jimdahl

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.

I haven't had a chance to see any of UND's games this year so am just working off published reports. The poundings of Crookston and Mesa State don't necessarily mean much, and the huge loss to Central Washington is a concern. Also, UNC was hanging in pretty tough with Montana last week, so they seem reasonably for real. I guess the strategy will be to pound it out on the ground again, rotating between Mahmoud and Beatty. Keep UNC's defense on the field, play a bruising game, and all those ground game cliches.

Here's an editorial you'll never see in the Fargo Forum: http://www.greeleytrib.com/article.php?sid=10347

You make claims like "UND sees the relationship with NDSU as a zero sum game" and complain how Grand Forks and UND fans are disparaging Fargo and NDSU. However, the only disparaging I see anywhere on this message board is coming from you against UND and Grand Forks. I've quoted portions of your last post above. Every post of yours ends with a tirade about how Fargo is the best and NDSU is better than UND. I've seen no UND fans touting UND's superiority. Instead we're just trying to have a conversation about the benefits and challenges NDSU will face, and the implications of NDSU's and UNC's moves for UND.

Good point on the new rules. There's been a lot of talk in the NCAA about breaking D-I up in new ways. Nice analysis of the ideal situation. However, if we can't achieve that situation, I'm not sure how being in a D-II conference with Duluth, Mankato, St Cloud, Moorhead is better than being in a D-IAA conference with NDSU, UNC, SDSU, USD and maybe a couple others... Also, being D-IAA in a less than ideal situation gets us closer to that ideal than staying D-II. Being D-IAA without a conference affiliation is definitely the worst option, though.

That article repeats a lot of the negatives we've talked about here: NDSU is going to have a tough time going it alone, attendance will not rise and costs will go up. NDSU also doesn't have any programs it can drop, so it simply has to get more money. NDSU is clearly taking this longer than necessary transition period in the hopes that other NCC schools will join them. I may have to eat my words here, but I doubt it: some NDSU fans are deluding themselves thinking Big Sky or any other premiere D-IAA conference has any interest in letting NDSU (or UND) join. That said, I still think UND can move, but only if they can get enough of the NCC to move at once to form a new D-IAA NCC. That solves the conference affiliation problem, cuts costs, keeps traditional rivals, etc... UND definitely should not move without a conference affiliation in hand first.

Sources indicate that last Spring Gemini thought that they would be producing jerseys for both Michigan and North Dakota this season with a Nike-swoosh on them. I think the only implication for Gemini of the Nike branding is that they don't get to produce Gemini-branded replicas.

Huh -- right you are. This page says you need 14 to be D-I: http://www.ncaa.org/eligibility/faqs/faqs_general.html A quick check of GoBison.com reveals that NDSU currently sponsors 14.

I think making ice involves burying a bunch of pipes/cooling equipment in the concrete floor. So, it basically involves creating an entirely new floor (which is why it's so much cheaper to build it into a building than to try to retrofit a building). I agree that NDSU moving to D-I eliminates the possibility of adding hockey for a long time. UND spends $1.9 million to run it's men's hockey program, and there's no way that NDSU can add men's without women's in this era of Title IX. Especially if financial issues surrounding the move to D-I force NDSU to drop some non-revenue sports, adding a new sport will be a hard sell for a while.

I think they're talking about Minnesota because hockey and football at U of M are two of the only profitable sports (I think there might be one other?) Since football is the only sport with 1AA, any D-I school has the same obligations in other sports. If Minnesota's massively popular football and hockey programs can't support all the non-revenue programs, that may be a hint to the difficulties involved. (Minnesota, of course, has a theoretical capacity of like 60,000 at it's football games -- it's no Michigan, but it's no UND or NDSU either). If Minnesota football (the only program classified differently from NDSU's potential affiliation) were non-profitable, you'd have a point that their expenses are higher being I-A instead of I-AA. I think the cold hard reality of modern college sports at the D-I level is that non-revenue sports are under immense pressure at all but the most successful schools. That's a vast difference from D-II where costs are much lower and UND and NDSU are among the highest revenue/most successful programs. They're clearly not perfect comparisons because every school has its own revenue and cost structures, but U of M and U of Montana are interesting looks at some other D-I and D-IAA programs.

For those who didn't see it: http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforkshe...ald/4013676.htm This argument makes NO sense. UND shouldn't move to D-I because there are too many scandals in D-I? UND is completely in control of whether or not it follows NCAA rules. If UND follows all the rules now, why would it start cheating just because it was D-I? Staying D-II to avoid the "scandal-ridden D-I" just doesn't make sense to me.

Sorry I was unclear -- obviously most D-IAA programs have more name recognition than most D-II programs. I just meant that moving to D-IAA doesn't mean NDSU is going to start playing Notre Dame or Wisconsin. Are Bison fans really going to get more excited about playing Oral Roberts (an admittedly more famous school) than playing Northern Colorado (a traditional rival)? I agree 100% on the importance of the Divisions. I would consider a UND women's basketball season much more successful if they won a single first round game in the NCAA Division I tournament than if they won the D-II championship. As far as Big Sky -- they've stated that they are not interested in NDSU joining because of the travel. I think the lack of conference affiliation and possible outcome may be one of the parts of this transition that most surprise NDSU fans. While it's possible that Big Sky may relent, I think some of the more likely outcomes could be very disappointing. My ideal situation is very close to yours: get enough of the NCC to jump that they can form their own conference (or half-conference, e.g. Big Sky East) such that the jump to I-AA puts less economic pressure on all of those who choose to jump.

How quickly Bison fans forget that the only reason the school is moving to D-IAA is because they couldn't convince the taxpayers of Fargo to fund a D-I hockey team. This is another glory-grabbing opportunity for NDSU's president to make "big improvements" on his watch. Fortunately for him, changing divisions didn't require a vote of the people like building a hockey arena did. Is there any doubt that if NDSU were starting up a $2m D-I hockey program this year that they would not even be considering this jump?

I've made this point myself many times in regard to hockey. It's true that in the early 90s there were plenty of hockey games with only 3000-4000 people. Now they fill up the 11,000+ seat arena every game. While my gut instinct is to attribute it to the success of the program and the excitement over the new facility, we certainly can't prove that it's not a permanent demographic shift. I actually have the same question about NDSU: How many fans will show up to watch NDSU play Oral Roberts? Assuming that NDSU will continuously sell out the FargoDome is a BIG assumption -- NDSU can't do it now playing traditional rivals. Are NDSU fans really THAT much more excited to be hosting unknown D-IAA teams? Will dramatically rising ticket prices (to offset new costs) not put downward pressure on attendance? Though NDSU hasn't won a national championship in a few years, they haven't had a losing season since 1975. Who knows how fans will react to losing against no-name D-IAA schools. Much like I've often argued that UND should not jump to D-IAA without more of the NCC, I think NDSU's ONLY chance of this working out economically is if they can bring enough of their traditional rivals with them. Familiar NCC opponents help both sides of the economic equation: sell more tickets and lower costs.