PCM

Why, yes, I probably do need a nap. Thank you for reminding me. And I'll take my meds as Diggler suggested. That might be a good idea, too. But I should warn you that if I do those things, I might start disagreeing with you again. Woudln't you rather have me on your side? I think that I'm doing your cause a lot of good.

Diggler, I completely understand your position. As long as the students can claim that nobody is listening to them, they are completely and totally free to do whatever the hell they want. It's the perfect rationalization and I salute you for making it over and over again to shift responsibility away from the students. You are truely the master of this tactic. There's no reason that anyone should even attempt to disagree with you. Once again, thank you for helping me see the light.

Jeez, I express total agreement with your position and you flame me anyway.

I agreed with you. Lighten up, Francis.

Of course you got flamed. What do you expect? Do you think that you can come here using common sense and get away with it? What planet do you live on? I've seen the light. I bow to the superior rationalizations applied to this argument. Logic is no match for them. The excuse-makers and purveyors of classless, inconsiderate behavior must be allowed to reign supreme in The Ralph. Without the behavior they excuse and condone, none of us would ever get the true college hockey experience that we all crave. We should be thanking them, not criticizing them. So give in. Go with the flow. It's much easier and less stressful.

There is no difference. Students should be able to do whatever they want. They own the university. It's theirs. Plus, Grand Forks would cease to exist without the students who go to hockey games. Breaking the law, ignoring rules you don't like, acting like a classless jerk in public, swearing like a drunken sailor and being inconsiderate is all part of the real world. The sooner students learn that, the better off they'll be when they graduate.

That's right. Screw the administration. Who do they think they are? Nobody should have to follow any standards. There's no such thing as appropriate social behavior in public, especially at a hockey game.

So what? Other bands do the same thing. It's a hockey game, not a church service. Lighten up.

Very true.

Really? Here's an excerpt from page 10 of UND's lastest response to the NCAA:

Weren't some people complaining about "classless" Canadian fans not long ago? If your standard of acceptable behavior is the lowest common denoniminator, then prepare to deal with fans of other teams who have the same standards.

To be consistent, I'll point out that there is a Sioux Name forum on which to post items such as this. There's also discussion on this story and others concerning the Sioux name issue on this thread. But I do appreciate it when people post links to me articles.

I've never worked at the Herald, so I can't say exactly how they operate. However, I do have a journalism degree and I have worked at other daily newspapers. I've been an editor and I've been involved in determining layout and story placement. It's standard newspaper practice to hold a meeting of editors to decide which stories will be published, where they'll be placed and how much play they'll be given in relation to other stories. Those are always editorial decisions, as they should be. There are always disagreements among editors, among reporters and among readers about which stories deserve more attention than others. The editors do their best to make the right decsion, but that doesn't mean that we must all agree with their decisions.

You are correct.

Story placement decisions are made by editors, not the guys who lay out the paper. They do what the editors tell them to do. The size difference in headlines and placement of the stories is intened to convey the relative importance of the stories -- in the opinion of the editors.

Just to be clear, the deans you mentioned both voted against the motion to change the name: The Herald put a large headline at the top of the front page about the University Senate vote. The story about the tribal council members was also on the front page, except it was at the bottom of the page with a smaller headline. But trust me, folks, the story about the meetings with the tribal leaders is far more important than the story about the University Senate resolution. When you understand what's happening on that front and you understand what's going on with the NCAA, you can see the context for why this resolution was brought up now.

Where's a guy like Mike Curtis when you need him? For those too young to remember, this article by Dave Wilson from Football.com helps explain it.

Freshman and sophomore years, as I recall. After the Sioux won the championship in 2000, a Boston College fan tried to tell me that Commodore was UND's best offensive-defenseman, despite a guy named Roche being on that team. Because Mike scored a goal against Niagara and a goal against BC in the NCAA playoffs that season, a lot of people assumed that he'd been a goal-scorer all during his career.

From the Green Mill, Tim Hennessy is the host with Sioux hockey coach Dave Hakstol and players Jonathan Toews and Brian Lee. TH: Our first guest in Jonathan Toews who won a gold medal with Canada playing at the World Junior Championships in Vancouver. Have you come down yet from the whirlwind of the World Juniors? JT: Not really. It

Since my comment apparently sparked this pi$$ing match about whether DI hockey is more popular than DI-AA football (I don't believe for a minute that it is), allow me to restate my original point which some apparently missed: UND's DI hockey program attracts more attention worldwide and creates more publicity than any athletic program at NDSU.

You don't need to rephrase anything. All you need to do is answer the simple question I asked.

Face it. We're just no good at reading between the lines. I think IowaBison's message is that because NDSU hired a consultant, UND must take the same approach. Operating under the assumption that NDSU is the best possible model for accomplishing a move to DI, UND can't hope to be successful without mimicking NDSU's process. We're just not smart enough to figure these things out on our own.

Show me where I said UND knew everything. You can't because I didn't say it. That still doesn't answer my question. Read my lips: I'm not saying UND shouldn't hire a consultant. I'm not saying UND will never hire a consultant. I'm asking whether it's likely that a consultant will tell UND something that it didn't tell NDSU and SDSU.

Given the amount of time UND has already spent studying the issue, I don't think four months qualifies as "quick." We'll have to agree to disagree on that point. Red herring. UND's alleged "bashing" of NDSU has nothing to do with how much or how little the university has studied the issue. UND has been studying the DI move to one degree or another ever since NDSU announced that it was serious about making the move itself. You can dispute that until you're blue in the face, but you'll be wrong. You didn't answer my question. Why would what a consultant tells UND be far different from what NDSU's and SDSU's consultants told them? Why should UND hire a consultant to hear what it already knows?

Four months is your definition of "rushing"? Do you work for the NCAA? UND's been studying this issue for the past couple of years. It's not as if there's a lot of new ground to cover. How do you know that UND's not going to hire a consultant? And even if it did, would the consultant's advice be poles apart from what NDSU's and SDSU's consultants told them? What magical solutions does hiring a consultant create?