PCM

I respectfully disagree that UND will have to wait until it's actually harmed. While it might make the university's case stronger, I don't think it's a necessity. A large part of the legal case is based on the grounds that the NCAA has no authority under its own consititution and bylaws to do what it did, which goes toward the breech of contract argument.

So, how much support will this bill get if North Dakota's only Congressman doesn't support it? My guess is very little.

Many of the hockey season ticket holders and football season ticket holders are the same people.

Nobody at UND would have done that because it would have been stupid beyond reason.

Which is why I don't understand why some people are going off the deep end about the survey. As for the rest of your post, goading UND into turning DI didn't work last time and I don't expect that it will work this time, either.

Yes, that's Frazee. The bump happened during the second intermission of the Saturday Gopher-Sioux game as the players were skating off the ice. The comment "A flea hit me!" was actually made by Frank Mazzacco, so I can't take credit for it. Doug Woog also said something like: "I think Frazee should stay away from Smaby for about 20 years."

I get a chuckle out of the idea that if UND would have lost to Holy Cross, Gopher fans would be content to simply forget about it.

UND's circumstances are different from NDSU's. How many times must that be said?

But maybe he watched with his eyes closed. Unless you ask, you don't know.

Different people will have different reactions to the survey depending on their point of view. I consider myself more or less neutral on the subject. I'm not against a move to DI as long as there's a plan to do it in an economically feasible manner. As The Sicatoka says, answering the cost and conference questions would go a long way toward easing my mind. I'm also looking at the issue from the perspective of a parent who's not wealthy and who will soon be sending a student to UND, which perhaps makes me a bit more pragmatic.

I was hoping for a dart throw.

I can't help you there. All I can do is give my impression of the survey.

It seems to me that some people are assuming a bit too much about the survey results. If I had to guess, I'd say it's more likely that Kupchella will base his decision on what the committee's report says rather than what the survey results say.

I'm supposed to be angry about something that won't happen?

I don't think that what you're suggesting is even a viable option.

As someone who took the survey, I don't agree with that characterization of it at all. If anything, I felt that the questions were skewed in favor of UND going DI. But who knows? Maybe Kupchella was directing mind control waves my way at the time.

I didn't give you permission to put JFR's head on my body! I'm suing!

Myles Brand, everybody's favorite NCAA president, discusses the topic of student athletes leaving early for the pros on the Monday with Myles Webcast.

The headline is treated as a direct quote from Pomeroy. There is no such quote from Pomeroy in the story. It's possible that there was such a quote and it got trimmed from the story.

There's a story on the front page of Saturday's Grand Forks Herald headlined: "Pomeroy: Don't limit NCAA authority." I can't find the story on the Herald's Web site or anywhere else on the Web. Here are some key quotes: It's interesting that nothing in the story supports what the headline says.

I see where you're coming from and it's a good point. I think UND's best defense against that argument is that the NCAA is taking a very broad, vageuely worded general principle and applying it to a specific area for the purpose of targeting a few schools with punitive action. The NCAA says that every single person who attends one of its championship events should be treated with dignity and respect, but we all know this isn't happening. It's futile to believe that this perfect state at athletic events will ever be achieved. There are countless stories in the media about how players are being singled out for the worst kind of hostility and abuse. And what does the NCAA do to make certain that those who officiate its events are treated with dignity and respect? When the last time you saw fans of opposing teams treat each other with dignity and respect? "Respect and dignity for all" is a great idea in principle, but it seems to me that unless the NCAA is enforcing it for all members, at all events and under all circumstances, the idea that only UND and a few other schools are tarnishing the organization's image seems rather far-fetched.

When Brad Schlossman writes about it in the Herald, then and only then will I believe it.

I promise here and now never to change my amateur bono status.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this because I'm not. However, I did spend seven years working for a private association. It was no coincidence that the organization's president was an attorney. I sat through many meetings with the association's management in which member relations were discussed. We had to be careful about overselling or overpromising what we could do or provide for our members. Because there was always a concern that someone could take the association to court for not delivering on what was promised, we were careful to spell out in writing what we would do for anyone who joined. And we were always careful to deliver everything that we promised. To me, it's similar to buying a service. If you give someone money to do something for you, there's a reasonable expectation that the service will be performed under the agreed-upon conditions. When you take someone's money to perform a service, you don't get to say, "Sorry, but I've decided to do something different than what I told you and -- SURPRISE! -- it's going to cost you more." The NCAA's constitution and by-laws clearly state that members of the organization have autonomy in dealing with issues involving discrimination. The NCAA doesn't like the way UND and the federal government have dealt with the discrimination allegedly caused by the Sioux name and logo. It has decided to hurt UND financially and interfere with the university's intellectual property rights by imposing its own punishment. Furthermore, the NCAA hides behind the its private association status by claiming that its action is designed to protect the national championship events it operates and nothing more. However, to my knowledge, neither the NCAA nor any of the name-change advocates have ever cited an incident of racism or discrimination against Native Americans attending NCAA events in which UND has been involved. So what problem is the NCAA really trying to solve? What evidence is there that UND's logo is causing "hostility and abuse" at NCAA-sponsored events? If the NCAA is truly controlling what's within its realm of control, why is it basing its policy on events and evidence that occur outside of the athletic arena? I recall, too, that when the NCAA said that all Sioux logos and references would have to be covered during the West Regional, many "experts" claimed that as a private association, the NCAA had every right to force UND to do that. But when Kupchella pointed out that the NCAA was unilaterally changing a contract, the organization dropped that demand. If the NCAA had simply told UND and the 17 other universities that American Indian nicknames and imagery weren't allowed at its championship events, I think those schools would have had a difficult time making their case in court. But the NCAA went beyond that and took punitive action against some of those schools for supposedly violating a very broad and very vague association principal, a principal that's being selectively applied in this case. The breech of contract approach appears to be fertile legal ground to me.