jimdahl

I think In-N-Out really missed their chance to be the big "fresh" national burger chain. Now that Five Guys has the national momentum, it's going to be tough, because In-N-Out isn't really differentiated. That said, travel to California or Nevada still always includes a mandatory stop at In-N-Out for me, which keeps it kind of special. Chains that you can only get in a certain region are kind of fun for travelers, though certainly not the way to maximize profit.

Lucky for you, you asked the question in the right place. I calculate PWR anytime there are games being played (though it isn't particularly well-defined until early November). You can always get the current one at http://siouxsports.com/hockey/rankings/pwr/ (or by clicking hockey/rankings/pairwise from the menus on the front page of SiouxSports). However, I also save each week's ratings (PWR, RPI, KRACH, win/loss) from November onward. You can see the development of this seasons' PWR rankings here: http://siouxsports.com/hockey/rankings/charts.php?team=0&compare=top10&rating=pwr The graph is of comparisons won, but hovering over each data point shows you the ranking, the date, and the results of the most recent games (if any) that contributed to that week's move. There isn't a nifty drop down box for it (I need to redo that page to make the charts a bit better, they're on basically 5 year-old technology now), but you can view past years by appending &season=2009 (or other) to the end, e.g.: http://siouxsports.com/hockey/rankings/charts.php?team=0&compare=top10&rating=pwr&season=2009 I started saving the results in November from 2007 onward, but not until December for 2004-2006. While we're on the topic, a mere couple hours before you asked, I also posted my first PWR analysis of the year Outlook for UND's end-of-year PWR.

Yep. I think cool would be a mistake, in that cool inherently has a limited time window -- if we'd dropped the name in the 80s, we'd be M.C. Dakota, etc... Roughriders has a few advantages over any other alternatives I've heard proposed. It's unique, it invokes an association N.D. wants (T. Roosevelt), it's human instead of a weather phenomenon, and it's tied to the state which makes an awesome flagship University tie-in. That a local high school has the same nickname is such a non-issue to anyone not affiliated with the high school that I give it pretty much no weight.

Pink and kelly green. Never change.

Wow, my FCS just cut over to the hockey game (some football game was just ending) and they said "due to contractual obligations, we must leave this program to bring you the following...". I, thinking I hadn't missed much, or that the game had really just started had my jaw hit the floor when I saw 4-0.

Dittos. 10 years ago in D.C. we got to see 1 hockey game a year, at the alumni satellite party. Now it's well over half (when you include road games at schools with their own coverage). It's absolutely changed what it means to be a Sioux fan outside of N.D.

SCSU 1, UND 0 13:53 in the 1st 4th shot of the game for SCSU (vs about 10 for UND), LeBlanc scoring

"This is the first unranked opponent UND has faced since Bemidji St".

I repped you!

Eh -- it's true. That's why it was so critical for each of the ND's to get into a top-tier conference post transition. Long-term reputation counts, and being the 2nd or 3rd team in the Big Sky or MVFC counts for a lot more than being the top team (overall recordwise) in GWFC. It was a transitional scheduling arrangement for independents when NDSU helped found it, and still was when UND joined it. Of course, this year, that didn't actually come into play, because Cal Poly simply didn't even met the well-known minimum requirements (if their schedule wasn't such to maximize the opportunity to meet those requirements, that's also their own fault).

I'm inclined to agree that attendance should be high -- while no-name opponents have caused huge swings in UND playoff attendance, NDSU fans have been waiting decades for a home playoff game and they attended much better for no-name D-I teams during NDSU's transition, so I don't expect NDSU fans to have the same "who's that?" apathy. The only real concern I would have would be the effect of Thanksgiving, but that should only be a real problem for students, I would expect the fair weather locals to more than offset that. Looking into it a little more, hosting does all come down to the Benjamins, and by picking Fargo the NCAA revealed that they expect NDSU to show up well. NDSU sneaks into FCS playoffs, hosts Robert Morris on Saturday That's why NDSU should have no trouble hosting anytime they make the field -- they can guarantee 9,000 ticket sales with little risk of having to cover themselves, which isn't true of most schools in FCS.

I thought who gets to host was based entirely on who bids more, nothing to do with relative rankings of teams. If that's true, having among the top attendance in FCS and nice facilities, NDSU seems well-positioned to almost always get a playoff game at home when they make the playoffs.

SOG 9-6 in favor of UND.

Slight change in the system.... giving rep is now limited to 1 per day. That makes it a little scarcer and something that should be given away a little more carefully, and also prevents massive rep-bombing.

That was the playoff game that drew 2500 fans, half in kelly green, as I recall. Based on school size and population alone, you might expect them to be able to outdraw UND; but I guess some combination of other closer competition (are people in St. Cloud Gophers fans instead?) and apathy about the football program has left the program with too little support to be financially viable. Anyway, on to my real question... doesn't this statement from the STrib article linked above essentially mean that SCSU has to keep football?

Ok, guys, you know I CAN see who negative reps my post :D

There's already one subtle way to use it -- at the bottom of a thread view is a bar that says something like "Viewing all posts -- change threshold?". If you click that, you can actually make it so you don't see, for example, any posts with a negative rep. That's a slightly more effective way of not seeing any junk than "hiding" individual posters who you don't like, in that it's post specific. That's how Slashdot, the granddaddy of user-moderated boards, works. That benefit increases the more it gets used, which is why.... I'm also working on leveraging it to show the highest rated current posts in a side panel. I think that will provide an additional incentive to use it, and help the cream of the board rise to the top for infrequent visitors. I've never personally loved traditional rep systems that just let people tag the posters they like the most, because it often just results in the biggest posters who tow the party line having very high reps (correlated with post count) and those who ever disagree with them have poor reps -- I just don't think that conveys much useful. Additional thoughts about ways people would like to see rep incorporated are certainly always welcome, though...

University of Northern Colorado coach Scott Downing will not return It would be nice to see UNC return to a little of their former glory, as that has the potential to be a bit of a rivalry matchup for UND given its history. for

As of 3:49 remaining... Brent Goska 3/7 27 3.9 0 0 Marcus Hendrickson 3/18 16 0.9 0 0[/code]

Oh, yeah, I forgot it's actually on real t.v. in ND. I'm so used to anything televised being nationwide these days...

The Montana radio announcers were definitely fooled (they described the formation as a "goofy" swinging gate) and thought UND was going for 2... Now we just need to make Montana regret actually having done so and leaving the free point on the table. I would guess that the people listening on the radio hear commercials then, so they announcers often don't give much thought to the raw feed going to the Internet.

Montana went for 2 and failed. UND 0, Montana 13.

The b2tv doesn't work for me at all... it's not that I'm missing some plugin or anything, either. The browser (no matter which I try) actually says it can't even find a site with that name. Clearly I need to get this solved before 2012

Montana audio -- pre-game discussion occurring now.

Game Day! Not only is it UND's first game against a Big Sky opponent since pledging to join the conference, but Montana also vowed to stay in the Big Sky earlier this week! Some highlights from the football news page... UND true to self during transition - Missoulian Nov. 10 Second season begins for Griz - Missoulian Nov. 12 [url=http://missoulian.com/sports/college/montana/football/article_0a32b85a-ee31-11df-a0a5-001cc4c002e0.html]Griz hope extra preparation time uncovers answers to UND