Hammersmith

As far as I know, reported playoff attendance figures are also paid attendance. The real difference in the case of playoffs is that there are very few no-shows(excepting for severe weather). During the regular season, single-game tickets might be purchased months in advance and things might come up for people(like a terrible season). And often season ticket holders might skip a game or three. But playoff tickets are purchased only a week before the game and generally only by those that actually plan to attend. So actual attendance and paid attendance are very close. As for student tickets, there are no student tickets at playoff games. At least not from the NCAA perspective. If UND is offering free tickets to students, those tickets have been purchased by UND(and/or donors) at full face value. As such, they will be counted toward reported attendance whether they're used or not.

6 years is the oldest in the country? Because of the constraints of their facility, UNI chose to go with the non-infill version of the same turf that's in the Fargodome and Dakotadome. Instead of PVC infill on top of the base layer, they went with a PVC pad under the base layer. They tried an infill turf last time and it was a complete disaster for them.

I'm jumping into this late, but if this about fighting any changes to the 1500 flight hour rule for your commercial pilot license, then the pilots association is totally in the wrong. The 1500 hour rule was a stupid overreaction to a couple incidents that has probably ended up costing more lives than it's saved. Listen to very qualified pilots talk about the rule and see what they say about it. The 1500 hour rule mostly got pushed because of a couple accidents where two inexperienced pilots were paired together and ended up getting over their heads and crashed their planes, killing all on board. The root problem wasn't inexperience, it was either poor pilot scheduling by the airline(putting two inexperienced pilots together, or putting two pilots together that had the same weaknesses) or cases where a small budget airline expanded too quickly and could only afford hiring a bunch of new pilots that diluted the airline's talent pool to the point where they couldn't put at least one experienced pilot on every flight. The seemingly easy solution by Congress was to make all pilots experienced. But the law of unintended consequences is a cast iron bitch. Where do those 1500 hours come from? Aspiring pilots can't afford to pay for them themselves. So these inexperienced pilots have to take jobs that count towards the 1500. And a lot of those jobs fall into two categories: way too simple or way too dangerous. The way too simple jobs are like checking power lines. This is a really common job for young pilots to work up to their 1500. They're hired by the power company to just fly along the power lines to check for encroachment of vegetation or damage to the lines/towers. The pilots get into their light GA aircraft at a small airport, take off and fly visually to the power line for the day, then visually follow the line and check for problems, then they fly back to the same small airport or another one just like it before repeating the cycle again and again. After a hundred or so hours of this type of flying, the pilot plateaus and doesn't get any better. They're not getting any practice flying in and out of busy airports, or flying on instruments, or in the dark, or bad weather, or at high altitude, or any of a dozen other things that a commercial pilot needs to know. They end up with 1500 hours, but their real skill level is closer to 300. Then there are the jobs that are way too dangerous. An example is banner flying. Those pilots have to fly a light aircraft at low speeds to pick up a banner off the ground(very dangerous), then they have to fly with the banner just a few knots above their aircraft's stall speed. If any little thing goes wrong, they crash and die. They can release the banner, but that has to happen before a certain point or it's too late. Many young pilots hold on just a few seconds too long, thinking they still have time to save things, but they don't. After that point, releasing the banner almost makes things worse. They go from a possibly controllable crash, to an uncontrolled one(often inverted). So why do inexperienced pilots do a job so dangerous? Because they need a way to get the 1500, the banner companies don't pay enough to get experienced pilots(there are much better jobs out there), and some young pilots still feel they are invulnerable. The solution to the problem is to reduce the 1500 real flight hours and switch much of them to quality simulator time(paid for by the airlines as part of their training programs). In the simulator, the young pilots can be bombarded with complex scenarios constantly for months and examined all the while to get a super close look at what they're good and bad at. Then the later part of their sim training can focus on correcting their weaknesses instead of just reinforcing bad habits like the 1500 rule can end up doing. The rest of the world doesn't use the 1500 rule, and the nations with rules otherwise similar to ours have safety records that are every bit as good. I only watch a few pilot channels closely, and every single one of them think the 1500 hour rule hurts far more than it helps. And they've got the receipts to prove it. 74 Gear, Mentour Pilot, and blancolirio just to name a few. If the pilot's association is so dead set against this reform, I would start asking why by following the money. I bet there's a reason they don't want it, and it's not about safety. Or the leadership fighting it is so far removed from what it's like to grind out the 1500 that they're completely out of touch with the realities.

Yes, I'm knocking ANYTHING made by Alienware. They're trash and anyone who's kept up with the industry knows it. Once they were bought out by Dell 17 years ago, they started sliding down the hill. They've got good people who want to do good things, but they're completely hamstrung by the pencil pushers. That funky case that looks so cool? It's actually a ten year old basic Dell design at its core that's just got some cheap plastic panels clipped on. Because of it's age, it's thermal design is antiquated and can't keep up with the demands of modern components. The top Core i9 CPUs actually get throttled down in those cases from overheating even with tons of stuff the designers tried to add to combat heat because they were forced to use the old chassis by Dell corporate. And then there's the fact that almost EVERYTHING in Alienware machines is proprietary. Can't swap motherboards. Can't swap power supplies. Can't swap cables. Swapping video cards is iffy depending on the power connector. Any they're not even priced competitively compared to what you give up by buying one.

Alienware machines? Somebody doesn't know what they're doing(or last knew what they were doing 15 years ago).

That's where I got it. Section 12.8.3 - Criteria for Determining Season of Competition. The exceptions are 12.8.3.1.1 through 12.8.3.1.7. Pages 66-67 according to the manual, or 79-80 according to the pdf.

I believe it's decided by each individual sport committee(which is made up of athletic directors that represent conferences that sponsor the sport). I don't think there's anything preventing the ice hockey committee from instituting a similar rule. Field hockey, both soccers, all three volleyballs, both water polos, baseball, lacrosse, softball, and men's wrestling all have some form of allowing players to compete in a partial season without burning a season of competition. (in addition to football)

I don't know your players. Are we talking injury or redshirt? Actually, I don't think it matters. Redshirt: There is no exemption for ice hockey like there is for football. In hockey, if you play one game, you lose the season. Injury: 30% of the season +1 = 11 games. Even if UND advances to the NCHC finals, it's still 11 games. We would have to interpret the rules as loosely as possible to allow all potential NCHC and NCAA championship games to count. Then the maximum number of games in a season for UND would be 34+2+4=40. 40*0.3=12; 12+1=13. He would just barely make the cutoff. My gut says the only chance for Johnson's season to qualify for a hardship waiver is for UND to have played all 34 allowed regular season games, then make it to both the NCHC finals and NCAA finals. The chart says "the institution's completed schedule" not the maximum possible for any institution. Figure 12-1, pages 76-77 according to the document, 89-90 according to the pdf reader: https://web3.ncaa.org/lsdbi/reports/getReport/90008

Small number of words for ... not smart enough to refute any point. Simple.

Those pics are worthless. The endzone camera shows absolutely nothing other than the ball moving around. In that last image, the hand in front of the ball is from the top UIW player, not UIW 20. It doesn't show who established possession first. The real question is whether NDSU 49 got his elbow around the ball before UIW 20 snuck it out from underneath him. I honestly don't know from the one angle that we've seen that shows it. There were at least six possible cameras that had some sort of angle on the play and we only saw three of them(and one of those three was not zoomed or slowed). I'm not going to post screenshots, but if you can get the game on the ESPN player, go to 3:16:17/3:33:54. If you advance the frames slowly using the spacebar, you can see the nose of the football start to peek out to the left of NDSU 49's arm that's braced on the ground. Nobody has established possession yet. This is happening after all three of the pics you were referring to. If you advance the video slowly, you can see UIW 20 begin to insert his right arm under 49's body to get the ball, but 49 quickly cuts that off by pulling his elbow in. At that point, you can see the other nose of the ball peeking out of the crook in 49's elbow. 20's left hand and arm are also underneath 49's body trying to pull the ball out from under him. Before either can be determined from this angle, the ball disappears from view. UIW 20 eventually retrieves the ball from under NDSU 49, but it's possible 49 was able to get his elbow around the ball before that and secure it for a moment. If that happened, the play was dead at that instant and nothing that happens later means anything. I honestly don't know who recovered the ball first, but neither does anyone else here. Since replay called it confirmed, I have to assume one of the other angles clearly shows 49's elbow around the ball before 20 yanks it away.

I think what he's saying is that a ref saw the ball had been recovered and blew a whistle to signify the play was dead at a time when the UIW player clearly did not have possession of the ball. Of course the caveat to that is if the ref actually blowing the whistle even saw the fumble. It's very possible the ref blowing the whistle didn't see the fumble and thought the play was over because the runner was down. It may have been a completely different official that ruled the play a fumble recovered by NDSU. Of course we may never know because of ESPN fixating on the wrong camera angles.

Going to say this about the fumble being discussed... We don't know what the replay refs saw because the ESPN crew screwed up and focused on the wrong thing. When the play went to review, the ref clearly said the call on the field was a fumble recovered by NDSU. The ESPN crew, on the other hand, totally missed that fact and thought the refs had ruled the runner down by contact and were reviewing whether it was a fumble or not. Because of this misunderstanding, the ESPN production crew focused all their time looking for camera angles that showed the fumble. They found two, but neither of those angles showed the initial recovery. Meanwhile, the replay refs were focused on camera angles that showed the play from the other side of the field where the recovery could be seen. There were two NDSU players that were in good position to recover the ball(4 and 49), and one UIW player in poor position(20). Since all three were lying on the ground, the moment possession was achieved by any of the three, the play was dead. The fact that the refs came back pretty quickly with a 'call confirmed' rather than a 'call stands', suggests very greatly that there was a camera angle we didn't get to see(through ESPN incompetence) that clearly showed who recovered the ball first and that it was one of the two NDSU players (from the position of the bodies, I'm betting Kobe Johnson(4) recovered his own fumble before it got stripped away by UIW). I'm not going to say the refs were great, but they called the game the same for both sides. There were plays made by both teams that could have easily been DPI. The only DPI that were actually called were extremely egregious. The same goes for holding. There were several no-calls on both teams that other crews would have flagged. The targeting no-call against UIW could have easily gone either way(this is from DI/II/III refs). The one I didn't like was the call against UIW on the late hit versus the no-call on NDSU for the same thing. While I'll agree the timing was tighter on the NDSU tackle(the NDSU runner was completely down and the play over before the UIW player launched himself onto the pile, while the second NDSU tackler initiated his tackle while the UIW QB was on his way to the ground but not yet completely down), I still would rather have seen them called the same, even though it would have hurt NDSU a ton(the NDSU no-call was on 3rd and 15 and would have resulted in a UIW 1st down).

They don't have to do any math because the school already does it on the first page of the bid. Line 1 is budgeted receipts, line 2 is budgeted disbursements. The guarantee is line 9 on the fourth page of the bid. Projected revenue is an integral part of the bid. So when someone says "they've always gone by the bid", projected revenue is part of that bid.

We have to remember that there are effectively two halves to a playoff bid. The first half is projected revenue, the second half is the guarantee. They are not the same number. And the NCAA takes the greater of the two when all is said and done after the game. So here's a scenario... School A projects that they will generate approximately $200k for the NCAA based on stadium capacity, ticket prices, and historic playoff attendance figures. But they are only willing to guarantee $50k. School B only projects $50k in revenue, but they really want the game so they guarantee $100k. Which school does the NCAA pick? If they pick School A, they are guaranteed an extra $50k. But if they pick School A, they very likely will actually bring in $100k more than School B once all is said and done. This is why one of the selection guidelines says something like 'revenue potential' or something like that. I guess I'm saying that if NDSU(or Montana) bid a $100k guarantee and UND bid a $125k guarantee, that doesn't necessarily mean that UND would win the bid. I believe each NDSU playoff game typically brings in $300k or more for the NCAA. That would be reflected in the top part of the bid. The guarantee wouldn't really matter unless the opposing school had something silly like a $500k guarantee. Note that I don't believe this applied to the Weber game. I think you guys got screwed on that one. I really don't like that precedent got stomped on that way, and your game was the only one it was done to. If the bids(including the top halves) had been close, I could see it. But there's no way Weber could accurately show $100k revenue potential considering their average attendance, that it was a Thanksgiving game(typically 40-60% average attendance), and that it was winter in northern Utah.

Personally, I think you're reading too much into the exact wording. (For everybody's info, the bolding and underlining is nodak651's, and not in the manual.) Creating a bracket is as much an art as a science, and the committee doesn't approach the guidelines with the exactness of a lawyer ripping apart a contract for the tiniest loophole. The purpose of most of the guidelines is to save money by avoiding air travel. That means using both the first and second rounds in synergy. If you're sitting with three unavoidable flights in round one, but a little shifting of those pairing creates the solid possibility for two bus trips in round two, that is absolutely in the spirit of the guidelines. And avoiding the Big Sky/Big Sky to Big Sky mess is worth a lot of shifting. And let's put the shoe on the other foot. Say NDSU was seeded one year and UNI and UND were not. And say UND and UNI didn't play that year. Would it feel fair to anyone in the Valley if UND and UNI faced each other in the first round only to be sent to NDSU in the second? A guaranteed conference rematch? I think you do whatever you can to avoid a situation like that because it may be someone else(BSC) this year, but it could be you(MVFC) sometime in the future. I guess what I'm trying to say most of all this late night is that this very likely wasn't any kind of attempt to screw UND or play favorites or intentionally break any rules. This was a case where a problem developed in one corner of the bracket because of the strength of the Big Sky this year and the dearth of western teams. And since all the eastern teams pair up so nice with bus trips, there weren't many other options. It came down to UND, SEMO, and SELU. One each had to be paired with Idaho, Montana, and Weber. One winner needed to go to Montana State, and one needed to go to Samford. To allow for the max possible bus trips, that means Weber and SELU can't be paired with each other. That gives us a total of four combinations, and two of those include UND/Weber. It was literally a 50/50 chance. These were the four combinations once you decide to avoid the triple Big Sky pod and allow for the second round possibilities of Weber/Mont St & SELU/Samford: 1. Weber/UND Idaho/SELU Montana/SEMO 2. Weber/UND Idaho/SEMO Montana/SELU 3. Weber/SEMO Idaho/UND Montana/SELU 4. Weber/SEMO Idaho/SELU Montana/UND None of them stand out to me as either really good or really bad. But it's also really late and my brain has been sputtering for hours. lol

Ditto. Once it became fairly clear that 1/2 were going to be a pair of BSC/MVFC and 3/4 was also going to be a pair, it just makes sense to split them up. Consider: 1/4 MVFC and 2/3 BSC. If the bracket goes chalk, you end up with conference rematches in both semis, plus the NC is a guaranteed BSC/MVFC matchup. Kinda boring when the odds favor that before the first game kicks off. But if you split them up, then even if the bracket goes chalk up to the semis, you at least don't have double rematches. Plus, the NC now could be a BSC rematch, an MVFC rematch, or another BSC/MVFC pairing. At least the probability of a variety of outcomes increases. At least that's how I look at it. As has been said, there is no real difference between 1&2 or between 3&4.

Apparently I like you guys way too much. I just spent about a hour or so creating my own bracket from scratch to see if I could see their rationale. You're not going to particularly like it, but I see why they did it. Once you pair up all the eastern teams, you're left with a few leftovers. When you start to attempt to reduce flights for the second round, you see that Weber is a strong team likely to win whoever they play. Because of that, it makes sense to send the winner of Weber/??? to Montana St in the second round. If you put Weber and Idaho together(plane trip), now you've got two Big Sky Teams where the winner goes to play another Big Sky team. That's not really fair to the teams and conference, and it's not really good for the playoff or subdivision. The level of regionalization we currently have is bad enough, but that scenario would be next level. So someone else has to play Weber. For you guys, I think it was either play Weber in Montana State's pod or play Idaho in either NDSU's or SDSU's pod. But they decided to use Idaho to pair with SELU because SELU is likely to win and that means a bus trip to Samford in the second round. I started to get a headache at this point, so I'm stopping. I can't absolutely confirm, but at this stage in my construction project, I think the committee's bracket will likely end up with one more bus trip than if they had put Idaho and Weber together in the first round, or it's the same number of bus trips but avoids the triple Big Sky problem.

You're right, of course. I plugged it into Google and it said 600 and somehow I screwed up between reading it on the screen and typing it into the post. Still, it's 200 miles beyond the maximum bus distance so the point stands even if I f-ed up the details.

Moscow, Idaho(University of Idaho) and Ogden, Utah(Weber St) are 900 miles apart by road. Rule 3 says the limit of mandatory travel is 400 miles. Had it been Weber and Idaho St(125 miles), you would be correct(assuming they hadn't played a conference game this year, of course).

1-2 in FCS? What's so wrong with that? Generally if you're on the road in the playoffs after round 1, it's because you were already judged to be the lesser team. Why is it surprising to have a losing record in that case? It's not like the regular season where there's a level of randomness to the strength of the home vs away squads. 2010: unseeded; 1-1 on the road; defeated the 4th seed and lost to the 5th(eventual national champion) 2020: unseeded(only 16 teams & 4 seeds); 0-1 on the road; lost to the 2nd seed(eventual national champion) Of course the 30-1 home record and 9-0 neutral site record are also both nice. Heck, even the single home loss was also to the eventual NC.

I'm surprised. My comments were based on past committee decisions. The article even says that nobody on the inside(past committee members, conference commissioners, athletic directors) can ever remember something like this happening before. The only argument I could see is if the bids were really close, but nothing in the article suggests that.

There are technically other factors, but 99.8% of the time it's the bid. Other factors could include: Bidder's stadium is physically unsafe, there have been repeated issues of serious harassment/violence from students/fans, no stadium lighting for night games, extremely high chance of an imminent natural(or man made) disaster. I doubt there's ever been a case where any of these factors came into play*, but the rules say it's possible. *There was a case where a (seeded?)team didn't have stadium lights and lost the chance for a home game, but that team chose not to submit a bid at all.

If anyone is that concerned, they can always use FOIA requests(or rather the state by state equivalents). You can't FOIA the NCAA or the private schools, but over half the field are publics so you should get a good sense of how competitive the UND bid was.

Step 0: A few weeks ago, all interested teams submitted bids for every round. Step 1: (Tonight)The 24 teams are selected first. Step 2: The 8 seeds are chosen. (start with #1, work down to #8) There is no seeding of any sort beyond the top 8. Step 3: Matchups are chosen firstly based on geography. The target is around 350 miles or less for driving. Anything over that becomes a plane trip. The committee is tasked by rule to create as many drivable first and second round games as possible. So they might matchup two nearby schools, then send the winner to a nearby seeded team. Or they might pair a strong team against a weak team in the first round, then send the winner to a seeded team near the strong team, assuming the strong team will win the first game and then be drivable to the second round(this could apply to you guys - if you're selected, you might be paired against the Pioneer autobid winner and then sent to Fargo or Brookings in the second round). Only other rules are that conference mates that have played each other this season as a conference game cannot be matched up in the first round, and that there's a limit to overloading one side of the bracket with teams of the same conference in certain situations. Step 4: Bids are opened and game sites are determined.

Do they have a chicken makhani/chicken makhanwala/butter chicken on the menu? Not that I get up to GF all that often, but I'm always on the lookout.