Hammersmith

If (and this is an if so large it blots out the sun) NDSU were to add hockey in the near future, it would start by putting a couple million into the Fargo Colosseum to make it an adequate DI practice facility, play games there for one or two years until the program gets on its feet, and then move the games down to the Urban Plains Arena(practices still at the Colosseum). NDSU would also probably pay a modest chunk of money to the UPC to help get the four sheets of practice ice finished as stated in the original UP proposal. If attendance were to ever push the UP's capacity(say in 7-10 years), then NDSU and the city would invest a couple million into the north end of the Fargodome to allow for quick ice turnarounds. That would give NDSU hockey a possible 10,000-12,000 attendance in the long term and have all the facilities on or near campus. All put together, that's like a 5% chance of a 5% chance of a 5% chance. In other words, not bloody likely. What's even less likely? The Fargodome arena ending up with ice capabilities. All that being said, I think this would be a terrible time for NDSU to add hockey. It's taken the best team in NDSU men's basketball history and a chance at March Madness to start getting our fanbase thinking football/basketball rather than just football. Throwing hockey into the mix before that attitude can set could be disastrous to the long term health of the men's basketball program. Personally, I don't see NDSU ready for hockey until we exceed 16,000 enrollment, sellout almost every MBB game, and have a reasonable waiting list(>500-1000) for season tickets. None of that will happen for at least 7-10 years. I'm not even sure it could happen while NDSU is part of the Summit; I think we'd have to be in a better basketball conference(like the Valley) before adding hockey wouldn't hurt the MBB program to any significant degree.

They did something drastic to the heating this year. In the past, the BSA was an icebox on cold winter nights. Apparently the thermostat has two settings: 1 and 11. (Either that. or they installed some new air handlers or something.) MBB will probably average between 3300-3500 this season. A renovated BSA with new seating would add an immediate 500-1000 to that, and a new facility would add 1000-1500. It would be nice if the numbers were growing faster on their own, but it takes a long time to change the culture of a fanbase. Once the change gets going, however, it snowballs into capacity crowds(or sellouts at least) very quickly. I think this season has been the tipping point. Unless we absolutely flop without the fab-four, the attendance growth should continue as NDSU completes its transition from a football school to a football/basketball school.

D'oh. I never though to look at the M/W breakdown of sports, just the total number. At the FCS level, you need a minimum of 14 sports; either 7 men's / 7 women's or 6 men's / 8 women's. NAU currently has 6 men's teams and 9 women's.

90% of 63 = 56.7 Prior to 2005, the wording of the rule included the phrase "three preceding academic years". When the rule was changed for the 2005 season, they eliminated that phrase and changed it to "a rolling two-year period". I believe the change came too late to help NDSU for the 2005 season(schedules had already been set), but it allows UND to be an FBS counter for the 2009 season, rather than 2010.

About two or three years ago as the nickname lawsuit was heating up, there was some humorous(or smacky, depending on your point of view) discussion on Bisonville about what you would change your name to if you were forced to. This was also shortly after UND had announced its DI move. It was brought up by a poster that UND always follows NDSU in whatever they do; when NDSU(or NDAC if you prefer) changed its nickname to Bison from Farmers(?), UND changed from Flickertails to Sioux(because Sioux hunt/kill bison). The poster went on to say that if NDSU were to change our nickname to the Blaze, UND would change theirs to the Firetrucks. It stuck.

I was a little uncomfortable when I read the headline, but less so after reading the whole thing. It sounds like less than 25% of this guy's duties will be guarding Chapman & guests. The bulk of his duties will be acting as a liaison between the campus and city police departments and the president. With the increasing size of the university and the addition of the downtown campus, I can see where a security presence is needed in Old Main; not for protection, but for communication. If that individual happens to be trained and licensed to carry, it makes sense to also use him in those cases where light security might be needed. Most home football games see Hoeven sitting next to Chapman, and Chapman is normally mingling among business, city, and state leaders when he attends basketball games. Why not have a single security guy close by just in case? Of course, the guy chosen could stand to lose a pound or twenty and could also use a new wardrobe. I don't know where the UND campus police department is located in relation to administration, but at NDSU, they are quite far apart. Maybe UND doesn't need this sort of position yet, but if the downtown campus that Kelley is talking about comes to pass, they may need to reevaluate. After Virgina Tech, things like this are a small price to pay for the ability to react quickly, correctly and effectively in a crisis.

Here's the final installment in Virg Foss' column. I don't think there can be any doubt now that Foss is against UND's move. Using Stanford as a reason why the move is a bad idea was truly idiotic. Stanford is almost unique in collegiate athletics and is also uniquely vulnerable to drops in the stock market. They have built up such a massive athletic endowment, that they fund all their scholarships from it and generally only need to raise new money for facilities. The endowment was so large, it allowed Stanford to fund 35 sports; that's unheard of in Division I where the average is 20-22 sports. Of course they're having to make cuts now; they based too much of their revenue off of a single source. None of that applies to UND(or NDSU, for that matter). While UND has some athletic endowments that were hit hard by the economy, they represent only a small fraction of the annual budget. Also, UND only has to fund a much smaller pool of sports; 20 to Stanford's 35. Using Stanford's situation in a column discussing UND's move can only be viewed as fear-mongering. I'll leave it to the rest of you to discuss the types of letters he chose to "advocate" the move. Mixed views on UND's D-I move

Damn, and I went and held back from saying that very thing.

As far as I know, the Gophers still have FCS openings for 2012 and 2014 onward. UND probably has a decent shot for the 2012 opening if the nickname issue is permanently resolved before some other regional FCS school like SDSU or UNI grabs it.

I think the answer can be found in an October 19th article in the Herald called "A Division I Job" or a November 9th article called "'Grinding' for Support." I remember Faison talking about where Fighting Sioux Club donations are and where they need to be by 2012. I think they were $1.3 million now and they need to increase to $1.8 million. But that's a three month old memory and I'm not 100% confident in it. I am sure that both numbers were between one and two million, though. The info might also be on this website somewhere; I think I quoted the story in one of my posts.

That article made me want to throw up a little in my mouth when I read it this morning. I can only hope that the comments supporting the move aren't as misinformed when he posts them in a week or two. I still have the draft of the letter I almost wrote to Foss, but I never sent it after I saw that he only wanted brief comments. After Foss' original column appeared two weeks ago, some among the Bison camp of fans claimed he was looking for a way to blame all of UND's ills on Chapman. Most, including myself, disagreed. After this column, I'm having to reevaluate that viewpoint. Chapman and NDSU sure appear in quite a few of the comments Foss chose, don't they? As for rebuttals: Terry Dunphy, Grand Forks:

I think it's most likely that Goetz talked to Hoeven's chief of staff to see if Hoeven wanted to serve on the committee. Maybe Hoeven's chief of staff didn't come flat out and say no, but I bet he sure hinted it. Now that the excrement has started to strike the rotating air-moving device, Hoeven is able to say, "No, nobody asked ME." Standard politics.

No NDSU fan has brought up the Wisconsin and Marquette wins on this thread until now(me). All references to those wins were made by Sioux fans, not us.

I said it was interesting; I made no claims about clarity.

Tran just put up a blog entry about the nickname committee. Lots of interesting little stuff and some new quotes from major players. It's also got Tran's impressions and opinions of the situation, which you won't find in his articles(not for or against the nickname, but opinions on why things are happening the way they are). The City Beat: Nickname realities

Thanks for that link, Jim. I also tried the Wayback Machine, but I was looking for the championship handbook and the ncaa.org website blocked robots from accessing that section(I hate that finding past publications is so difficult on that site). I still wonder if RT knew the rule change was coming since he had been on the committee until recently and undoubtedly knew several of the then-current members, but that's just the star2city part of me peeking out. That whole SSI system was pretty dumb. While it's nice to try to objectively choose teams for the tournament, there are just too many factors outside a school's control to allow a system like that to work. A school has no direct control over how good the conference portion of its schedule is. They also have no control over how well their non-conference opponents do. You can schedule a team that went 10-1 the year before, thinking they'll get you a lot of points, only to see their QB go down in the first game and they finish 5-6. And that doesn't even touch they way they handled I-AAs. Of course, the regionalization system they use now might just be worse. The FCS selection system might not be perfect, but I wouldn't go back for anything. Again, thanks for the link and timeline clarification. [/end thread hijack]

For the record, I've never said anything about the press conference. Quite frankly, I don't see what the big deal was. But I don't care enough about it to call out either side. I know some Bison fans disliked what RT said and how he said it DURING the press conference, but I've never seen the video myself, and I don't like getting worked up over second or third-hand info. As for the time frame, the contract was sent to RT in May of 2003, it was in September that GT learned the contract hadn't been signed and the game was in doubt, and the decision to not play NDSU at all didn't occur until February 2004. All of those dates are verifiable if you pay for access to the Forum's archives and do an advanced search for "und AND ndsu AND football AND taylor AND thomas" and you limit the timeframe from Jan 2003 to May 2004. I assume that similar articles were written in the Herald, but I think they only have a 180-day archive online. As for what RT knew and when he knew it, I said there was "a very good chance" because RT was a former member of the committee that makes those rules. Don't you think it's likely that he put in a call to colleagues who were still on that committee to see what was happening? I wish I could find a copy of the 2004 Division II Football Championship Handbook(the first year the game wasn't played), but all I can find is 2005 on. This is what the 2005 UND non-conference schedule looked like points-wise: Central Washington: 14 points(W vs. a >.700 away) Winona State : 14 points(W vs. a >.700 away) West Chester: 13 points(W vs. a >.700 home) Western Washington: 9 points(W vs. a <.500 home) Ferris State: 9 points(W vs. a <.500 home) Win vs. NDSU: 11 points Loss vs. NDSU 9 points RT could've scheduled NDSU in place of two other teams, and even a loss would not have hurt and a win would've helped. West Chester was within one loss of dropping down to the next point level. If that had happened, a win vs. NDSU would've been worth the same amount. Again, I wish I could see the 2004 handbook to see if the rule change occurred prior to the '04 or '05 season. Either way, there had to be discussion happening prior to the change and RT must have been aware of it. The only question is when that discussion began. If it happened prior to Feb 2004, then RT would've had a good idea that scheduling NDSU would not have hurt their playoff chances. If it occurred after, then the decision for football was initially made in some good faith, but that changed within a year when the rule did. I said I was done before, but this was the type of discussion that made it fun a couple days ago.

Maybe I'm completely off base, but I thought a significant amount of that $2 million was in the excessive use of cutting edge technology to create the high-end atmosphere. Wouldn't that stuff be subject to high depreciation rates and written off at some point? In other words, just because it cost Suite 49 $2 million to start up, it doesn't mean another bar/resturant in that location would need anything close to that. I know next to nothing about stuff like this, however, so maybe I've just strung words together.

I had a longer, much angrier post toward ChiefIS written that was very condescending in tone, but I deleted the lion's share because it served no other purpose than to vent my spleen. After I finished it, I realized the reason we were disagreeing was because we were coming from two opposite directions. I continue to feel that the Summit presidents are supporting Douple up to and until they say otherwise. He seems to believe that Douple's decisions are only acceptable if the Summit presidents come out and support them publicly; until then, they are suspect. To that end, I leave you with the remnants of my original draft: There are different, legitimate ways of running a conference. Could it just be that the Summit presidents are actually HAPPY with the way Douple is handling the situation? Could it be that they DIRECTED him to not present candidates that had controversial issues attached? Could it be that they trust him and are allowing him to do his job as he sees fit? The Summit presidents hired him and they can fire him if they so choose. They know it. He knows it. Just let the damn drama play out. If you're right, we'll find out in March. If I'm right, we'll also find out in March. With that, I'm done with this topic. It was fun last night, but debating a third party over the matter just feels like I'm banging my head against a wall. I've said on multiple forums that I believe the timing of the USD site visit is solely due to the Summit basketball tourney in Sioux Falls. I've also posted that I believe that Douple is being proactive in gathering information, but that the league has no immediate plans to expand. Site visits are a lot of work, and the Summit was forced to do three back-to-back-to-back in 2006. This time, I think they want to spread them out. Someone had to go first, and the tourney made it USD. I've also posted that I think the 2011 & 2012 Summit tourneys will be in Fargo, so a team will be here in January 2011. Gee, that will be just after the settlement deadline expires and a bit more than a year before UND becomes playoff eligible. Wow, what a coincidence. Like I said, I could be proven completely wrong in March, but my scenario is just as likely as anything else. Blowing a blood vessel over Douple's decision doesn't do anyone any good until we learn what the Summit's expansion plans actually are. Again, March.

1st paragraph: Who the hell do you think makes up a site visit team? It's comprised of the commissioner, one or two university presidents, and other staff, typically including the provost of one of the conference's universities as an academic adviser. In the case of NDSU, the visit team consisted of Douple, Richard Roberts(president of Oral Roberts), Homer Erekson(UMKC school of business), Mike Moore(IUPUI athletic director), Kathy Orban(WIU senior women's administrator) plus two Mid-Con officials(including current GWC commissioner, Ed Grom). 2nd paragraph: It is totally within the duties of the commissioner to protect his conference from choices he feels could hurt it. It's also clearly within the powers of the President's Council to overrule him if they feel it's necessary. If Douple feels that seriously considering UND is a waste of time and effort until the nickname issue is completely resolved, then that's legitimately part of his job. It's not like there's a imminent deadline approaching. If the President's Council disagrees, they can easily override his decision during the regular meeting in March and instruct him to schedule a site visit. Another element you're probably not aware of is the current initiative within the Summit League called the Summit Plan. It is a multi-year plan to improve the level of competition and the profile of the League from within. As part of this plan, Douple has been given a few more duties and powers to act on behalf of the League than a commissioner would normally have in a totally stable conference. The Summit Plan was developed by the commissioner and the president's council and was approved by a vote of the presidents. In other words, the presidents have explicitly given Douple permission to do these sorts of things. He doesn't have final say, but he's allowed to be more proactive than most commissioners normally are. 3rd paragraph: Are you trying to tell me that the other Big Ten presidents knew very little about the details at Penn State? Come on. From being fellow members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the Association of American Universities, and that most of the Big Ten are considered to be "Public Ivies" along with Penn State, it's obvious that the Big Ten presidents were well acquainted with Penn State long before they started thinking about adding them to the conference. Do you really think the same can be said about Centenary College of Louisiana, Oakland University of Michigan, Western Illinois University, or Indiana University Purdue University - Indianapolis when it comes to schools like USD or UND? Probably the most that can be said is that they know those universities exist and that's about it. If you asked the president of Centenary what the enrollment of USD is, do you think he would know, or even come close? If you asked the president of Oakland whether UND had a law school, would he be sure? How about the hundreds of other questions that need to be asked? It's Douple's job to be the icebreaker and find likely choices for membership, because there's a world of difference between Penn State and any schools the Summit might be looking at(yes, including NDSU).

Talk about revisionist history. The real situation was that Taylor approached Thomas with a 2 year + 2 year contract. Over the phone, the two of them agreed in principle to a two year contract with the first game in Fargo(it was our turn in the rotation) and the second in GF. The contract had an auto-renew clause in it for a second pair of games(Fargo/GF) if neither AD objected. This clause was inserted to allow the UND AD to easily cancel the extension if he felt the scholarship differential was proving insurmountable. Taylor sent the final contract to Thomas to sign. Instead of signing it, he sat on it for months, never telling Taylor that he had changed his mind. Taylor continued to schedule the upcoming season, thinking the date for the UND game was set. Taylor only found out that the game wasn't going to happen when a reporter asked him how he felt about the contract falling through. He wasn't particularly happy. All of this was reported by both the Herald and the Forum. As for the "it will hurt our playoff chances", that is both true and false. For one year, the DII playoff selection criteria had a loophole that would have "penalized" UND for playing NDSU. The loophole existed because there were so few DI-AA independents at the time, and they were all bad. Accordingly, they were all lumped together as having low value in the playoff selection points system. When UNC, UCD, NDSU & SDSU all moved up, they initially fell into that same category. It took the rulebook a year to catch up and add the Great West to the list of "good" I-AA conferences; the kind with the high point values. Once that happened, the argument that playing NDSU would hurt UND's playoff chances went out the window. There is even a very good chance that Thomas knew the rule change was coming when he refused to sign the contract described in the first paragraph. He still continued to use the invalid argument until he left for the NCC commissioner's job, however. Funny that.

You seem to be under the impression that "site visit=invitation". Douple is using the site visit to inform the presidents about USD, who he thinks might be a fit. It will be totally up to the presidents to decide if he's right. Remember, almost none of the Summit presidents know anything about about USD; its facilities, its programs, its academics. Sure NDSU & SDSU know about them, and maybe SUU a little bit, but the other seven presidents know very little. How do you expect those presidents to make informed decisions on a school they know nothing about. Should seven different presidents conduct seven different investigations, or should the league conduct one and report the findings to the others? It's Douple's job to put together a list of possible expansion/replacement candidates for membership and gather the info needed for the presidents to make their decision. It's also his job to eliminate any candidates he views as unacceptable for whatever reason. The presidents can overrule him, of course, but that will or will not happen in the future(probably at the March meeting). There doesn't appear to be any pressing need to expand, so it's not like Douple is pushing USD down the throats of the Summit presidents. The Big Ten/Penn State situation is completely different. In that case, all the presidents were dealing with a well known school and very little new research was required. A conference like the Summit must look at little known schools that are new to Division I or are otherwise obscure.

I'm pretty sure it used to be on the official fightingsioux.com website, but I don't think it survived the move to the new host last year. I didn't find it with a quick search, but I'll dig a little more before calling it a night.

But you're confusing a limited policy directive with a global one. The SBoHE decision in the lawsuit applies to UND, and UND only. It doesn't apply to the university system as a whole. The settlement and its timeline is between UND and the NCAA; none of the other universities are third parties to it. Again, the overall policy of the SBoHE is that the local decision-makers(ADs & presidents) are in charge unless specifically overruled. The Board has never expanded the particulars of the settlement beyond UND, so the Summit's laws and directives are paramount.

Who decides "what's in the best interest for the State of North Dakota"? How many projects and programs occur every year that are good for one city, county or institution, but are arguably bad for the state as a whole? In this case, the SBoHE would probably look at it as who is hurt worse: 1. A state university who doesn't get a desired game but has many other scheduling choices, or 2. A state university who may run afoul of their conference leadership and jeopardize their standing in the conference by scheduling an opponent they were told/asked not to. Sorry, the SBoHE would almost certainly side with the second situation; not that the Board would even bother with something like this. Now, if NDSU actively blocked UND from getting into the Summit, that would be a whole 'nother kettle of kittens(PETA thread). If that were to happen, the Board would come down on Chapman/Taylor like a ton of bricks. But that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about scheduling, not membership. And the situation I just mentioned would never come to pass. As the new kids on the block, NDSU & SDSU do not have much say in matters of expansion. If the majority of the Summit schools are against UND joining, then NDSU will vote for them(like it would ever come to an actual vote in that case) and the other Summit presidents would understand that NDSU was voting against the rest purely for political reasons. If the Summit presidents overwhelmingly want UND in, what the hell do you think NDSU is going to do? Vote no? Please. The only situation where there could possibly be a problem is if NDSU's vote was the deciding factor, but that will never happen because to force a vote in that situation could tear the conference apart. Generally, the conference presidents will only call for a vote in a membership situation if they know it will be unanimously for the newcomer or nearly so. As for NDSU lobbying against UND during the discussion: Are you nuts? NDSU(whoever is president at the time) will stay the f--- out of it unless asked direct questions by the others, and then "vote" the way the wind is blowing. Anything else would be politically suicidal in either direction. If NDSU lobbies against UND, someone would leak it and there would be hell to pay. If NDSU strongly lobbies FOR UND, it will only piss off the other presidents and marginalize NDSU's position on the council. The best thing for everyone is for NDSU to stay neutral.