nd1sufan

Any idea of how the Big Sky will handle their conference tournament? Will all 11 teams make it? Or just the top 8? Or some conferences in some sports only allow the top 4 in the tournament to avoid a lower division team representing them in the National Tournament.

Perhaps you may not want to make those types of comments after a season when your 3 wins were against a bad D2 team, a team without a D1 win in over a year and a team in its first year of football. I'm sure better years are on the horizon for UND football, but now is not the time to gloat over your football program.

But we have been told that UND owns the State of ND outside of Cass County and it is nothing for someone to travel 4 to 6 hours for a football game, so UND actually has most of the 640,000 population base to draw from compared to the 200,000 in the Fargo Metro area. Now explain the the attendance differences.

I think 12K is pretty good. NDSU doubles the average playoff attendance of UND, which is THE FLAGSHIP university in North Dakota, has twice as many fans(or more) than NDSU, has a monopoly on fans all over the state and region, and has pretty much rendered NDSU irrelevant outside Cass County. By the way, I think athletically NDSU will be fine, but academically, I'm a little worried about being on the same field as a team from the Ivy League of the West. I just don't know if NDSU is a peer institution.

Who is saying there will be 6000 at the game today. If the game were in the Alerus, it would be sold out.

Actually, UND would charge more for one game(the NDSU game) than they currently do for season tickets ($40).

Well I guess its not Waldorf College, but the Bison are up 39-37 at Oregon at the half.

No, since we have been told that NDSU has NO chance of successfully recruiting against UND, I just think of it as a coup anytime NDSU can get a kid in any sport that UND offered and think it needs to be pointed out since it is such a great feat. Kids de-commit all of the time and I was sure after the annoucement heard round the world of UND to the BSC, the Lindberg kid was gone. In fact, taking a kid away from UND mens basketball is equivalent of taking one away from Duke or Kentucky.

The "product" isn't going to magically improve because UND is in the Big Sky. Believe it or not, there are bad teams in the Big Sky with poor attendance.

Maybe 1,000 or 2,000, but the vast majority come from less than an hour radius.

I agree Weber State would be fun to watch in Mens basketball, but the Cal Poly's and Cal Davis's have been coming in on a regular basis in the Great West, and it hasn't exactly been an attendance boost.

Wow, took longer for the "Imperial Cass County" remark than I thought. My point is if you are expecting people to drive 4 to 6 hours to fill up a stadium for football or basketball games its not a good situation. Also, most serious sports fans in this state already have loyalties to one school or the other, and I don't think which conference either is in will change those loyalties.

Another kid that apparently hasn't heard the UND to the Big Sky announcement. He signed with NDSU yesterday.

I would really rather stay in the Summit/MVFC combo. With all of the movement in D1 conferences these days, there is bound to be an opening or two in the Missouri Valley fro all sports in the next 3 to 7 years. I would rather wait and take a chance on getting in the Missouri Valley than go to the Big Sky. I know Sioux fans are talking about how great it will be in the Big Sky, but really outside of the Montana schools, who will you be excited see to come to the Alerus or Betty to watch them play football or basketball? I would like to hear from Sioux fans which schools in the Big Sky have them so excited.

I don't care if the Montanas leave or not, kind of want to hear the excuses when the Alerus is half full with a wonderful Big Sky schedule. Cal Davis, SUU and Cal Poly draw 6,000 now, not sure why that will change with a 3-8 team in the BIg Sky. You will possibly have one draw a year, and that will be the Montana school that comes in every year. No one else in that conference will excite the average fan.

Apparently the kid from Kansas that just verballed to NDSU hadn't heard UND is in the Big Sky now and is King of the FCS. You can think all you want that recruits in the traditional core recruiting areas for both NDSU and UND(ND, Minn, Wisc, Nebraska, Texas etc.) thing playing N. Ariz, E. Wash, Sac State, UC Davis, Idaho State, Portland St et al. is so much better than playing Illinois State, Youngstown State, UNI, SIU, et al. I don't buy it. I guess time will tell. I'm not buying the statewide support thing either, but there are more people in Cass and Clay counties than in the whole western half of North Dakota.

Which travel partner will be better, SCSU in the Summit with NDSU or U of Mary in the Big Sky with UND after the Big Sky again expands in a panic when U of Montana and Montana State announce they are leaving for an FBS conference?

I guess somebody better tell Bohl he better head east, it doesn't look like he has a chance to get anyone west of Illinois

Did I miss something? Doesn't the NCAA require a school to have minimum capacity for football seating and AVERAGE 15,000 fans per game? UND Better get started on that retractible roof stadium and skip the indoor practice facility.

First of all, I don't buy your premise. But even if it was true, is that really the first thing you are thinking about when you are looking at when thinking about going to watch the Sioux play an opponent in basketball or football, their acedemic programs? Hell, why not join the MIAC. Those schools graduates are very highly regarded by employers in the Twin Cities.I'm not here to argue which school or conferences are better academically or which schools are peer schools and which are not. But I know Oakland, IUPUI and Oral Roberts put teams on the basketball floor every year that would compete for if not win titles in the Big Sky and they are fun to watch. Same can be said for several of the MVFC teams. Both conferences have their pluses and minuses, but I think I would rather not be the lone wolf in the Dakotas in either conference. I do wish the SIoux and their fans good luck in the coming seasons, hopefully the 2 closest schools geographically don't decide to make the jump to the WAC in the near future. That could be a deal breaker for UND. I'm guessing the Summit would welcome UND in if they could afford the Big Sky buyout. Does anyone know what that is?

Who will be UND's travel partner in the Big Sky? Any ideas?

I think it was the only chioce because your football program wasn't going to get an invite to the MVFC in the near future. I'm not sure it is any better than the Summit for basketball or UND's other sports. An awful lot of travel and if you are going to continue to recruit Minnesota and Wisconsin hard, those kids' families would have no road games they could drive to (except USD).

What does that have to do with the stadium they play in? I could be 30 rows up in the Fargodome and be closer to the field than if I were 15 rows up (which is actually pretty much straight out from and not much above the field) in the Alerus. It needed to be built much steeper than it was.

That statement seems kind of odd for a fan of a school that plays football in a quonset. What were they thinking when they built the Alerus? At least the BSA was at one time a decent basketball arena. The Alerus has always been a terrible place to watch a football game.