UND92,96

Rob Bollinger named new associate a.d. at UND! link I'd say that's a great choice by Mr. Buning on his first hire, and many thanks to Rob for again showing his tremendous loyalty to UND.

I am surprised UNO apparently has a larger budget than UND considering UNO offers four fewer sports.

I would think that living in EGF (or Crookston, or Fisher, or Warren...) has its good and bad points. You can buy property for less, but you also sell it for less. You pay lower property taxes, but you're also constantly dealing with under-funded public schools which seems to mean yearly staff and program cuts in a lot of local Minnesota school districts. Which is the better situation is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

Thanks for the info. He would be a big pickup, particularly this late. I know he's played AAU ball for Howard Pulley in the past, and one of the Pulley coaches is none other than Bo Powell which should help UND's cause.

Somebody on the minnesotapreps.com board posted that Minneapolis DeLaSalle point guard Travis Bledoe is visiting UND in the near future. Bledsoe was a finalist for MN Mr. Basketball this past season. Has anybody heard whether this is true or whether UND is even still recruiting for next year?

I am involved in the real estate business in GF, and I honestly don't see the base's realignment as having a huge effect on property values in GF. In Grand Forks itself there aren't a lot of active Air Force personnel who own property, and most people live on base. It's a little tougher to predict what will happen with the civilians who will lose their jobs, but probably a lot of them will be able to find another job locally depending on what field they're in. I would have been afraid of losing many of the retired Air Force personnel had the base closed, since presumably they no longer would have had easy access to medical care, etc. that they currently have by virtue of the base being here, and therefore may have been more likely to move. Certainly losing the number of people that has been speculated is going to hurt the overall economy (particularly in places like Emerado and Larimore), and I would expect sales tax numbers to take a big hit once the realignment commences, but it could have been worse. I certainly wouldn't want to be a business owner or even property owner in or near Rapid City these days.

I certainly can't vouch for the accuracy of this, but the number I heard in terms of new personnel should GFAFB get the Global Hawk mission is roughly 800-900. I guess I would assume that that would be subtracted from the roughly 2200 who would be transferring as a result of losing the tankers.

I guess I've never followed the logic of that argument when tony has used it in the past, and I don't follow it now. The last cut was, if I'm not mistaken, over a decade ago. That was a completely different era for UND football. For one thing, UND was not a national power, or at best was only just beginning to become a perennial playoff contender, and frankly I don't even know if we were fully-funded. A cut from 40-something to 36 probably didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time. Now, UND is one of the top programs in dII football, easily funds the maximum of 36, and would be tremendously harmed by a cut of anywhere close to the magnitude proposed last year. I fail to see how not moving to dI in response to a football scholarship cut in the early 90's--or whenever the last cut was--means that a program like UND has to just shut up and take whatever is dished out in terms of scholarship cuts in the future. I've been pretty vocal in my opinion that I don't feel like going dI without a conference for the majority of sports makes sense. However, a football scholarship cut--particularly one as large as the one just proposed--is the one thing that would make me change my mind.

My understanding is that only the past ten years were considered in making the determination as to which school had the best overall athletic program. As far as Fargo South is concerned, you certainly could make a case for them, as well as Bismarck High. However, just as Red River has its weak sports, most notably football, South has its shortcomings, as well, particularly in girls' sports. Plus, an argument could be made that South should win even more titles than it does considering its huge enrollment. I couldn't find a link for overall enrollments, but this would suggest than South's male enrollment is nearly double that of either Grand Forks Central or Red River.

Not surprisingly, Mike McFeely weighs in on the challenges facing Buning. [url="http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=91381

I think a key hire by Mr. Buning is going to be the open assistant/associate a.d. position. The reason being is that I think it's very important for an "outsider" to have somebody who knows UND and the Grand Forks community to help guide him around potential landmines that will inevitably pop up. My first choice would be Rob Bollinger, but it's probably very iffy that he would be interested under the circumstances. Another potential choice would be Rich Glas. Although I feel that Buning is more than qualified for the job, I'm going to be a little nervous if he doesn't have a right-hand man or woman who is familiar to the fans and alums and who can let him know in advance whether a particular decision could lead to a potential firestorm.

Obviously I was incorrect in my perception, but when I initially read the release in question, my interpretation was that the door was left open so that some "name" candidate could still interview if he/she applied at the last minute. I honestly didn't think it was likely that any other candidate who had previously applied would be invited to interview unless one or more of the other finalists dropped out for some reason.

I guess the problem is that the wording of this release said basically that three candidates would be brought in for interviews, and that "it is still possible that other candidates could be brought to campus for interviews." That, probably unnecessarily, created the perception that if Buning or anybody else who had previously applied was subsequently brought in to interview, they would be viewed somehow in a lesser light than Bollinger, McCarthy or Molde. To the extent that somebody screwed up here, I would have to say that it was Harmeson and/or the search committee for having allowed the release to be worded in such a way. In any event, it's unfortunate because obviously Buning is very qualified and has done nothing wrong here.

While I was rooting for Rob Bollinger to get the job, you can't help but be impressed with Buning's credentials. Maybe he can be the best of both worlds--Wanless's administrative abilities and RT's people skills. I wonder what the chances are that Rob would be interested in the vacant assistant a.d. position? That could go a long way towards smoothing things over with the numerous fans/alums who were backing Rob, plus I think he would do a good job in that position.

I'm not sure what's going on with fightingsioux.com, but they've been a little erratic lately in terms of putting out press releases after letter of intent signings. They STILL haven't posted one to announce the spring men's basketball signees.

Between the fact that the women should be a strong national title contender and that there are several players from within pretty close proximity to Grand Forks, it would seem that selling out the Betty at least a few times next year should be realistic. Players like Langen, Beck, Kimbrough and Bagaason should hopefully draw a nice contingent from their home towns in addition to the people from the Grand Forks area who historically have gone to the games.

As an aside, this is an interesting read as it shows that there are some people out west who actually have the audacity to suggest that EVERY state tournament should be held in a "central location," which I interpret as excluding Grand Forks and Fargo in particular. You have to scroll down to the District 15 notes. It would be hard to imagine the Dakota Bowl, for example, NOT being held at the Alerus or Fargodome, or the state hockey tournament NOT being held at the Ralph. I'm disappointed that the state track meet will now be held exclusively in Bismarck, as even though I would agree that their facility is newer and nicer, I feel that the impetus behind it had more to do with Bismarck being more "centrally located" than with the quality of the facilities. That's a slippery slope that I really don't want to see extend to moving other state competitions to exclusively Bismarck or Minot just because some people in the western half of the state don't want to travel more than a couple of hours for a state competition.