UND92,96

I, for one, am glad. I want to see their best player play, and this will be our only opportunity to see him in GF. And at least now we'll be able to better tell whether the defense has made any improvement in the past two weeks.

At this level, I don't think it's unusual for a new head coach to retain one or two assistants from the previous regime. Joe Glenn kept at least two of Meierkort's assistants. Bohl retained Vigen (and maybe more, I don't recall).

I'm not so sure a lot of money isn't going to be lost regardless, due to the very real question of what direction attendance may be heading not only for the rest of this season, but beyond.

The downward trend has been pretty clear in recent years. And that was before some of the debacles we've seen in the last ten games. I still say that one more game along the lines of what we saw last week will result in a significant drop in attendance compared to last season's homecoming game, similar to the drop from 2009 to 2010. I hope I'm wrong. EDIT: If somebody had said five years ago that a September home game against Montana would draw fewer than 10,000, would you have believed it? I certainly would not have. We used to draw a lot more than that for games against UMC.

How much of a factor should attendance play into evaluating a coach? Specifically, I'm afraid this past Saturday's debacle is going to ruin attendance for the rest of the season. If per game attendance goes down this year, even with the best home schedule ever, it would obviously be a huge red flag to any a.d. The following are the attendance figures for the five homecoming games UND has played under Muss: 2008--12,164 2009--12,431 2010--10,215 2011--9,930 2012--9,742 Even with EWU coming in--the best homecoming opponent UND has had in years, if not ever--I'm afraid we may see attendance in the 7000's or worse if UND is blown out by MSU.

The SDSU defense does force turnovers, which covers for some other shortcomings, but they really give up a lot of yards. SE Louisiana put up over 500 against them on Saturday, but turnovers were the difference in a 34-26 win. I suspect Montana would put up a ton of yards against SDSU, and would win fairly comfortably, but SDSU may keep it competitive if they could force multiple turnovers.

Hard to say for sure whether they're truly back to where they were a few years ago until they play some of the better teams in the Big Sky, but I don't think there's much question they're better than SDSU right now regardless of what the national rankings say.

Lennon isn't coming back, but neither do I think that he, Bubba, DeBoer, etc. all of a sudden forgot how to coach. Maybe it was just a bad fit geographically, i.e. not having the same kinds of recruiting contacts in that part of the country as they did in the Dakota's, Minnesota, etc. I have no other explanation because clearly Lennon was far more successful at the dII level than his predecessor Jerry Kill.

Mollberg made his share of mistakes against Montana, but for some perspective, Brent Goska and Marcus Hendrickson combined for 146 yards against SDSU and Montana in 2010 (with a better line and running game than at present), neither was a red shirt freshman at the time, and both did quite well later in their careers.

In 2010, UND played Montana and SDSU in back to back weeks, on the road, and gave up a total of 48 points. In 2013, UND played the same two teams in back to back weeks, at home, and gave up 90 points. Not exactly progress.

Brooks Bollinger? I know he doesn't have a lot of experience (two years at Pitt as qb coach), but he would create buzz in the program.

I would guess the NDSU d-coordinator may take over there once Bohl leaves after this season.

I assume you mean since we became an FCS program, and if so, the answer is no.

Now THAT'S an insult!

He's now at Western Illinois.

I suspect only people in their 40's or older will understand this comparison, but barring a major turnaround this season is feeling very much like 1985.

This kind of result has happened three times in the last nine games. It's completely unacceptable.

In terms of the Alerus era, I would rank the worst losses as 1. Sioux Falls (2009); 2a. Montana (2013); 2b. Central Washington (2002).

Rains looks imminent here, but hasn't started yet.

This isn't 2014 recruiting, but there's a local 6'5", 290 pound 9th grade OL with a vaguely familiar last name to keep an eye on in the coming years: http://www.grandfork...icle/id/273078/

Per a Tom Miller tweet, Goodman is injured. Also, no quarterback starter has been named yet.

McFeely blog on the demise of the UND defense compared to the dII years: http://kfgo.com/blogs/so-many-opinions-so-little-time/953/unds-defense-what-went-wrong/

To further illustrate the point, even a head coach promoted from within a year and a half ago--where UND probably could have still gotten away with paying relatively little--is getting paid quite well by Big Sky standards (Travis Brewster).

It seemed like a much better win at the time. They finished 4-7 that year.

According to a tweet from CatGrizInsider (retweeted by Dom Izzo and several others), he has a separated shoulder.