MplsBison

You can't compare the situations, I agree. But it really all just comes down to money. According to the OPE, Butler's mbb team had $1.7 of expenses in the 2008-09 year. In that same year NDSU had almost $1 million expenses and UND had almost $900 thousand. For another datapoint, U of Minn had expenses of around $5.1 million!!! So don't try to feed us this line that UND couldn't get to what Butler is doing now. Same situation, no. But UND can get to a MBB budget the size of Butler. Then, all it takes is recruiting the right kids, with a young, talented coach, and some luck. UND could be in the mBB national championship game. So could NDSU. So could any of the Summit schools! The horizon is not a high mid-major, they're maybe a half step above the Summit and a full step below the big mid-major conferences.

Horizon is a half step above the Summit and a full step below conferences like the A10, CAA, Missouri Valley, WCC ,etc.

Because it's a lie, parroted by yourself and the Goons and CIAs of the ss.com world who have this fantasy where hockey is a popular sport in the US and world. Not only would the national media attention on UND be many times greater than anything UND hockey has ever gained, but interest from UND alumni across the country would also be many times great than anythign UND has ever gotten! That's the truth and you hate it. Hockey, as a collegiate sport, has a very painfully obvious ceiling for the amount of interest it can bring UND. Basketball has no such ceiling, the potential is limitless in comparison.

For all the UND hockey fans trying their hardest to deny UND basketball's DI potential ("UND basketball never has a chance to win a national title like hockey does!!!!!11"), look no farther than Butler's program which is going to the title game. UND athletic program is already on par, at least, with Butler's program overall in terms of quality, facilities, etc. As far as being specific to the bball program, obviously Butler has better players and probably has a bigger budget (I'd be curious to know what Butler's head men's bball coach makes), but I don't see why UND could get to that level.

What a highlight reel of your personal biases! You're no business man. You would make decisions for UND's athletic department like a child, all heart, no logic. I'm glad that there are a some businessmen with strong heads on their shoulders who run the show, not a bunch of blowhards.

Here you go, happy reading! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

1 of every 3 Spirit Lake members voted against the nickname. 1 in 3! Vast majority! LOL! We'll see what Standing Rock votes, if they have a vote in time. But this fantasy about 90+% support is such a joke. If you want to set back your athletic department 5-10 years because 60% of people support the nickname, then I'm glad you do don't get to make the decisions at UND!

Then you don't deal with them. Sorry, that's how I view it. You don't get an excuse to be lazy and slow just because you claim that it's your culture. You get left out of the deal, if that be the case! I wonder if the state said they had 1 month to make a decision about a casino if they'd tell the state they need a year to think about it because that's their culture? Doubt it. Amazing how when something is a priority it can be sped up!

The Summit is UND's only option for an auto-bid conference in the next 5 years, minimum. Boy, that must really burn you up.

I see this attitude as a problem, for any school. Growth for growth's sake does not equal success!

Energy efficiency of internal combustion: http://courses.washington.edu/me341/oct22v2.htm Very poor compared to electric motors. The problem always has been and always will be, how do you carry enough energy with you to power your electric motor? Batteries are heavy, gasoline is comparatively light.

I've already answered a hundred times, I want UND in the Summit as soon as possible. There is no reason to waste 2012-13 if they can be in the Summit. Saving the nickname is not a good enough excuse.

If the name was going to be saved, it should've happened by now. There's too much money to be saved by having the rest of the sports in an auto-bid conference, even if the teams aren't yet eligible for the post season tournaments. Your response is, why not wait? My response to that is, why wait?

There are many more uses for oil than to be refined into 87 octane gasoline for passenger vehicles. The comment 'give it 20 years' refers to passenger vehicles running purely on electric means. Just today I read that FedEx has 4 totally EV delivery trucks running now in California. The internal combustion engine had its day, it's time to move on to better things.

It was in the paper that Faison or Kelley was quoted saying that the Summit will meet in June and if UND isn't ready by then they will be skipped over for the 2012 season. Something along those lines, I'm sure someone will correct me with the exact details. Is saving the Sioux nickname worth throwing the 2012-13 non-football/non-hockey schedules away? Nope.

GF area can support winning UND football, men's hockey and men's bball teams in the same year. At least give it a chance. Why are you in such a big hurry to deny it a chance? Are you scared that your precisous hockey team will suffer?

This thread is about oil. Start a new one about healthcare if you want to talk about that.

They need a decision by June. By the way, where is the ND supreme court decision?

Other than Butler, the Summit is just as good as the Horizon. I also don't expect hockey fans to get bball season tickets. But believe it or not, not every UND fan is a UND hockey fan (I know, shocking).

Here's my point: what if they said that it was their culture such that they were not allowed to make a decision until 100 years had passed? Obviously that's ridiculous. But when does it stop becoming ridiculous? 10 years? 5 years? 1 year? There's some amount of time where you say "ok, you've had enough time to consult the spirit elders or whatever, what is your decision". How long is that?

There is no such thing as "on their own time". That's a line of garbage. That's called not being a partner and not working with the other side. It's reasonable to request more time, but it's not reasonable to take a year to make a decision that only needs a month.

I don't know much about the NA politics and demographics in ND, but what you said does seem to shed some light on the subject that I had not previously seen before. Thanks. It does seem like the Sioux have a great leverage over UND to get more resources for their tribes, if they want them.

It may not be on the table, but it should be and it should have been a long time ago. If, that is, they wanted to approach this like a business partnership. If UND admin just wanted to bully the tribes into giving up the rights to the nickname for nothing, then I suppose what's happened so far (ie, all this garbage about the tribes "doing it on their own time" lol) is about all that's going to happen.

Life would go on. We have a lot of smart people in the world and we'd figure something out that worked. The reason we haven't now is not because a solution doesn't exist. There's no pressure to find the solution.

I was only referring to winter sports. Football does not interfere with winter sports schedules for the most part. There are no other major sports in fall and no major college sports in spring.