Hammersmith

No current Summit team has won a game in the tourney(with the exception of Oakland winning the play-in game in 2005). Former Summit(Mid-Con) schools have won games while being members. I think the most recent was Valpo's Sweet Sixteen run in 1998.

That's one of my pet peeves. For those that don't know, NDSU's elementary education program is run by VCSU. There's no good reason for it; it's just political. The students live on campus or in Fargo, the faculty and staff do the same. I'm not certain, but I think more El-Ed students run through Fargo than Valley City. And the secondary(grades 7-12) degrees come from NDSU. It's a stupid result of a stupid situation. Supposedly it's because VCSU is listed in the state constitution as a teaching college, but I believe that's just a cop out. You know what would happen if the program transferred to NDSU? Nothing. The students wouldn't notice a difference(they never set foot on VCSU's campus as it is) and just about the only change to the faculty would be a different name on their paychecks. Sorry. Like I said, pet peeve.

(I don't remember if I've posted this stuff here before, so apologies if this is a repeat.) Wahpeton and Williston/Bismarck are better for that. Wahpeton and Bismarck have the infrastructure, and Williston has a great location. North Dakota only needs two tech schools(1 east, 1 west), so there isn't really room for more than we've got(educating tech students is expensive). Mayville needs to go bye-bye, but I agree with Mpls about Valley City. I would love to see North Dakota develop a couple serious junior colleges. Not the glorified high schools that we've got now, but real prep schools designed to feed students into our four-year colleges. One of the big rationales for keeping schools like Mayville open is that many students from small-town North Dakota are better served with the smaller class sizes. Also, some students from bigger cities need the additional academic attention to succeed. I actually agree with this; but why does it need to be for the full four years? Shouldn't the students be ready for the bigger universities after two years? Besides, by the time you get into your 300 & 400 level classes, the class sizes are pretty small even at schools like NDSU & UND. So redevelop Valley City and one other college into true prep schools and get the word out to the school districts. Personally, I like the idea of Bismarck getting the other one, but there's a good infrastructure argument for keeping them as a tech school. As a first pass, I'd like to see Mayville totally shut down, and Devils Lake and Bottineau reduced to outposts. NDSU & UND would remain virtually unchanged. Minot & Dickinson would remain four year schools with any grad programs as partnerships with NDSU/UND. I'd also like to see both of them develop specialty programs; geo/arch/anthropology for Dickinson, and maybe languages/foreign relations for Minot. I'd like to see Williston and Wahpeton as the tech schools, with Williston having specialty programs in energy and resource management and Wahpeton in high-tech research and manufacturing. The research parks at both NDSU & UND could use a ready supply of good local techs to compliment our home-grown engineers, and Wahpeton could be a great source. All the campuses could have a small community college aspect(including Bott & DL), but it should always be viewed as an adjunct and never as a primary mission(like most NDUS campuses do now). Of course none of this is going to happen, so this is all just choking the mental chicken. But I get bored when I'm walking/jogging and I've been in and around higher ed my whole life. As for the writer of the letter, he's got some good and bad points. Much of the money the SBoHE is requesting is actually deferred maintenance and raises from the bad economic decades ND just came out of. We're paying now because we didn't pay then. I think we all know the colleges are actually focused on the academics and research, it's just that we and the media like to talk about the athletics; the author is confusing perception with reality. Duplication of programs is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it's geography, sometimes size, and sometimes quality of education. While we're not a big state population-wise, we are fairly large in area. Sometimes it's good to have commonly sought out programs in multiple points in the state. For size, there's not always an economy of scale in education. Sometimes you get to a plateau in a program where adding a moderate number of students increases the costs disproportionately. In those cases, it may be better to let another campus start a smaller program using existing resources and let them take the overflow. And sometimes there are programs that any school of a particular size/mission should have even if another campus has the same program. Just because another school has a specialized English program, for example, doesn't mean that the other schools shouldn't have English departments and degrees. Sorry this got long-winded. Kudos(sympathies?) if you actually read the whole thing.

That was actually a shot at NDSU fans. VMeister(aka AnswerGuy) was being sarcastic with his comment.

Why should I show you the bylaws? Shouldn't you be the one showing me? You're the one basing an argument on something you say exists but have no proof of. In fact, you claim "Conference bylaws normally require schools to participate with all sports in which more than half the conference members offer the sport and / or if an autobid becomes available." Do you have any proof of that? I have run into very few conferences that publish their bylaws on the internet. Have you actually read the bylaws of multiple conferences or are you just making assumptions again and passing them off as fact. You want to come up with wild scenarios? Fine. Just don't try to pass off your assumptions as facts and then get pissy when someone calls you on it. I guess I didn't realize it before now, but you've become MplsBison.

Sorry star, but it's more likely this is about the upcoming demise of the Great West Conference than any elusive Summit bylaws(that probably don't exist). Once you guys get a Summit invite, there will be nothing holding the football and all-sports halves of the GWC together. Personally, I don't see the all-sports part of the GWC surviving the loss of the UxDs, but even if it does, it won't be interested in running the football side of the conference anymore. At that point, it makes sense to return the administration of the conference back to the Summit where it all started(if you recall, the Mid-Con ran the GWFC for most of its run). While the Summit presidents will investigate bringing football completely in-house, I believe they will end up returning to the old status quo and run the GWFC out of the Summit offices. Maybe they will keep the GWFC name(especially of the GWC folds), maybe they will call it the Summit Football Conference, or maybe they will come up with some other name, but it will be a separate conference. That keeps everyone happy, or at least close to it. SUU, UND & USD keep their football home even if the GWC goes under, NDSU, SDSU & WIU aren't forced to do something they don't want to(or if not forced, at least they won't feel pressured), and the non-football schools won't feel like the conference is shifting away from them(why the non-football MVC schools continue to want the MVFC to be administratively separate from the MVC). A rule you can rely on 99.9% of the time is that university presidents will do the minimum possible to achieve their needs. This is not the 0.1% of the time. You can look on it as an extension of Occam's Razor. Which is more likely: star's elaborate scenario of schools switching conferences, scheduling agreements between conferences, and moving autobids, or my scenario of everything staying the same except the location of the conference office? If you go with star, I think you need some time away from the internet and star's Hypnotoad*. *Hypnotoad courtesy of Futurama - the show that wouldn't die. New episodes starting tonight on Comedy Central, 8pm EST/9pm CST.

The Big 12 says, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Texas turns down Pac-10; Big 12 schools have framework of deal(Dallas News)

Your scores are based off of only one year. With such a limited sample, you get some low scores like cross country and lots of high scores like your eight 1000s. Once you have a full, four-year set of data, those numbers will even out. I would suspect the low MCC score was due to transfers more than academic ineligibility. We had a similar problem with wrestling right after our move. A number of wrestlers transferred to Mankato State to continue to compete for DII championships. Those transfers hurt our APR for years. Today, our APR in wrestling is a respectable 940-something. It just took four years for those transfers to work through the system. By the time your numbers actually count for something, your MCC number should be back in the black.

As part of the Momentum fundraising campaign a few years ago, about $8 million was raised for the then $16 million project. NDSU had planned to do the project in two phases because they didn't feel they could get the total amount raised in one shot, but the SBoHE nixed the idea. In the interim, both internal and external factors caused the project to grow to the current $32 million. But that previously raised $8 million was just sitting in the bank. Since there were certain items that would need to be purchased as part of the renovation that could be used immediately, the decision was made to use part of the money now. About $2.5 million was used to buy a new basketball court, scoreboards, weight equipment, cabling connecting the BSA to the Fargodome, architect costs for the renovation plans(this was about half of the money), and a few other things. This is all stuff that can be transferred to a renovated or new facility, or stuff that would have been done anyway, and none of it was done in secret. Heck, we were talking about this stuff on Bisonville as it was happening, and it was common knowledge where the money was coming from. The money was used for the purpose for which it was raised, but apparently additional approval was required from the SBoHE to start the spending and that approval wasn't requested. It's the standard runaround. The athletic department says they knew approval was needed, but they thought the development foundation had gotten it(they were the ones raising, holding and spending the money). The development foundation says they thought they had the needed approval and didn't need to go back to the board for additional approvals. In the end, this is probably the least egregious of the five projects being audited. The only thing that lumps it in with the rest is the expanded use of the development foundations(not just NDSU's) to skirt the bureaucracy of the SBoHE and the legislature. I'm not saying Mpls is right and the blame lies solely on the SBoHE, but there could well be a very small grain of truth within. If the capital and building expenditures process did not keep up with the rest of the reforms of the Higher Ed Roundtable, the foundations may have been viewed as a way to get needed projects done without them getting tied up with political nonsense. I think there's a reason why foundations have been started at most of the NDUS campuses, and the pre-existing foundations at the 4-year schools have grown dramatically in the past decade. There was a need not addressed by the state, and the foundations filled it. Still, we are now seeing the downside of this process. The foundations don't have the same oversight and knowledge base as the universities, and things can slip though. Whether those slips are honest mistakes(as I think the BSA project mostly was) or deliberate attempts to avoid SBoHE policy(the house and Barry Hall projects), I think the universities have come to rely on the foundations way too much. I hope the SBoHE does two things above all others: restrict the functions of the foundations to what they were several years ago, and streamline the process for building projects; especially the small and medium sized ones. I think that will resolve most, but not all, of the issues. The remainder of things can be handled like the recent decision to make the internal university auditors answer to the SBoHE, rather than just to the university presidents. With the current lynch mob mentality around here, I'll be on the lookout for torches and pitchforks coming my way, but I'll stand by it.

Try again. Nowhere did I say that Marcil was responsible for the bad decisions made by NDSU officials. In fact, I specifically said that NDSU officials were responsible for their own actions. What I actually said was that I wish Marcil had never donated the money(or donated it for some other purpose) so that the whole string of events(and bad NDSU decisions) wouldn't have happened(at least for the president's house). Nice try to pigeonhole the debate, though. Why don't you actually address my points next time.

How come you guys keep letting Mpls get under your skin? Haven't you figured out he's just saying this stuff to provoke responses? If you look up 'internet troll' in the dictionary, his username is used as an example. I would like to see you guys discussing your own university's actions a bit more. Everything NDSU officials did, UND officials did as well, albeit to a much smaller degree. Split a project up to avoid getting SBoHE approval? Check. Use creative definitions in an attempt to exclude certain costs from the total amount? Check. Use inappropriate funds to complete a project? Check. Now, the amounts of money in the UND cases often pales in comparison to the same offenses at NDSU, but that doesn't make UND's actions right, just less wrong than NDSU's. Mpls does have one tiny little point buried amongst the garbage. The fact that multiple universities in the state were either skirting SBoHE policy, or flat out ignoring it, does suggest that some of the policies might have flaws. Maybe the $250,000 limit for SBoHE approval should be raised, as well as the $350,000 limit for legislative approval. I don't know how often those numbers are updated, so it might be that the inflation of building costs has greatly outpaced the limits. Maybe projects small enough to be handled by university staff shouldn't be required to be bidded out even if they technically exceed the SBoHE limit. Maybe the limits should be tiered so that a project requiring approval at VCSU would not necessarily require approval at NDSU or UND because the maintenance departments at the latter are large enough to handle the project internally. This does not excuse the leaders at NDSU, UND or DSU from their actions. If there were problems, they should have tried to fix the system rather than break the rules. I'm sure this stuff has been going on at all the campuses in some way, shape, or form, but the problems at both president's houses dragged it all out into the open. I'm sure Marcil didn't have this intention when he donated the money, but his actions started a domino effect that is sure hurting all of us. As an NDSU alumnus and supporter, I really wish he had just donated his $1 million to the Barry Hall fund or the scholarship endowment rather than specifying if for a house. I am absolutely convinced that Chapman originally planned to do the same thing Kupchella did: wait until after announcing his retirement to push for a new house. Marcil's donation took that option off the table for us.

I think most of this is correct, but I'm going to add one small addition. While I'm sure the Chapman mess hurt the Fargodome addition project, I think it was the stock market meltdown that was the primary cause. Those extra funds that the sales tax raised were partially invested in Wall Street. Those funds took between a four and seven million dollar hit last year. When that number came out in the Forum(I don't remember the exact figure), I knew the project was dead. There just wasn't enough money left to pay the city's share and still have enough left to maintain the building for the next 35 years. It's probable that the fund will recover(I think it's gained about a million from the low point), but you can't make decisions based on that kind of hope(or at least you shouldn't). If Sanford hadn't stepped up to the plate, we probably would have waited for the fund to completely recover and then try again; maybe in 5-7 years. I do chuckle at some of the comments here that seem to confuse inertia with loyalty, and automatically consider "change = bad" and "status quo = good". But that's for another long post(and I've got to get back to work).

I don't think that factors in because the rating seems to be based on unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy statistics. Cass just missed the top 20 at 5.77. http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives...l/stress_index/

The original post in this thread was from 2005 when the gutting happened. GeauxSioux just necromanced the old thread to give it closure.

Thankfully, that should be changed next season. The FD is getting a ~$650k lighting upgrade over the summer. It should allow the option for HD broadcasts if FSN/FCS or KVLY choose to bring the cameras(the current lighting is below the threshold for HD). We'll agree to disagree on the concourses.

Only on the non-hockey, non-nickname boards. Being academically ineligible counts against your 5 year window, but it doesn't automatically count against your 4 playing years. If you had not already used your redshirt year, the ineligible year could sort of count as that. It wouldn't quite be the same because there are things an eligible redshirting player can do that a ineligible player can't, but it's close enough for government work. The one area where there can be problems is in sports whose competition seasons straddle the semester break like basketball. That doesn't apply here, so we'll just ignore it. Murray was a 2007 HS grad, so: 2007: 1st year of competition 2008: 2nd year of competition 2009: ineligible - didn't compete 2010: 3rd year of competition 2011: 4th year of competition He could be listed as a senior this year because that seems to be standard practice for athletic departments. They seem to err toward multiple senior seasons rather than keeping track of mid-career redshirts(for whatever reason). I would guess that Murray will be listed as a senior both this year and next.

Reading that article makes me wonder which of us has priority. NDSU signed a 6 year deal with 550/710 at the same time as the KFGO deal. It won't matter for hockey, but I wonder what happens if both football teams are playing at the same time.

Just a heads up. It looks like UND is going to announce a contract with WDAY around noon today. The Forum is playing coy on the subject, but the Herald version of the article seems to confirm it. Sioux booster luncheon in Fargo today includes UND athletics announcement I suppose this means a new thread title is in order, but I'll leave that to you guys.

No current Summit team has won a game in the tourney. The Summit started as the AMCU in 1982, so that's where we start. Cleveland State made it to the Sweet Sixteen in 1986, Northern Iowa won a game in 1990, UW-Green Bay also won a game in 1994, Valpo made the Sweet Sixteen in 1998, and Oakland won the play-in game in 2005(I don't really count that one). So the final tally is 7, 6, 1, or 0 wins, depending on how you count.

I was going to write how the Final Four games and the championship game don't count for shares. Then I double-checked things, and the NCAA website said it was only the championship game that didn't count. But then I added up the total number of shares available, and that only works out if the Final Four games don't count. So now I'm confused. Either one of the sources is wrong, or the policy was just changed and this is the first year where the Final Four games count. Pre-2008: 125 shares available - play-in game, Final Four games, and championshp game don't count Post-2008: 126 shares available - play-in win now counts as a share Post-2010: 128 shares available? - don't know yet

The guy's numbers in the quoted text are way off. Using the current share number($222,206/share), Butler earned the Horizon just under $900,000 next year, with that number increasing slightly each of the next six years. Butler got into the tourney on the Horizon's autobid, which means you can't really count the first share as something Butler won for the conference. Butler did earn one share for each of their victories until the Final Four. The Michigan State win didn't count for a share. That means Butler earned 4 shares for the Horizon. If the Horizon does award 25% to the school bringing in the share, then Butler will get either around $225k or $275k next year depending on whether the Horizon counts the initial share. Over six years, Butler should get between $1.5M to $2.0M, depending on the initial share and how quickly the share value increases.

Ain't going to be Norman. That deal fell through, and the owners of Big D's in Fargo are now the bidders. In case you're unfamiliar with Big D's(most of Fargo is from the state of their parking lot), they're a bar and grill that has live music in the evenings fairly often. It's near West Acres on 42nd Street, just south of BWW and across the street(and a bit north) from Granite City. The building started life as a Country Harvest Buffet before becoming a Mexican place. Big D's has also been in trouble from time to time because of their liquor license. They're required to have over 50% of their sales be food, and they've had problems keeping to that. Fargo investment company to buy Suite 49

Classy as always. Nice to know some things never change. Some days I almost feel sorry you have to deal with this guy as part of your fanbase like we have to deal with lakes. Then I remember that you guys make no attempt to rein him in, unlike us with lakes, and that feeling quickly goes away. And the Bison take today's first game.

If you guys think summitfever = Lakes, then your pattern recognition skills need a lot of work. Summitfever is a Bison fan, but (s)he ain't Lakes. Among other things, summitfever follows women's basketball closely(especially MN AAU ball); Lakes would never do that.