jimdahl

UND's week off allowed it to climb to #24 in the AFCA coaches' poll (UNK dropped out after losing to UNO). Interesting to know what the coaches expect from the UND team this season. Other ranked teams include: #8 SCSU #11 UMD #18 UNO

I like Kent and guy -- though not UND fans, they at least have knowledeable things to say; it's a pleasant contrast from some non-UND fans who don't actually seem to know anything about the Sioux but just come around to bash. The 4:00am is suspicious; my guess is computer programmer. I remember from my old days that all good programming is done at 4:00am. On topic: I agree that Montana will be an easy sellout but wonder how often NDSU is going to be able to get schools like Montana/Maine to come to Fargo; I would guess not every season. I also think that unlike a true rivalry, fan interest in a ritual butt-kicking could diminish over time (I know some Bison fans would argue that NDSU will be competitive with Montana in a few years, which would invalidate my point, but I'm not too worried). I'll predict that NDSU will experience a pop in attendance from the warm glow surrounding the transition, but after a few years NDSU's "conference" games against even UC Davis and UNC would significantly underdraw UND. Once the dust settles, even if NDSU schedules a big name home opponent every other year, I would guess that UND would still also draw 19k compared to more like 12k for other small-time D-IAA opponents. The transition to D-IAA is expensive and NDSU needs to be increasing attendance, so I don't think NDSU's administrators are anxious to give up an easy sellout. There's just too much in-state rivalry in all the small towns, too many UND grads in Fargo, too many "mixed" families for some distant rivalry to quickly replace this one. I know some Bison fans' hatred of UND is so intense that they want to think they've moved beyond UND and don't need this game, but this matchup is still a big guaranteed ticket for both teams. I think that could very well change in 10+ years if both schools stay on their current announced paths, but not in the next few.

Johnstown Chiefs (ECHL) sign Notermann and Leinweber

Chad Mazurak to Wichita Thunder

Grambling made it look easy for him. I was watching the game at a bar where I couldn't always hear the sound, but I did catch the announcers ripping on D-IAA. While Montana probably would have put up more of a fight, Grambling is considered a decent I-AA team. I really only follow D-I majors and the NCC, so I've found games like this and UNC's matchup with Montana last year interesting to see where D-IAA fits in. It's nice to see Rislov doing well at SJSU. While I have to admit it would be nice to have him, I'm honestly pretty excited about Bowenkamp this season. Nearly all of UND's losses last season were close games in which the Sioux had offensive production but that they failed to put away.

Thanks for the clarification. Indeed, I wouldn't want the evidence of UND's athletic superiority to be tainted by my footnotes containing an incorrect assumption about Directors Cup scoring

From the old barn, fun fact of the day (and a random thought of happiness!): the Barn opened with a sweep over NDSU (n

Since you asked: 2002-03 SDSU #5 UND #30 2001-02 UND #7 SDSU #9 2000-01 UND #2 SDSU #17 1999-2000 UND #3 SDSU #32 1998-1999 UND #6 SDSU #52 No doubt SDSU (winning its first major championship in modern history) had a better season than UND last year. Looking at Directors Cup standings and championships won over a little bit longer period, it's pretty indisputable that UND has been more successful in the last 5-10 years. Also, keep in mind that SDSU's directors cup standings include a few sports in which UND doesn't field a team, but UND's directors cup standings don't include it's highly successful hockey program because it's D-I. This statement confuses me. The "highest level" is D-I, UND is a D-I hockey program. No one is disputing that UND fields D-II football, basketball, etc... programs, but the hockey program is D-I. Many of us wish UND would at least study the issue. Though my gut reaction based on demographics, budgets, and attendance is that UND can afford to reclassify if SDSU can, it's tough to say without the UND-specific numbers of what the budgets would need to be, what attendance and funding changes would be needed to support those, etc... I'd like to see UND at least compile the data so we would know.

I assume you get this screen: Media player (.gif ~50k) Notice how I have a slightly gray rectangle in the middle of the black and media player controls above the "standard web banner"? That means that the media player object properly loaded in the page. Notice also where I have the buffering message in the lower left of the controls? You should get a similar message when the player first loads. After it buffers to 100%, the message will change to something like "playing". Let me know if you're seeing something substantially different in your popup window. You can also check if the media player is able to talk to the server fast enough by right clicking on that gray rectangle and choosing "statistics". That will bring up a dialog like this: Stats screen (.gif ~15k) Stats advanced tab (.gif ~15k) You can also try accessing a site other than DataFlix to make sure your Windows Media Player is working correctly. launch.com has free music videos that stream over Windows Media (on the video tab) and the first time you try to view one it sends a test video to your media player.

My mistake, it was cross country in which they've won a national championship half a dozen times (only once since the 80s, men's in 1996). I knew they had won some sort of running-related sport and remembered the earlier post that mentioned track.

Hopes high for Newberry with new coach, transfers, from Charlseton Post and Courier.

I don't get where the disagreement is. No one is saying D-I hockey is as popular as the elite conferences in D-I football or basketball, those two are classes by themselves. After that, it gets muddy (particularly as regional sports enter the picture), but D-I hockey is probably in the next few. This was all in response to an (ill-informed) SDSU fan lumping UND with USD as a weak athletics school. The question is still on the table how SDSU has surpassed UND in the last 10 years. The same SDSU fan (with no answer to the above question) decided to attack someone's response that UND has won 7 D-I titles to SDSU's 0 by claiming that no one cares about D-I hockey. Again, I think it's been well established that D-I hockey is far more popular than ANY sport in which SDSU fields a competitive team (mmm... D-II track and field).

I think Michigan football is much more popular than Michigan hockey. Though a lot of students follow the hockey team rabidly, the school doesn't see enough demand to expand Yost beyond its current 6k or so. The football stadium, on the other hand, seems to expand every few years and still can't accomodate the 100k+ of locals, alums, and students interested in each game. That football has fewer games than hockey probably skews per game numbers toward football (because if you want to hit a game, you have fewer opportunities), but not by THAT much.

We created each of the other forums here because they serve an unfilled demand; for example, though you can create Sioux hockey threads on USCHO, they get lost in the tumult and get taken over by trolls who repeat anti-Sioux propaganda to try to drown out any real conversation. By moderating this forum we try to prevent that and enable people to actually discuss the Sioux. The same holds true for the other forums, they provide unique venues for particular discussions. We've discussed the differences between the mission of this site and POI a bit in the hockey forum-- POI has really targeted being more a social group for Gopher hockey fans and hence has a lot more USCHO-like arguments and personal discussions. In contrast, this site has tried to be more of a source of news/information for distant alums who might not ever see a game (the message board is only about 50% of the traffic). I've gotten a fair amount of feedback from casual or less frequent readers (those who don't check in 5 times a day, but maybe twice a week) that the lack of chit-chat and personal discussion in the forums makes them an accessible source of information and insight about the Sioux (in specific contrast to USCHO). Of course, breaking the chit-chat out into a separate forum does ameliorate that problem somewhat. My big question is what would be the purpose of a general chit-chat forum? If you really want to discuss a new movie with hockey fans, is there a particular reason that you'd rather discuss it with only Sioux fans rather than on USCHO cafe? What's wrong with Sioux athletics message boards being slow in the summer, when there aren't any athletics being played? Is the purpose of this proposal really to meet a demand (as was the case when we added the D-IAA forum) or is it an attempt to create new demand just to increase traffic? Though my views are definitely on the "con" side, or such a forum would already exist, we're certainly happy to provide the resources to meet the demand if it's really there. My opinions certainly aren't set in stone, nor are they necessarily the final word.

Newberry in rebuilding mode, from GreenvilleOnline.com. Includes some talk about some of the new players. Perhaps most fascinating is that the new coach brought 7 players with him to Newberry from his old NAIA school, Pikeville College (KY).

My guess is that both teams (UND and NDSU) need the game enough that they'll overcome the current bickering about scheduling. I'd expect to see home/home arrangements rather than UND just going to Fargo for the payola (particularly given the current schedule's shortage of home games). Today's Herald article about the NCC talks a bit about this:

I think figuring what to do if 300 people buy it is a problem they'd LOVE to have

This just showed up in my email inbox with instructions to post it here:

Once you download the patch (I guess you're downloading an .EXE file?) you have to run it by double-clicking on it. Sprig seemed to be indicating that once you actually run the patching program to install the patch, you'll see an entry for Windows Hotfix #823980 in the Add/Remove programs. I think that varies somewhat by which version of Windows you have, though. If you use Windows Update to download critical patches, it will automatically install any new patches for your version of Windows so you don't have to go through all of this hassle of manual downloading. To do that you can go under the Tools menu in IE and select Windows Update. If you do that every couple weeks, you'll probably be patched against any flaws before exploits exist (for example, this patch has actually been available for a month, though the exploit just showed up this week).

Cutlip was a transfer who turned out to be ineligible. There some discussion of it in this thread from last Fall. The articles linked in that thread are probably more enlightening than our banter

Mine came today (Wed Aug 13). I was starting to think I was blacklisted

UND will go to Maine in 2004-05, Maine will come to Engelstad in 2005-06. Maine press release

Meet the Sioux for hockey is usually the Tuesday (sometimes Monday) before the first game. This year that would be Sept 29-30. I haven't seen an official date written down anywhere, yet.

Football is the only sport that splits D-I. DI-A are the schools you probably think of as D-I (Big Ten, SEC, ACC, etc...), you have to meet a football attendance plateau to be a member. D-IAA football schools are for the most part the schools you think of as mid-majors in basketball and generally don't meet the membership plateau to be D-IA. D-IAAA schools are the D-I's those that do not sponsor football, and are generally of low, but varying basketball quality. NCAA Division membership criteria The bottom of D-IAA is far below the top of D-II in terms of funding, facilities, and institution size. NDSU will be immediately competitive in those areas in relation to D-IAA teams, but will definitely be striving for conference championships and tournament appearances instead of tournament championships in D-I basketball. Personally, I'd take a D-I tournament appearance over a D-II championship, so I still think it could be a good move for basketball if NDSU proves able to be competitive in their new conference.

One price of fame is that people want to hear and spread sordid details about you. The increasing popularity of the UND hockey program has increased the fame of the players. Perhaps more importantly, there are new mediums (such as web sites) that can widely disseminate information. It used to be that if the Herald and local t.v. news chose not to cover something going on in G.F., the general public didn't know about it. That said, I'm often surprised at some of the negative things people say about players / coaches / media members in posts. Comments posted about someone influence a lot of people's opinions of that person AND certainly make it back to that person (trust me). Bearing in mind that posting something on this forum is the equivalent of saying it in front of hundreds of Sioux fans, media members, players, families, and staff would probably make a lot of us more cautious. As a supplement to the media coverage of UND, this board is a place to share information and analysis about the Sioux, not a gossip board or flame-fest. As many know, on USCHO you can't even discuss the Sioux because detractors will quickly fill the thread with anti-Sioux garbage. While aggressive moderation here will continue to prevent that, 2nd hand information is a reality of message boards. If posters keep in mind how widely disseminated their posts become and consider any potential harm given that, most people will make good decisions, though they are individual decisions.