southpaw

It's a shame on that "hit out of bounds." First contact was made before his foot stepped out. The follow through, which was completely legal, carried a yard or two. Bad call.

Anyone going to give the coaches credit for the good defensive play this half? Lots of pressure, two stops and SDSUs only score so far was when they started inside the five. Or is it all negative?

No drops by the receivers... They gotta help out the QBs a ton today.

It would be dumb of Midco to request to be put on a special tier. Despite what some may think, Midco's goal is to be in as many homes as possible. That means trying to be on the basic cable channels. The local cable companies are the ones assigning them to a tier. Midco has no control over that and most likely isn't a fan of it. Midco gets its money regardless if its on a tier or not, they just get more money if its not because then they have more subscribers.

ESPN charges $5.05 per customer to the cable company. Midco sports net would be crazy to charge even half of that. It's not Midco's fault certain cable companies are pricing out their customers.

I enjoy the optimism people are showing here, but I think the team is a year or two away from being really competitive. Hope I'm wrong SDSU 42 UND 31 I see them going 0-3 in these three big games, but would be happy with 1-2 followed by a win in Pocatello to get them to 3-2. They're going to have to win 4 of their last five games to get to 7 wins though.

You keep using the term maximum exposure. Half of the home football games is not maximum exposure. You lose 27,000 POTENTIAL viewers with the current deal. In the past, you lose EVERY viewer when the game isn't even on TV. Exposure has increased with this deal.

There are an estimated 109,000 people living in Fargo. Based on cable subscriber numbers from other cities about 20-25% of a population are cable customers. So that's about 27,000 CableOne subscribers in Fargo. Which is more important? Having three football home games on TV but making sure those 27,000 people can view it? Or having $5 million and all of the football home games, 3 more volleyball games, the same number of men's and women's basketball games and women's hockey games on TV and those 27,000 people have to travel five miles to watch the game?

When UND signed the contract, CableOne and Midco had an agreement in place. That's not the case anymore. When UND signed the contract with Midco, they were increasing the number of games broadcast and the promise of going to HD within three years (they did it after year one). When UND signed the contract they were getting both money and exposure. Blame CableOne and Midco for not renewing their contract, but this is far from UND's fault.

Midco is trying to get into Fargo once the contract with CableOne is up. If Midco gives CableOne their channel, they essentially give away any incentive to switch over to Midco once that move is made. You don't see manufacturers just giving their products to companies to sell so why do you expect something different from TV? CableOne has to buy the channel before they can pass it on to their customers, just like every other business.

This is going to be so nice. Can't wait for the recruiting impact.

Anybody coming to the Idaho State game from GF? We are hoping a kind person would pick us up a grinder kit. We offer many Colorado microbrews in exchange for delivery costs!

Go ask Northern Colorado.

How is it possible for the teams to prove that losses 10 years ago don't affect the teams now? If the teams win, does that mean the "curse" is suddenly over? If a team loses, is it because of the 2003 football team losing in the national championship game? It's not that you aren't toeing the company line... it's that none of what you said actually made sense.

I'm still looking for that FCS link on the front page of ESPN. It takes just as much work to get to the FCS scoreboard as it does to the college hockey page.

Why does it make it tougher? Why does everything UND do have to be compared to NDSU? Why can't UND just focus on building out of the transition. Improving the football team doesn't become a whole lot harder after NDSU beat KState. NDSU is the back-to-back national champions of FCS. Beating KState doesn't suddenly make them any better than the teams of the past two years. UND has done a pretty good job of recruiting the past few years against all of that success of NDSU. Stop comparing UND football to NDSU. Are you going to be on here exclaiming UND's success if the football team does better than NDSU's 3-8 season in their second year of the transition? I doubt it. NDSU in 2013 is not in the same situation as UND in 2013. Stop comparing and start looking for improvement within the program regardless of the success of any school 70, 200 or 1,000 miles away.

So many inaccurate and contradictory points in this post. It's obviously very early in the morning but I'll take a brief stab at at rebuttal: Those teams of the 80's were just as stacked with NHL draft picks and all-star teams as the teams of today. Those teams won national championships because they had the best players in the nation. It was an incredible mix of all stars plus four year players with dedication to UND. You want championship teams like the 80s, but you don't realize that those championships were won because of studs. What does that even mean? These teams happened to play football prior to a championship team? Who is to say that the teams playing right now are not "laying the foundation" for future championship teams? You expect them to win championships NOW but you don't criticize the teams of the late 90's for not actually winning any championships. As to your next point about all of the runner up finishes/close losses. I find it hard to believe that games 8-10 years ago are still having an effect today. How many staff members, players, etc are still even around from some of those losses? Don't try and tell me that a loss in the final stages of D2 is going to carry over 10 years and affect the women's basketball team today. Later on you go to say that you're sick and tired of all of the people showing up to UND hockey games at the Ralph. You whine about UND not getting any favors from the Ralph, especially early on. Ralph Engelstad spent $110+ million on a brand new arena. That increased the capacity from 6,000 to 11,400. That's nearly double the attendance allowed for UND hockey games. How is that not doing a favor to UND or the hockey program? Often "gifts" of that magnitude are going to come with some strings attached. If you truly believe having the Ralph is a hinderence to UND hockey then you don't understand the importance of that building to recruiting, funding and media exposure for UND. The school recently signed a contract with Midco sports net to broadcast all of their home games. Do you think that would have happened in the old Ralph with 6,000 people attending games in an arena that was getting dated? Not very likely. UND could not afford the move to D1 at the time. Regardless of how it turned out for other schools, you can't look back at history and say UND should have moved up when the funding was not there. Hindsight is 20/20 but to sit here and criticize is pointless. UND couldn't afford it so they didn't make the move. After gaining a significant amount of new funding via the new Ralph Engelstad Arena and the popularity of the hockey team, UND moved up to D1. I'm thankful the coaches, players and admin don't believe they are held down by some mystical boundaries that were set by teams 5+ years ago. You say the current UND teams aren't moving on from the losses of 10+ years ago. Why is it just the losses that matter? Do you give the 2000 UND hockey team credit for helping to inspire the three consecutive Broadmoor championships won the by Sioux in the past few years? Maybe they haven't shaken off the D1 transition growing pains becuase these teams are starting their second year of play in the Big Sky following the D1 transition. The NDSU team you glowingly talk about later in your post went 3-8 in their second year of football following the transition. By the way, how many schools would love to have a "homey" little arena that was free to the university and houses both the basketball and volleyball teams? Check out the mighty NDSU and see how all of their success has helped them renovate the BSA. UND had undoubtedly the best team in the nation in 1998. You don't hear about choking and losing the big games in March and April about that team. Things are considerably different than they were in the every other decade of college hockey. Yale just won the national championship. Miami was seconds away from winning it a few years ago. The best team does not always win. The team everyone expected to win does not always do so. UND has had some very good teams but only twice would I say they were the odds-on favorite to win the National Championship. Those excuses you speak of are parts of the game of hockey. How did the LA Kings win the Stanley Cup in 2012? Something called a hot goalie played a major role in that. Please show me this 24/7 coverage by any station in Fargo. NDSU gets some games broadcast on statewide TV, so congrats there's 600,000+ people who could watch a game. I don't see how that helps improve their national presence. UND football and basketball are carried nationally on FCS thanks to Midco Sports Net. The UND hockey team has games broadcast on CBSSN. Yup, UND sporst are invisible. You whine about all these people showing up to UND hockey games and then you go on and on about how UND sports are nonexistent. Got it. How does the destruction of an out of date, never used building crystalize in your mind how far we've fallen? You conveniently forgot to mention the early 90's of UND hockey when things were really bad. When NCAA tournaments were a pipe dream instead of a consistent goal. I'm sure it was just a coincidence that you only picked the winning teams of the end of the D2 era and then compared them to the losing teams of the D1 transition days. There's a huge difference in competition. As I wrote above, UND has played one full season following the D1 transition. The mens' basketball team finished 3rd (and nearly made the championship game) of one of the toughest one-bid leagues in the nation. The hockey team lost to the eventual nataionl champion with a team that was one win away from winning the MacNaughton cup. The football team played arguably the most difficult schedule of all FCS teams last year and was a missed 12-men-on-the-field penalty from finishing the season above .500.

I don't see any UND fans jumping on the bandwagon of NDSU right now. But a lot of us recognize the significance of this win for NDSU, FCS and the state of North Dakota. Regardless of how high and mighty NDSU thinks they may be, UND is going to receive some inadvertent positive press from this win. National outlets are going to confuse the two schools, UND will get credit here and there and it may help some recruiting or growth of the fan base. It's not unrealistic to think the average fan may confuse the two schools when the NCAA does. I cheered my ass of against NDSU tonight but I realize that it's a good win and they did it in impressive fashion. If KState goes on to miss bowl eligibility, we will all question the validity of this win, similar to their previous FBS wins. But until then, it seems like KState should at least be .500 or better.

Lets throw a spotlight on the big ass elephant hanging out 70 miles south. I was pretty impressed with their team tonight. I watched the second half and was cheering for KState but the Bison played well. Brock Jensen led a pretty incredible drive for the win. They're a good team and would be scary to meet this year. I don't think they will cruise to it, but a third straight title is expected. I hope they lose to Ferris State.

Umm... Most people 30 and younger know that crunk does not mean "excited or full of energy." Here is the dictionary definition of the word skeet: a shooting sport in which a clay target is thrown from a trap to simulate the flight of a bird. Try and tell me rappers are talking about shooting clay targets instead of shooting something a bit more inappropriate

You post in a sport where you say you don't post much, you know Valpo isn't a good team, yet you aren't smart enough to realize that a warmup game is a good thing? I find that a bit odd...

Myself, SiouxTupa and one other non-poster (but follower) will be heading out to Pocatello for the Idaho State game in early October. Anybody else making road trips (or just driving across town) to road games this year?

I too am surprised there is no talk about UND's media day in a thread about NDSU. There are the same number of threads on Bisonville about UND's fan day as there are about NDSU's fan day.

I think it's more of a "one of the best" type things. It's tough to compare across conferences. I would be willing to bet that by the time we are a couple games in to Big Sky play, it will be obvious the level of talent of UNDs receivers.

If there are issues with the stream not being solid enough, it's not going to be UND or Midco's fault. That's on Neulion. Just like with live streaming on America One (formerly b2), UND sends one game feed (likely three stream qualities) to the Neulion servers. Then Neulion is responsible for hosting all of the traffic that logs in to watch the games.