jimdahl

Good, this is what I thought. NDSU will have a minimum of 16 sports next season, but only need 14 to be a member of D-IAA. Though the Bison plan on adding some women's sports to offset the increasing football scholarships for men, the option will exist in the future to drop a couple sports and still meet the minimum sponsorship requirements. This is what I've thought since I learned that NDSU will have 16 instead of 14 in D-I, but every now and then I run into someone who claims that NDSU actually needs 16 instead of 14.

Kollar re-signs with Quad City Mallards following his only professional game last March (a 6-1 win over the Kalamazoo Wings). http://www.whbf.com/Global/story.asp?S=948...05&nav=0zGqBRET

I've actually seen conflicting reports on this. The current bylaws, as far as I can read, indicate that for D-IAA that you only need 7/7 or 6/8. However, I've seen Fargo press sources repeat the 16 figure (required for I-A) many times. D-IAA requirements: https://goomer.ncaa.org/wdbctx/LSDBi/LSDBi....1&p_CallCount=1 D-I requirements: https://goomer.ncaa.org/wdbctx/LSDBi/LSDBi....1&p_CallCount=1

I agree wholeheartedly that economic development in ND and Grand Forks is a big problem -- one that certainly isn't solved by paying people to stay in state (a vicious circle of gathering money from all residents and redistributing it to those who make the most threats that they might leave). That said, it's a reality of modern education that athletics is one of the most visible marketing efforts a school makes. There are plenty of counter examples, but UND is no MIT. Strong athletics programs are definitely a draw for students and increase name recognition. While there are clearly more direct ways to spend money to increase a school's student base and research prowess than investing in athletics, strong athletics programs can contribute to a school's recognition.

For those who missed it the first time around, here's what Wanless had to say to the GF Herald shortly after NDSU announced its decision. The article talks mostly about the implications for UND, but mentions NDSU a bit also: http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/s...rts/4027971.htm

We're discussing the difficulties that NDSU is likely to face because they're well-known, of interest to us as a traditional rival, and likely to apply to UND if we try to jump alone at some point in the future. That said, we're of many different opinions, so trying to collect our opinions together will reveal inconsistency: 1. Some of us are of the viewpoint that UND should stay because NDSU is going to fail miserably 2. Some of us think that if UND moves now with NDSU and others that it can prevent a lot of the problems that we're talking about for both UND and NDSU 3. Some of us think UND should just go its own way, but acknowledge that NDSU will face a lot of difficulty People in the #2 camp above (like me) dicuss how some of the difficulties that the Bison will face are mitigated by a bunch of teams moving at once -- that's why I talk about the Bison's potentital difficulties, but still say the Sioux should move. I think the biggest mistake UND could make would be to sit around for five years and then decide to move alone, which will subject them to all the same difficulties the Bison will face now. I'd much rather see UND move now, if ever, and lessen those difficulties for all of us! I've never seen anyone here say that NDSU will fail, instead we've discussed a lot of the difficulties because they are relevant to UND. Our biggest problem with Bison fans on the board is that they seem to reject the possibility that NDSU will face any difficulty.

I wouldn't be too worried -- he actually managed to bring about quite a bit of success at UND. Big increases in athletic budgets and attendance at sports. Unprecedented success of the teams. His problems at UND came about because UND is a hockey school and he's not a hockey fan. He promoted football a lot, which has turned out to lead UND to unprecedented football success. However, hockey is very influential at UND (a hockey alum recently donated $100m to the school to build a new hockey arena, for example). To make a long story short, important people didn't like some moves Wanless backed (including pushing out a very popular ex-hockey coach and not supporting the "Fighting Sioux" nickname and logos) which put a lot of pressure on him to leave. It was more of a culture-clash than him being a bad administrator. Just my opinions, of course.

That's certainly why I gave the (so far lowest) 6 vote. I remember 90-96 all too well. The offense was decent, guys like Johnson and Naumenko scored, but our goaltending was not top-5 WCHA caliber. I don't see what's changed between last year and this. Perhaps a year later and whatever training has gone on, someone will step up. If not, well, last year's finish was lower than 6.

It's the old rule of basketball pools -- you don't win by following conventional wisdom or picking the top seeds for each game, sometimes you gotta make a guess. I say the Badgers climb above the Sioux, though I suspect that will come down to the final games in Madison. I don't really expect SCSU to win (even win you consider puppy power) but wanted to be more creative than guessing a Gopher repeat :O

Here's their release: http://www.usd.edu/urelations/news/archive...eptember24.html I have to wonder how much they'll think it's worth saving the NCC and traditional rivalries if UND and SDSU jump with UNC and NDSU? Of course, their athletic budget is only $3m (the release states) and Vermillion is only about 10,000 people.

I am actually currently working on a new greener "skin" for the board. Once it's finished I'll make it the default for the board, but if you want to use it now you can switch to it in the user control panel under "skins".

At the fear of being unpopular for ranking the Sioux too low and the puppies too high: 1. St. Cloud 2. Minnesota 3. Denver 4. Colorado College 5. Wisconsin 6. North Dakota 7. Duluth 8. Alaska-Anchorage 9. Mankato 10. Michigan Tech

It was a pretty uninteresting news piece. You can view it yourself at http://new.in-forum.com/wday/ jump to 20:23 on the 6:00pm news. Wanless said NDSU should jump and UND should too, or risk being left behind. Predicts UND will move (not exactly going out on a limb, since he even disclaims it with "eventually". I'd bet everything I own that UND moves "eventually"). Doug Fullerton (Big Sky commissioner) predicts that NDSU will not find a conference before 2004 (didn't the NDSU AD say in the press conference that he should be run out of town if he doesn't have a conference affiliation in two years?) He also said that the Big Sky will allow NDSU to give a presentation at its October meeting to sell themselves.

There's a good example of the kind of organization they never had before -- note that it has a 10% licensing requirement on that logo. This page lists a lot of the rules/regulations regarding logo use: http://www.UND.edu/dept/our/visual.html FWIW, we have the good fortune that one of the people who helps with SiouxSports.com is an IP attorney. We've actually gone back and forth a bit with CLC about what constitutes "fair use". I actually expect to reintroduce a few UND logos soon and see what happens.

Coincidental with the switch to the new logo, UND started using CLC as their licensing company (before they did it all internally). That brought with it a host of new rules and regulations (poke around UND.edu and you'll find a lot of licensing info that didn't used to be there). My understanding is that all merchandise is now 10% off the top. Along with this new agressiveness towards marketing comes a defense of the logo (notice that siouxsports.com doesn't use UND logos much anymore?) That's not by choice.

FYI-- WDAY news can be watched live on the Internet at http://www.in-forum.com/ for anyone interested.

Regarding Duluth, I believe that their $50,000 check is just being held until the NCC takes a vote (which probably doesn't happen until 2003, after SDSU has announcd its intentions). Clearly the other schools in the NCC that wouldn't jump (Augustana, Mankato, maybe UNO) would have to figure out a new plan. I have NO idea what sort of rules cover the naming of a new conference, if they could just form a new "NCC" in D-IAA, or if it would need some clever new name.

Needless to say the Herald's editorial opinions haven't changed, but this week they interview and quote NDSU coaches: http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforkshe...rts/4126223.htm Realistically, though, I don't anyone thinks any D-II school can jump up to D-I and be instantly competitive. Football stands the best chance of being competitive more quickly because there's the I-AA subdivision. There's certainly no chance of UND women's b-ball challenging Tennessee anytime soon, or NDSU men's b-ball challenging Duke. This is just one more area where it would be nice to start a new D-IAA conference with ex-NCC schools. In the short term we'd playing old rivals for the conference championships, and as we became eligible (12 years for Men's BB?) we'd get to start sending that rep to the Big Dance. Of course, by then D-IAA will probably extend to all sports anyway, so we'll just be back in the second division with all the schools we should be playing and D-II will be the new D-III.

Yeah, I guess this isn't quite big enough a game for the benefits of experience to really start to outweigh the raw talent. However, it's clearly a critical game for both teams. A loss here could hurt UND a lot in confidence. The loss to Cent. Wash has already removed any "champ" aura of invincibility the Sioux might have enjoyed for a while this season. Whereas a win here would really erase some of those doubts.

Sounds like one hope is a pretty young defense at UNC: http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforkshe...rts/4096924.htm It does seem like it should be a defensive struggle, as dbarker suggests.

But he seemed so much happier with you guys. Are you sure you don't want to keep him?

There's really not much of an argument here -- of course footall is higher attendance than hockey. True in pros, true in college, indisputable. The reality in North Dakota, though, is that hockey is a VERY close second. Compare UND hockey to NDSU/UND basketball and there's no comparison. That's precisely why NDSU will attempt to add D-I hockey as soon as they've absorbed the other costs of moving to D-I. It's a big draw in N.D. In the meantime, however, some NDSU fans will continue to bash hockey because it's a clear area of revenue/attendance/D-I national championships success for UND.

In fact, the recent surge in visits from our NDSU friends are because of posts on their new message board urging fans to come over here. The location of that new board is: http://www.bisonville.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl

I thought we'd settled this -- the majority of the people on this board don't agree with your base assumption that NDSU is more prestigious and inherently superior to UND. Since we disagree on that base assumption, it's no doubt that we reach different conclusions. While size of the city is a significant difference, Fargo and Grand Forks are both close enough in size and geography (both are very small cities "in the middle of nowhere", and only 1 hr drive for a Fargoan to go to a UND game) that I don't think that would have a huge effect. If I were more ambitious I could do research and list the successful D-I programs in smaller metro areas, but I assume you're not disputing they exist.