NDSU grad

I just think some people took it to meant that ND kids weren't "good" enough to play at that level, just adding to the inferiority complex of the state.

Caufield and Trenbreath are probably better than Belquist at WR, but it's hard to compare. I would guess that NDSU recruited Yilek, since he definitely sounds like a stud. The main thing I was disappointed about in SU's class was the lack of O-linemen. It didn't really seem like an emphasis for Bohl this year, though, so maybe it was by design.

Airmail, that's funny stuff. Speaking of ND monuments, far and away my favorite is the pyramid of tin cans wrapped in chicken wire in Casselton. It's awesome in its simplistic beauty.

I think in this day and age getting any money from the state for projects such as these will be next to impossible. If I'm not mistaken, I don't think NDSU got much if any state money to build the new Business Administration building. Our last fundraising project exceeded projections, hopefully alumni will feel as generous this time around. 15M should get SU a pretty nice arena.

See, when you're more explicit I don't make presumptions that you weren't inferring in the first place. Your assessment is fair enough, and NDSU's travel costs are definitely going to rise. Obviously our AD is banking on revenue streams rising as well, but we'll have to see. As a wise man once told me, the only thing more dangerous than venturing into the unknown is maintaining the status quo.

I think it said a school with a small alumni base, little community support and a mediocre tradition is having trouble meeting revenue predictions. There's dozens of DII schools within a reasonably close distance to New Haven (so your geographically isolated theory is bunk). It sounds like they are having the same troubles Morningside had. How come you haven't compared NDSU to them yet? That would be a better comparison since everyone on this board will be more familiar with Morningside.

Have any of you heard anything new about Belquist? I believe (I could very well be wrong) that he is generally considered the best player in Class A. If Heckendorf does indeed commit and the rumors about Jark from Aberdeen coming to SU are also true, that would give us at least two WR's in this class. I know at one time he was also considering playing hoops somewhere, so maybe he has decided to take that option.

But don't you think that one directly affects the other?

You make a good point, but IMO there was no way a conference would even think about taking us unless we made a formal announcement and started the transition. Also, I believe even having a consultant conduct a reclassification study shows thoughtfulness on NDSU's part. Also, we waited a long time between the first talks of reclassification and actually starting the reclassification process, again showing patience. Carr's recommendation would have precluded NDSU from going DI, which would have disappointed me and countless other Bison fans who were supportive of the move and IMO would have been a mistake. I'm sure you'll disagree but that's ok.

I think it would be pretty cool to see Bison play hockey. Not very mobile, but it seems to me that if you could just get one to lay down in front of the net it would be pretty hard for the opposing team to score. Seriously, I presume you are speaking of the NDSU administration, and it's true they tried to get the city of Fargo to assist in paying for a hockey arena about five years ago. In hindsight, that was the best thing that happened for Bison athletics if it did indeed spur the move to DI. We have the facilities, student population, and community of a DI institution already, so I see no reason to make it official. Next year might suck for football (I am not totally convinced of that yet) but IMO we will reap benefits in the following years.

Since you refuse to say so explicitly, I have to presume you think NDSU's move to I-AA is emotional/ego driven then? Why do you think that?

Well, the nice thing about an open air stadium is that it is fairly cheap to expand. I'm sure that would be a problem you'd love to worry about in a few years.

It looks really nice, but kind of small. What is the capacity going to be? And is that curved area the visitors' seating?

I guess that's more of a philosophical question than anything. I guess that if a player plays for a DII school he is a DII player. But then if the school moves up is he automatically a I-AA player. I don't know. But IMO there are definitely I-AA caliber players on both NDSU's and UND's rosters

Can you give partial scholarships in DI basketball. I know you can't in DI football (well you can, but it counts as a full ride). If the Bison fund all basketball scholarships right away that would give us three extra (13 for DI vs. 10 for D2) plus all the scholarship money we're losing with the seniors. I imagine the only thing keeping us from having a really big recruiting class is the 5/8 rule.

I really didn't expect our schedule to be a who's who of DI-AA football next year. But keep in mind Northern Colorado didn't have any home games against I-AA competition last year, so I thought having Cal-Poly come here was fantastic (they're a pretty good program and trounced DI UTEP last year). I expect we'll have about 4 or 5 DII teams on the schedule next year, but hopefully that will be down to 0 or 1 by 2005.

JMO, but I don't think the group will be better than the 01 D. That was the best defense I've ever seen in DII, but we'll have to wait until they hit the field next year.

I think one of the main problems is their size. It's pretty easy for them to get bumped off a long route by a physical corner. And that's the main reason I don't liek the West Coast offense, it's not really designed for deep routes by the WR's.

I don't like the West Coast offense either, but I'm guessing Bohl will hire an OC that will run it to maintain continuity.

In my perfect world there would be no automatic bids, just use the BCS to pick the best eight. The only reason I included the automatic bids is I was trying to be somewhat realistic in reasoning that the BCS conferences would never agree to a scenario in which their conferences didnt' get an autobid.

There's six BCS conferences: Big East, Big 12, Big 10, SEC, Pac-10, and ACC. I like the idea though. Six conference champions, two at-large, and play it out. Get rid of the conference championship games, start the playoffs immediately after the regular season. The semifinals would be the following week, and the championship game would be around the 1st of the year. Keep all the meaningless bowls, and rotate the championship game among the 4 sites that now get BCS bowl games.

Believe it or not, Hager is a Minot State grad (I think he's in their hall of fame) but that is a good question regarding his desire to ever leave NDSU. He was always quoted as saying how he wanted to be a DI coach, but yet I never heard of him applying for any jobs during his early success at SU. I think he would have stayed at SU forever.

This could have a huge trickle down effect. Ever look at the ingredients on a bottle of pop. It usually says high fructose corn syrup. Why? Because it's a lot cheaper than sucrose (table sugar). If sugar becomes cheaper then the demand for corn byproducts goes down, which could lead to lower corn prices (although I'm probably being dramatic since most corn (~80%) gets fed to steers). Since you guys went to UND, those are those animals where we get steaks and hamburgers from .