the stuttering now and then. TD UND

You can resize the media player to any size just by grabbing the lower right corner of the window and dragging it. Question for you: When you go to the pull-down menu and view -> statistics, on the advanced page what number is by "bandwidth in use"? I'm just curious if we're seeing exactly the same thing, because I find the picture somewhat watchable for football (though agree that the compression artifacts would become very annoying in hockey)

Quality seems on par with the demos. Interestingly, it launched into media player instead of in that special window with the advertising. It's nice because that makes it resizable (it's a reasonably small picture), but when you enlarge it too much you really start to notice the compression artifacts. I think I'm finding about 1.5x it's normal size to be my favorite. I've had it get confused and rebuffer once in the first 10 minutes, but it's overall been very stable.

One interesting point that came up when I was chatting with bisonguy about it is that this free trial will also undoubtedly be the highest load their broadcast system ever sees. If it's ever going to fail, it will be during the trial (of which they've hopefully considered the impact). The demos were a good indication of the intended resolution/encoding quality, but didn't show us anything about the system capacity. I'm almost more interested in seeing how well this video thing really works than the game itself

The excitement is almost palpable: Potato Bowl web site

The first game is free at live video broadcasts, so you can see how well it works on your system. The demos are actually decent on my PC. The nice thing is they stream at a moderate rate (222k) whereas a lot of video sites on the web try to support modems by streaming at much lower rates. Of course, if you're trying on a modem, results will never be great.

Shocking news from today's Herald: