Bison06

What some UND fans don't seem to understand is that it DOES matter what level a team plays at and it DOES matter what conference they are in. Why you may ask? Because it damn sure matters to recruits. You don't think Central Michigan is at a disadvantage when they recruit against a Big Ten team, even if it is lowly Indiana? BCS conference teams have advantages in recruiting and in athletic budgets. Which means better facilities, better coaches and ultimately better players. Beating a team from an FBS conference is a difficult feat, the numbers bear that out. Beating an FBS team from a BCS conference? Damn near impossible if you look at the numbers.

Listen, those stats I listed aren't my opinion. It is extremely rare and difficult to beat an FBS team. If it were just about scheduling the "easy" ones don't you think everyone would be doing that? So until NDSU does what Appalachian State did, which by the way had never been done before and hasn't been done since, you won't be impressed? Just think how good UND's football program would be if you held your own team to such a high standard. If it isn't a big deal or difficult to do, why hasn't UND been able to accomplish it?

Is that right? Which year would that have happened? Last year? How could you possibly justify such a statement when UND has lost to FBS teams the Gophers would likely beat? I am seriously curious to hear a justification for this.

I haven't contradicted myself at all. You obviously haven't followed FCS football for very long. From 2006-2011 there were 520 FCS vs. FBS games. FCS teams won 37 of those games. This is a 7.1% winning percentage. Over that same time period, NDSU had a 5-3 record against FBS competition. They won 5 of 8 games over that time, a 62.5% winning percentage. 2012 stats aren't included in the above stats but NDSU notched another win this year giving them a 6-3 record against FBS teams since 2006, or a 66.6% winning percentage. So from 2006 to 2011, NDSU accounted for 5 of the 37 FCS vs. FBS matchup wins. That's 13% of all the FCS vs. FBS wins. So given the fact that from 2006-2011 FCS teams have a 7.1% winning percentage over FBS teams while NDSU enjoys a 62.5% winning percentage, I feel confident in saying that I am correct in saying that FBS wins for FCS teams are EXTREMELY RARE. But NDSU seems to buck that trend and IMO would have beaten most if not all of the FBS teams UND has played over the past few years. Feel free to use facts this time if you want to say I am contradicting myself.

I think the problem is a lack of consistency from venue to venue. The Alerus and FargoDome could likely support replays, but smaller stadiums when games are not televised or simulcast would likely need large upgrades in technology to make it work.

Why don't you check the stats on FBS games vs. FCS teams. Regardless of how good an FBS team ends up in their own conference, FBS wins are EXTREMELY RARE. There is no such thing as an FBS cupcake. Has nothing to do with me being an NDSU fan either, they are just so rare that you can't discount them even in the slightest way. Which of the FBS teams that UND has played in the past 4 years wouldn't NDSU have beaten? Texas Tech is likely the only one.

It doesn't take a math major to figure out that a conference as small as the Great West is going to have their conference ranking skewed either too high or too low. If they have one or two teams with a decent ranking it artificially elevates the entire conference. If one or two are really bad they will be skewed in the opposite direction. Larger conferences are buffered from these large swings by having a larger sample size.

We could argue back and forth all day about UND vs. CSU. The fact remains that UND has never beaten an FBS team, so to say that UND would beat Colorado State is a reach to say the least.

UND would likely pound MSU, they are a cellar dweller in the MVFC. Even though they beat NDSU in 2010

Post #398.

Well hell, 7-0 is possible, extremely unlikely, but anything is possible. The last poster said 5-2 is likely, which means a win at Colorado State an FBS school, something UND has never done. Saying that UND wins that game showed his bias. So now using a little smiley emoticon is bashing? Grow some thicker skin my man. I have been on par with what others have said with 3-4 or 4-3. So how do you respond to what I said in an earlier post, that if we are agreeing for the most part that UND would have likely the same record against NDSU's schedule, how can UND fans say NDSU's SOS is poor?

Well, when considering the strength of a conference every team gets included. I don't make the rules.

5-2? You have never won an FBS game, but are willing to predict one to prove your theory? Why is the MVFC routinely rated so highly if they are horrible? Conspiracy?

So 4-3 if UND beats an FBS which they haven't done, or 3-4 if they don't. So you're telling me that UND could likely have a worse record against NDSU's schedule, but UND fans want to have a discussion about how bad our SOS is? Interesting logic.

So if my act is so incredibly old, please enlighten me as to where in my post I said something false. What do you think UND's record would be against NDSU's schedule?

You mean the best rated conference in FCS? http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbc12.htm You need to get your head out of the sand and look at reality. Repeating the Big Sky is the best conference in FCS over and over again doesn't make it true.

What act? Honest question, Do you watch any FCS football outside of the Big Sky?

A zero percent chance that UND only has 2 wins? Now I need to see a game by game analysis because I don't see a guaranteed third win for UND on NDSU's schedule. If you say USD, I would say a win isn't guaranteed against them considering the history in USD vs. UND games. I think against NDSU's schedule, UND still is most likely to be either 3-4 or 4-3. So pretty much the same as they are now. So the discussion of SOS between NDSU and UND is irrelevant because the teams on NDSU's schedule might not be as good as UND's on the whole. But they are still good enough to beat UND.

Your post should be in the dictionary under selective reading. Read the whole sentence.

The question that should be posed is not how NDSU would do against UND's schedule. It's how UND would do against NDSU's schedule. Would UND do better, worse, or the same as NDSU against the same schedule. If you say UND's schedule is tougher, fine, I agree with that. But you lost to most of those teams, so it wouldn't have mattered if you had the SOS of the Minnesota Vikings. SOS is only relevant when you are winning the games when you compare it to someone else's SOS. Like Darell is in this thread. So how about it, how would UND do against NDSU's schedule?

As a general rule, teams that are winning will get the first pick of the litter in recruiting battles. Doesn't mean they get the best players, because recruiting is more art than science, but they get the ones they want which in general means they are better. I understand systems and coaching philosophies play a role in the types of players a team will recruit, but cutting scholarships definitely brings the bad teams up and pulls the good teams back to the pack.

Why is this so hard for you to comprehend? Even with your explanation you are describing a situation that causes a leveling of the playing field. Here is a less complex example. If the FBS decided they would cut scholarships across the board, some guys that would have gone to LSU or Alabama would end up at Minnesota let's say. Would Minnesota have a worse, better, or same chance of beating LSU with players that were in previous years good enough to be on LSU's roster, but due to scholarship cuts ended up at Minnesota. Take the last nine scholarship players off the best teams and they are better than the last nine scholarship teams off of the weaker teams. So you literally take the worst nine scholarship players off of Minnesota's roster and replace them with the worst nine on LSU's roster. Who gets better and who gets worse? Scholarship reductions hurt the best teams the most and at that point in history NDSU was head and shoulders above everyone else.

It's pretty logical to say that was a part of it, but as others have said, football programs are cyclical. Maybe it was just UND's time to shine.

With a simple understanding of arithmetic it really isn't that hard to understand Dave. Someone will have to give specific numbers because I was too young to know what the scholarship limits actually were back then. For the sake of the argument assume that if someone is offered by NDSU they would accept, probably not that far from the truth back then. If everyone has 45 scholarships and they get reduced to 36, there are 9 quality players that in previous years would have been on NDSU's roster that are spread out among the other schools. Also, for the sake of the argument assume that all 9 of those guys that would have gone to NDSU if they had 9 more scholarships end up on the same roster at another school year after year. It would be similar to taking the last 9 guys to be offered a scholarship each year at UND and send them over to SUU or some other conference team. How happy would UND be to do that, especially if you ended up playing against them and they were damn good? College recruiting can be a crapshoot, so even though those 9 might have just missed the cut to get on NDSU's roster they may have turned out to be studs for the other teams. Do this for a few years and it isn't hard to see how this evens the playing field significantly. When I say even the playing field I don't mean in a fair play kind of good way, it evens it in the way that communism evens the playing field, by bringing the best back to the pack. This causes a watering down of the whole division.

I'm sure that's the reason you're angry about it. Nothing to do with it being NDSU I have no doubt.