Hammersmith

Actually, I think that is pretty scary. Not because I dislike Bush(which I do), but because I don't think any human should be worshipped. Worshipping >> blind obedience >> fanaticism >> "violence is okay because it's in <insert deity>'s name." Once that first step of worshipping a living person is made, it's not hard to transfer the devotion to the current "correct thinking" leader. Somehow, I doubt that Washington, Franklin, Adams and Jefferson had bowing and praying to a presidential portrait in mind when they decided that the head of the Church of England was not their cup of tea. Quite frankly, I despise any person, organization or religion that espouses a "us vs. them" philosophy. The moment you do that, you dehumanize your "enemy", which is the first, dangerous, step towards jihad or genocide. As you might expect, I'm not too fond of our current political system(both halves). And yes, this does apply to my Bison/Sioux feelings. As I said in another post, any negative feelings I have toward UND are aimed at individuals, not the institution. For example, I do not dislike Roger Thomas because he was from UND, I dislike him because of his comments and actions. Those negative feelings do not transfer to Tom Buning. I will judge him completely independently of his predecessors. Sorry for ranting; this topic kind of pushes my buttons. Have a good afternoon.

This is the way it is supposed to work: There is 'actual' and 'paid' attendance. For satisfying the 15k average attendance requirement, either will work. Tickets must be sold at 1/3 or more of their pre-season value to be counted. (I take this to mean 2-for-1's count, since each ticket was sold for 1/2 value.) Tickets sold at less than that(give-aways) can be counted only if the tickets are actually used. The students count because of the activity fee, but they must either be given tickets which are later counted or they must enter through a seperate gate and be counted there. The band counts if it's counted by an athletic department official, but the players, cheerleaders and students performing stadium services do not count. The loophole in this requirement is that the school's athletic department or development foundation can use one or more financial contributers to buy tickets at 1/3 price to inflate the paid attendance if needed. I highly doubt any I-A school is going to miss the attendance requirement from this point on. BTW, the 16,134 NDSU vs. Northeastern attendence figure is actual, not paid. We all know the old Dakotah Field numbers were inflated beyond any reality, but since moving to DI, the numbers are honest. Everything you want to know, and more: http://www1.ncaa.org/membership/governance...Information/FBD

You are correct with two tiny quibbles: 1. It should be exploratory, not experimental and (to be really picky) reclassification, not transition 2. The "certain number of DI games" is a minimum of 9 games with >50% of the total being DI(i.e. 10 total needs 6 DI) Other terminology changes: "non core member" should be "active member" and "core member" should be "core institution". Sorry for being so anal, but I've been in the NCAA manual so much it's seeped into my brain. So, corrected version:

If the rules were the same back in 2004 as they are now(I think they are, but I'm not sure), then both NDSU and SDSU should have been counters in 2004. Counting UC Davis and Northern Colorado, NDSU had 8 DI games and SDSU had 7. Besides, in the case of SUU, they had no chance of a playoff spot. Cal Poly was a different situation and it's possible that having the SU's on their schedule might have kept them out of the playoffs. They had a 9-2 record and still didn't make it in. It's possible that all the Great West schools learned from that, and that is one of the reasons NDSU is wary of having a DII on the 2008 schedule. Really, it seems like everything is in Buning's and Lennon's hands at this point. If they choose to pursue an accelerated transition, then they will have to decide between having most of the home games be patsies, having fewer home games, or paying significant amounts of money to bring I-AA teams to GF. Home and homes are the way to go, but it's difficult to get established I-AA teams to come to a reclassifing school first. Still, it's obviously doable and if Buning wants a Bison/Sioux game in 2008, it's within his power.

You're referring to the phrase "the year the reclassifying institution must comply with Division I scheduling requirements", right? (emphasis mine) That part has confused me and I thought it meant that UND couldn't count as DI until 2009 until NJIT came to Fargo for WBB. They counted as a DI for us even though they're a year behind us in reclassification. The reason given was that they had a full DI schedule a year early. The FB and BB rules are the same, so that should mean that UND has the option to ba a DI counter in 2008. Also, Hallstrom's report on WDAY said that Talyor would consider adding UND to the schedule only if they secured 6 other DI games. To the posters commenting on GWFC adding UND as soon as possible: Other than making scheduling easier, UND does absolutely nothing for GWFC until 2012. Whether you're added in 08, 09, 10, 11 or 12 doesn't matter except for the scheduling. I'm betting 60% in 09 and 40% in 08. To Smoggy: I find it hilarious that we're using the same excuse because we're not the ones who used it first. UND lost the moral high ground on this point. Beyond that, UND's rationale for that point, changed the following year when the rules were altered, yet no attempt was made by UND to renew the rivalry for several years. NDSU is just saying that 2008 is a bad year for us. 2009 on the other hand...

The political will to close UND-E was helped by a fire that destroyed one or two buildings, including the library. Pre-fire, I think it was in a worse situation than Mayville is now. When Trinity Bible College expressed interest in the campus, the state jumped at it since it would keep jobs in Ellendale. I don't think a situation like that will be repeated.

Wow, I kicked over a hornets nest for a while, didn't I? I considered the matter since I posted and, while I still believe a 2 for 1 would be justified, I realized it doesn't matter. The earliest that the Bison/Sioux game will happen is 2008, and the latest UND will be in the GWFC is 2009. The maximum gap is only 1 year. (I don't believe you're getting into BSC) There's simply no time for a multi-year contract. As soon as UND gets into GWFC, it's the conference office who will determine where the game is played. Someone asked about UND in GWFC in 2008. It's possible. If I were UCD, CP, or NDSU, I would require UND to schedule 3 DI-AA OOC games before letting UND in as a provisional member(no conference championship or player of the week honors until at least 2009, maybe later). That would insulate the schools making playoff runs from harm should one of UND's DI-AA opponents back out of their contract for a DI-A money game. UND will need a minimum of 6 DI games in 2008 to be a DI counter. 5 GWFC games plus 3 OOC games would give everyone a nice buffer while still allowing UND to schedule 3 DII games. About my Kupchella comment. It is my personal opinion that Roger Thomas and Charles Kupchella are the two individuals most responsible for the problems between our two universities over the last several years. I don't mind comments between students, alumni or fans, but I think the administrations should be above that. I'm sure many of you feel the same thing towards Chapman, and I don't think we're going to change each others' minds. I don't hate UND as an institution, but I don't like RT and CK. I think RT is getting what he deserves as the NCC crumbles about his head, but I wish CK would be gone before we restart the rivalry. To me, it would feel like we were starting from a clean slate. That's simply my opinion, and as DaveK has been saying in the Vikings thread, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I'd like to see a total system of 2 research/professional universities, 1 four-year university, 2 junior colleges, 2 tech schools, and a couple of community colleges. Rather than every small college in ND trying to be everything to everybody, I wish they could focus on a mission and excel at it. My king-for-a-day vision would be for several of our small campuses to be stripped down to a admin/support building, a dorm, a classroom building, and a tech building. Classes would be taught in 2-4 week periods by instructors from the other campuses. NDUS would then build a small fleet of semi's to haul tools and equipment from campus to campus for classes. I also agree with Chewey that our elected officials(& SBoHE) are going to keep sticking their heads in the sand until the whole system becomes unstable and collapses. I wish we had leaders strong enough to jump on the grenade and deal with the issue. (Personally, I only think ND needs one high-level university, but even I'm not crazy enough to suggest cutting either NDSU or UND back to a four-year or junior college.)

BTW, the various factors the Herald is talking about are 6 other I-AA games on the Sioux schedule before the Bison agree to a game. If UND has 7 I-AA games in 2008, they become a I-AA counter. We're desperate for strength of schedule in 2008 since we'll be competing against 110+ other I-AA schools for the 8 at-large playoff slots with no autobid safety blanket. Personally, I don't have strong feelings about the game. I'd rather wait until Kupchella's gone, but if it happens, it happens. I only hope the contract is for a 2 for 1; you owe us a game and our stadium seats 7000 more.

Cute.

Just to give you some (probably) false hope. (I agree with the writer on the schools) posted on bisonville by greenie:

You're right, but in a funny sort of way the GWFC is the Mid-Con's conference (beyond the administering of it). While Taylor, Oien and others were driving forces to create the conference, it's my understanding that it was Douple as SUU's AD who initiated and pushed the talks. Now that he's the Mid-Con's commish, I think that some of that, rightfully, transfers over.

I'm sorry, but you hold no cards when it comes to conference membership. That was the hardest and most humbling lesson we Bison fans learned during our reclassification. A sucessful reclassification is dependant on lots of hard work and a fair amount of luck. Even if you do all the hard work perfectly, it's not a guarantee of sucess. That is the biggest pitfall I believe you face. If anyone involved in the process at UND, from president to students to donors, starts to think that "just because NDSU suceeded, so can we", you will slacken your efforts and almost surely fail. Do your best, keep your eye on the ball, use NDSU as a model, pray for luck; that's the best thing you can do. Well, that and give lots of money to the FSC, of course.

I agree with MplsBison on this one. I don't think the Gateway will add anyone in a kneejerk response if WKU bolts. I suspect they'll wait at least one or two years before making a decision. By then, UND (and USD?) will be DI and the GWFC will still be (relatively)stable if the xDSU's get invited. Also, Wichita St is on the short list of DI schools thinking hard about adding football. With their MVC ties, they're the frontrunners after Drake if Drake wants to stay non-scholie. Star, I don't read that quote the same way you do. I see it as a commish covering his bets no matter what DU decides. How does it look for a member of a DI-A conference to move to a I-AA conference because it's a step UP in competition and recognition. This way, he can make it seem like it's the Sun Belt's idea and save a little face if DU moves. DU will be in the Sun Belt for as long as it wants. I do believe that if BSC adds a member, DU is their first choice, but it's far from a certainty and I don't think it improves UND's chances by any appreciable degree. edit: I know that Sun Belt vs. Big Sky comment might open a can of worms, but really, Sun Belt is one bad DI-A conference.

We hashed this out a week ago on bisonville. I'll give you what I found then. Source is the NDUS Annual Financial Report FY 04-05. It doesn't give a breakdown on specific endowments, but it does give total amounts held by the major players. According to this report, UND holds $8,697,873 in endowment investments(pdf pg. 73). The UND Development Foundation holds about ten times as much at $80,633,007(pdf pg. 27). This number does not take into account funds held in trust. NDUS Annual Financial Report FY 04-05 Another official source is the UND Foundation/Alumni Association's Annual Report. This report gives a little more detail about how the assets are broken up. The UND F/AA holds total investments(including lands, buildings, trusts, etc.) of $124,044,066 and total assets of $143,626,117. UND Foundation Annual Report General wisdom is that well-invested endowment should return 10%, of which 5% is reinvested(3% to counter inflation and 2% to grow the fund) and 5% is used for the endowment's purpose. Using these guidelines, UND should be generating about $4.5M in endowment payouts using the NDUS numbers. If you are looking for specific endowments and their sizes, I can't help you - sorry. I hope this gives you a little of what you are looking for. edit: specific endowments are listed towards the back of the Foundation Annual Report.

Your points are definitely valid and I think most UND fans are doing the same thing we NDSU fans were doing a few years ago. I think it boils down to two reasons. First, BSC is a well-respected I-AA football conference. Like NDSU(though not quite to the same degree), UND fans want a recognized home for one of their top sports; BSC gives them that. Second, several of the BSC schools are "like us", state flagship schools with good professional and research departments and on-campus populations. Most are even located in rural/small urban settings like the Dakota schools. Related to that is the fact that we know some of them from years past(esp the Montana's). The MCC schools are mostly smaller schools (many are commuter schools) that are in urban settings. Most are also schools we've never heard of before NDSU started working on an invite. I think UND fans will come-around quicker than we did(many have already) and start giving MCC a serious look. I also firmly believe that UND fans will very quickly discover how agonizing it is to be independant, and that any conference is far superior to having no conference at all.

I'm going to have to respectfully doubt that until I see the actual quote. The thought of him saying something like that at anytime, much less within a day of NDSU getting invited into the Mid-Con, just seems unrealistic to me. Starting in 2007, only 4 of 10 schools in the Mid-Con will sponsor football and WIU is in the Gateway. I know that Douple has stated that he wants the partnership of Mid-Con/GWFC (Mid-Con administrates the GWFC) to be similar to the partnership between MVC/Gateway, but I haven't heard any serious talk of any of the other 6 schools adding football and I don't see WIU leaving Gateway and it's autobid. FYI: The other 6 schools are Centenary, IPFW, IUPUI, UMKC, Oakland and Oral Roberts. In the MVC, 5 of 10 schools play in the Gateway, while another plays in the non-scholy Pioneer League. The remaining 4 do not sponsor football.

This isn't smack, just a little reminder for any who don't know or forgot. UNI is last year's I-AA NC runner-up. The Sioux will need a darn near perfect game to win, maybe even to just stay in it. I don't think I'll go so far as to wish you luck(I am a Bison fan after all ), but I hope it's a good game.

Agreed that we're moving from 4:3 to 16:9, but wouldn't that make awkward arena videoscreens? I thought 4:3 would be a good compromise. Also, the desktop world is a long, long way from widescreen saturation, which is where most will still be watching webcasts.

Re-reading what I just wrote made me think of something. Almost all arena videoscreens seem to be square. As I mentioned above, that causes a problem when you pipe that feed out to computer monitors and televisions. Since we can't change everyone's display device and producing two different aspect ratio feeds simultaneously in real-time can be very difficult, wouldn't it make sense to build our arena videoscreens in a 4:3 ratio? That would streamline the whole process. Of course, all of our screens are new at both campuses so the advice might be a little late. Oh well.

I watched tonight's Bison game on the webcast. It wasn't perfect, but it has merit. Prices are $7.95/month, $39.95/6 mo., and $69.95/year. We get all home football games plus sometimes we get away games if they also have webcasts and use the same provider(don't hold me to that last part, I might be wrong). We also get all other sports except x-country, golf and track. Last year there were 43 games and 80 total events webcasted. What's really nice is they're all archived, so I could watch last years Bison/Bunnies football game right now if I wanted. Also, the number of games webcast this year should be higher than last year. As for quality, I haven't looked through the archive, so I can't tell you how things were last year - only tonight. Pre-web production values seemed to be very high. Immediate instant replays, name/number overlays and camera work were all very good. Sound was a problem. They tried to mix the ambient noise(crowd/players) with the student radio station doing play-by-play. The synch was fine, but the levels were way off. Often, I could barely hear the announcers over the crowd noise. That will need to be fixed and I'm sure I'm not the only one who sent a note to the provider. Halftime was really embarassing, since they had music and commercials running over the marching band audio. Jumbled mess. Video quality was acceptable if not spectacular. I set up my computer to output to my TV, so I got a living-room experience. The video looked very good until I went full-screen, then the artifacting became very apparent. I would like them to try a higher bit-rate, but maybe they can't do that. One last thing was the aspect ratio. Most TV's are 4:3 vs. something like widescreen which is 16:9. This feed seemed to be 1:1 or square. I wonder if it's because they're using the feed meant for the Fargodome's videoscreens which are nearly square. The end result is black bars all around the picture much like the letterbox bars on widescreen movies on TV. Annoying, but not a deal-breaker. The biggest problem for me was the lack of synch between the video webcast, radio, and other audio webcasts. I like WDAY 970 for play-by-play, but the over-the-air broadcast was off by about 30sec. I tried the WDAY audio webcast next, and it was off by about 10sec. Better, but not good enough. I ended up surfing the messageboards and web while listening to the WDAY audio feed. When something big happened, I quickly brought the video feed window up to catch the action. Kind of like an instant instant-replay. Nice, but I don't know if it's worth the money that way. Live-Stats are very cool. I think the current bit-rate is about 330k. If they could up the bit-rate to at least 500k, or even 1000k, it would be a huge improvement. Also, striking a deal with ForumComm for the WDAY audio would be great. Better yet, give us a choice. Overall, I know there have been improvements from last year and if they fix some of the basic mistakes, it should be a great service. It is somewhat bleeding-edge technology and I'm happy NDSU is embracing it as much as it has. I highly recommend the concept. One last bit of dissertation. If you have the capability, turn your computer into a media center pc. I cannot tell you how cool it is to sit in your living-room, watching a webcast, chatting on a messageboard, watching live-stats, and surfing the web for news and info all at the same time and without leaving your armchair. In fact, I'm typing this from my chair using a wireless keyboard, mouse, and my TV. It may be geek, but it rocks. To sum up: If you want this, you(UND) must: 1. Have good production facilities. (Alerus/Ralph?) 2. Build or hire a robust streaming service at 500k or higher 3. Work with radio stations to get the audio most fans want (ClearChannel?) 4. Synch and balance the feeds constantly - don't set and forget 5. Archive the games, press conferences, etc. 6. Live-Stats are cool 7. Start small (football/basketball), then expand to most sports 8. Offer different bit-rates - audio only for dial-up, 250k, 500k & 1000k for those who can handle it If done correctly, this could blow FSSN out of the water and reach far, far more people. Sorry for the post length and I hope this helps.

Friends, friends, you're both right(and wrong). ;) Since the DI move, almost none of NDSU's BB games have been M/W doubleheaders while almost all the UND games have been. Comparing the two is really apples to oranges for now. I personally feel that NDSU's attendance is stronger, but that's based on opinion. But here's a question to those of you that were at UND BB games last year: I heard a lot of anecdotal stories last year (many on this site) about fans leaving after the women's game. If those stories are true, what does that say about the men's attendance figures? Did the gates count the people who left after the women's games and then subtract them from the men's? If they did, then my apologies, but if they did not, then there is no fair way to compare the two sets of numbers until UND moves to DI and faces the same M/W situation. edit: BisonMav beat me to it.

I'm sure there is always talk of those conferences joining the playoffs, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon. The SWAC is made up of mostly HBCUs and I doubt many of them are willing to give up their Classic games. The Ivy League would, most likely, have to start giving out athletic scholarships to be competitive in the playoffs and that would strip away one of the things that makes them unique. Possible, but I don't see it happening. I have also thought about a 24 team field, but that would kill the push for a 12 game season. I suspect there is greater support among the I-AA schools for the longer regular season schedule (another potential I-A money game) than a longer playoff. aff is completely correct about the fact that automatic qualification eligibility is not the same as getting an autobid. What makes things worse, for now, is that the committee that determines who gets the autobids each year is currently made up of one member from each the 8 autobid conferences. The best chance the GWFC has is in 2008 when one of the two West Region spots opens up (currently held by the AD from Sam Houston State (Southland)) and he gets replaced; perhaps by someone from Cal-Poly or SUU. The chances of that happening are very slim, but it's something. Also, this fall the spot held by the MEAC representive opens up. If she is replaced by a non-MEAC school, that might give us a better chance in the future(MEAC is argueably the weakest autobid conference). And just for the record: GWFC was the only non-autobid conference represented in the 2005 playoffs. GWFC had a better playoff record(1-1) than MEAC(0-1), Ohio Valley(0-1), Patriot(0-2), and Big Sky (0-2). Only Southern(6-2) and Gateway(4-2) had better winning percentages. (Atlantic 10 went (2-2)) Parity seems to be high; autobid recipents record vs. non-autobids = (8-7) vs. (7-8). If the GWFC continues to get at large bids and keeps winning at least one game, it will be very hard to deny them an autobid when the MEAC teams(4-12 since 96; last win in 99) and Ohio Valley teams(1-13 since 96; last win in 96) keep getting knocked out in the first round. Still, it's politics, and logic rarely reigns supreme in that arena.

I don't think they could. I spent many hours last weekend trying to figure out the GWFC autobid situation and still got almost all of it wrong. I ended up talking to ralph from I-AA.org to get everything straightened out since he had spoken directly with the NCAA. (2010 if we can get an active member by 2008; 2014 if we have to wait for UND) Everytime I dig into those bylaws, I come out needing a cigarette and a drink - and I don't smoke and rarely imbibe.

You didn't get it quite right, filbert. As star2city said earlier, core member status is independent of conference. Once you are an active member for 8 years, you are a core member forever. Thus, IPFW immediately satisfies the core member requirement even if they don't satisfy the continuity of membership requirement. Here is a corrected version of the timeline. The first number given is the number of core members that have played together for at least 5 years, and the second number is the total number of core members. Remember that men's basketball requires 6/7 for autobid. Asterisks are for continuity counters, bold type is for changes to filbert's timeline, italics are for non-core members. So the Mid-Con is a bit more stable than your original timeline suggested, but I wouldn't call it completely stable by any means. The only time the conference is right on the line is in 2007-8, when there are only 6 continuity counters. The 2-year grace period would cover that, if necessary. Any one member can leave at any time, but a second core defection before 2014 would kill the autobid. The only part of the revised timeline that I am unsure of is whether NDSU and SDSU will satisfy the continuity requirement in 2016 when they become core members, or 5 years later in 2019. I chose the conservative interpretation in my version.