jimdahl

That's actually a good point. SDSU's conference restriction was made under the assumption that they could decide next summer and move the following year. However, they still self-imposed a restriction to increase popular support for the move, but have now decided to ignore it because it didn't turn out to be as easy to meet as they had hoped. This confuses me. We've all been talking for 9 months now about how SDSU isn't allowed to move without a conference. This S.D. BOR release contains the following quotes: The Board also voted 6-2 to support South Dakota State University's application for Division 1-AA status, if SDSU can find an appropriate athletic conference to join. ... Jewett said the Board believes it is important to establish a detailed athletics policy so that expectations are clear regarding funding, student fees, scholarships, and other criteria.

Just hit the AP wire and consequently the front pages of ESPN / CNNSI.

While I thought it was hasty of NDSU to ignore its consultants' report, at least they had the integrity to announce what their true plans were -- moving no matter what, confident that a conference will work out eventually. SDSU's administration just pretended they were going to follow the recommendation because they were so (incorrectly) confident a conference would be knocking on their door. I officially retract every time I said I thought SDSU was going about this the right way -- it turns out they were just lying to try to railroad this move through (and they fooled me into sticking up for them ).

A Statement about D-III reform efforts from NCAA President Myles Brand

Got it, thanks.

SI's D-II pre-season Not that SI is the best source of D-II knowledge, but they expect Minnesota-Duluth to continue to excel, coming in at #6. They'll be a welcome addition to the NCC next season. Don Hansen poll Don has UMD at #10, and SCSU as the highest ranked current NCC team at #14. He had no other NCC teams in the top 40!

CC Tigers ezBoard But if I teach you to fish... you could have found it at SiouxSports.com NCAA D-I hockey links (that page can be found under "More Links" on the front hockey page)

I don't know how the alumni office handles the Alumni News, but quite often when a relatively small office mails 90,000 large periodicals, they don't send them all in one day. Further, mail transit times can vary dramatically for periodical class materials. I wouldn't start worrying just yet.

Here's what Title IX actually says: Whew. How to test for that? The Department of Health, Education and Welfare recommended a three-pronged compliance test for institutions: 1. Demonstrate that the percentage of its female athletes is nearly the same as the percentage of female undergraduate students; 2. Show that it is steadily increasing opportunities for women; 3. Prove that it is meeting the athletics interests and abilities of its female students. An institution need only meet one test. So, there's no demand that you instantly have equal opportunities if you prove that you're moving in that direction, and so forth. Funny historical note: when Title IX was implemented, women's activists were pushing for a 50-50 split, but football coaches (who were quite influential) managed to push through the proportional test because it would benefit male sports. In 1974, 60% of college attendees were male. Now, 54% are female. Oops. There has recently been a proposal on the table to drop the proportion to 50-50 with a 5% leeway. It was shot down, but the efforts to weaken Title IX will undoubtedly continue as institutions blame Title IX for closing down non-revenue men's sports. ESPN discusses some of the changes to interpretations Title IX FAQ from Women's Sports Foundation

Washington Capitals sign Jason Ulmer. He'll play next year for the Portland Pirates (the AHL affiliate of the Caps with whom Spiewak played this Spring). He played for Pirates previously in 2001-02, when the fans voted him the "Unsung Hero" of the team. Quad City Mallards press release: NHL team signs ex-Mallard, Jason Ulmer (Thanks for the tip, Dale)

I've said this more than once in the last couple years, usually to the displeasure of whoever happened to be listening. Early 90s REA attendance: 3000-4000. That had nothing to do with arena capacity, which was just over 6000. Now the team is drawing 11000 (3-4 times as many as 10 years ago). The population of G.F. and other entertainment options haven't changed significantly. While the team is definitely bettter, and the arena itself is more of a destination, how long will those factors sustain this level of attendance? I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if G.F. can support an 11,000 attendees/game team for the long term. What will happen when the arena is no longer the "new thing", or when the team has a few disappointing years, or when both coincide? If I were REA, I would definitely be actively working to expand the Sioux fan base and figuring out ways to generate additional revenue by providing additional services for fans (e.g. webcast, magazine). There are ups and downs, and it only makes sense to capitalize on the excitement and good-will generated by these good times to try to lock in additional fans and revenue sources for the future.

I can only assume that Sicatoka's concerns are directly related to his not-so-secret agenda of wanting UND to move to D-I This is really completely unrelated to D-II or UND. First, this was a recommendation from the D-III management council, not some uber-NCAA governing body, so it's certainly not setting any sort of precedent. To put this recommendation in context, D-III has absolutely no scholarships; in fact, many of the teams are practically intramural such that anyone who wants to play can literally walk on. That's a vastly different governance attitude from D-II. Further, I suspect the D-II hockey schools have enough clout that they could get the D-II hockey scholarship limit changed if it really came down to that. Keeping our eye on the ball -- this affects a very small number of programs (I think about 5 hockey and about 5 other). It's tough to predict whether those schools will be able to mount sufficient opposition. On the other hand, you can read the list of new D-II schools in the D-IAA forum to see that CC could easily to move to D-II and fit right in

Some of you may have seen this elsewhere on the net, but it bears repeating. If this proposal goes through, CC would be forbidden from granting scholarships to its D-I hockey team. Division III Management Council plots legislative course for future

This inflation is getting out of hand! A few observations/tips- Though the resolution of the video is fixed (320x240) and you can't make it full screen, you can make it take up more of your screen by changing your video resolution in the display applet of your Windows control panel. At 640x480 or 800x600, the window will take up most of your screen. The video seems to be a fixed bit rate of 222Kb/s. The lowest end package of almost any cable modem service I've seen includes at least 384Kb/s downstream. If you can carry at least 300Kb/s downstream, it's unlikely that the image quality is being degraded because of bandwidth limitations. If you right-click on the video and choose "statistics" you can see if your connection is dropping frames or not. It is possible for system speed/video card quality to hamper playback because modern codecs do some pretty fancy math. The resolution of these clips are low enough that bus speed (internal communications inside your PC) is unlikely to be a problem. My nowhere-near state-of-the-art laptop (1Ghz) renders the video just as well as my desktop. Modern video codecs (compressors/decompressors) work by recording only the changes between frames. Therefore, the less motion, the higher the image quality. Even from equal quality sources (which Chris indicated these were not), a press conference is going to look a little better than a fast moving game.

The trick to ESPN Motion is that it doesn't stream. It puts an app to your computer that downloads video clips in the background. That way it can spend a minute or two downloading a 15 sec clip, hence the quality can be much higher than if they had to stream video to you.

http://www.dataflix.com/ Looks like $9/game or $100/season. To help you decided how well it works for you, you can see a sample by watching a game or press conference at the above link. It looks like the first two hockey games will be free to help get the word out. [edit-- changed post to reflect that they did change the price from $.01 for 1st two games to free, and the URL changed; apparently it's currently under construction]

For those who don't know, this is a printed publication that will be put out by REA/UND starting this Summer covering Sioux athletics. Subscriptions will cost $15/year for 6 issues. The initial marketing plan was to send an initial free copy to everyone who gets the Alumni Newsletter (which I assume still holds). My understanding is that it's going to be a bit more "behind the scenes", human interest, etc... instead of just news, and that each issue will focus primarily on a different sport. I wasn't aware of this before today, but the web site seems to indicate that the web content will be accessible only to paid print subscribers. I guess the reality of college sports today is that you have to take advantage of each revenue opportunity. Regardless, it's great to see more high quality information published on the Sioux.

RMAC pre-season poll

Newberry faces long road to building a winner, reports South Carolina's The State. I don't think I'm breaking the secret that Newberry does not have the most competitive athletics programs. They're trying... But... Re: scholarships...

http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/n...ews/6394116.htm

GF Herald Grasping the offense Fargo Forum Kleinsasser's steady rise brings him to top of heap among NFL tight ends

I don't think there are many Sioux fans who are big fans of UND's recent football scheduling. If the athletic department's new riches can be used to build a new sports center for basketball, hopefully in future years they can also help the much more popular football program.

As a D.C. resident when all of this went down, I remember it pretty well. To me, the big difference between something like Braves, Sioux, Indians, Seminoles, etc... and Redskins is that Redskins is historically considered a racial slur. While we normally debate whether using Native Americans names and imagery as nicknames and mascots is offensive, the question of whether using racial slurs as a team name is entirely different. I think the big question in the Redskins situation is whether the term is still an offensive slur, or whether its history of common usage has removed that connotation. I don't think Snyder holds any particularly loyalty to the name (unlike when the Cooke family owned the team), but supports it only because of its economic value to the team. The Skins have some of the most rabid fan support in the NFL (beyond the Packers, IMHO, having lived in both teams' home regions). The fans are already suspicious of Snyder and letting the name change could lose some of them forever.

I remember reading this article a week or so ago that indicated that he would be deciding before Aug. 1, FWIW. It made it sound like the Devils are really going to be pressuring him to leave early.

Here is an old article that talks about the 4-year contract. So here's the big question for those who know about this stuff better than I: How does losing to a D-IAA team affect your playoff chances in the new mathematical D-II playoff selection formula? That would probably be the primary determinant of UND's willingness to go get beat up in Fargo every couple years. NDSU would have an incentive to bring in UND if that remains one of their better selling matchups. Another option going forward is that the two schools would make occasional two year home-away agreements, foregoing the payola for UND but getting a "big game" at home. I don't really see NDSU's incentive for this arrangement. *This discussion assumes that in 5 years NDSU will be D-IAA but UND will remain D-II (which I personally don't find likely).