Bison06

Absolutely. I’m not sure what the end result looks like, but as it currently stands, I believe it’s extremely unfair to college athletes. Where I see issues potentially is in recruiting. If a player has value and can profit from his own likeness, I’m not sure how you would police local businesses hiring athletes as spokespeople as a way to sweeten the pot in a recruiting. The capitalist in me says if a business thinks a kid brings their business value and wants to pay him, then have at it. But I see it potentially becoming a problem too.

I used to fall mostly on your side of the discussion, but now find myself advocating more for the student-athletes rights. Most people who haven’t been NCAA student-athletes don’t understand the extent to which the university you play for and/or the NCAA truly own your name and likeness. Sure, we all see the high profile cases where the university is making millions off of an individual eg. free publicity gained from an athlete winning the heisman. But what they don’t see are the simple examples. Say a UND player is from a small town and has made a name for himself and wants to run a camp with their name attached to it in their home town. They can’t. Another example, I worked at a bar to make money while playing college football. One day I showed up and they wanted to take pictures of me interacting with the bar patrons for a new menu, they wanted to pay me a few hundred bucks for my time and to use my likeness moving forward. This is an NCAA violation under the current rules and I would have had my scholarship revoked for profiting from my likeness. These smaller examples is where I really side with the student athlete.

Lol

We’re all still waiting on that NCAA investigation into the lack of institutional control.

I have no idea where Hedberg or any other NDSU coach falls in the grand scheme of things, but if getting coaching jobs was strictly merit based in the NFL, there would be a very different crop of coaches.

I think your take is right on. Football is a team game and none of the three phases of the game compete in a vacuum. The goal of the game is to win, not to break offensive output records. I think a lot of the griping about conservative play-calling from many of the NDSU OC’s over the years has been unwarranted as it’s NDSU’s plan heading into most games. Shorten the game by keeping the ball in our hands. Wear out a defense by letting our Oline grind them for three quarters so they are worn out in the fourth. It isn’t a coincidence that NDSU always seems to win the fourth quarter, they design it that way and are committed to it. Clearly it’s worked out for them.

Actually, the talk in this thread about differences in personnel between the two defenses is spot on. Mr. Holinka is likely very well aware of the current conversations surrounding the defense and is downplaying the differences between the two. Savvy media comments. The two fronts are very different, much more than just standing up or putting his hand on the ground. 3-4 defenses require your nose to be responsible for two gaps vs one. Without a Haloti Ngata type at the nose that can absolutely manhandle the center and requiring a double team on nearly every play, the defense is vulnerable. Point is, they are very different fronts and require very different recruiting, IMO. Mr. Holinka clearly knows this and I'm sure will do a great job recruiting the players that best fit his defense.

I agree with you and others who have said that a defense can be successful regardless of the scheme, but I lean your way on recruiting for each scheme being different. It seems like the 3-4 requires a few players on the defense to be a very specific type of player to be successful. Nose tackle has to be an absolute dude and your outside backers have to be a very specific hybrid of pass rushing/coverage players to be great. (Terrell Suggs, Jerry Hughes types) A player with linebacker hips and d end pass rushing skills is hard to find at the FCS level. The 4-3 scheme seems a bit more flexible with different types of athletes.

This is a thread about FCS playoffs, if you’re not interested then why read it?

That’s interesting, NDSU opened as a slight favorite correct? I wouldn’t be surprised if JMU ended up as slight favorites given they are the more experienced team.

I agree, JMUs defense is solid. Athletes at every level. They are one of a few teams at the FCS level that I believe likely has equal if not better players than NDSU at many positions. We’ll need to play our best game of the year to beat them I believe. This is the first year it’ll be on ABC, really good for FCS I believe. Hopefully it’s a great game and continues to introduce new fans to FCS football.

In other news...back to playoff discussion. I’ve been looking forward to this matchup and hoping it would be in Frisco all year. JMU is damn good, well coached and has incredibly talented players at every position group. NDSU will certainly have its hands full. What concerns me about this game is some of the little things NDSU seems to have become slightly less disciplined with this year. As a fan, I need a larger sample size to determine if it’s the youth of our group or simply a more undisciplined version of NDSU under our new coaching staff, but the penalties and missed tackles that have become more common this year I think may bite us when playing a team as great as JMU. Seems like a toss up on paper so I’ll pick an NDSU win in a surprisingly high scoring affair, relatively speaking. I’ll go with 31-27 NDSU, but I would be hard pressed to put a large sum of money on that one.

Yeah, that’s when it got inappropriate, lol.

Go ahead and post pictures of yourself so we can marvel in the physique of a the man who is calling other people out for being out of shape.

Haha, yeah I realize that, but you’d be surprised at the amount of fans that go that have no affiliation to either team and just want to experience the whole thing. Thought maybe you’d been to the game since you were talking about the stadium.

The stadium and setup in the city are almost perfect for this type of game. im not sure if you’ve ever been down for one of the games, but if If you’ve ever experienced it my guess is you’d be more than fine with the game staying in Frisco indefinitely. I’ve been twice and can’t imagine a different venue or town being able to match the game day experience that Frisco can offer the FCS championship.

Read a few of his quotes, he seems to have the competitive spirit you look for out of your QB. I didn't get a chance to see your young QB play this year that had you all pretty excited(Schuster?), but I wouldn't be surprised if this new guy is your starter day 1 next fall.

All of that being said, if I was a UND fan, I would be very excited about your QB recruit. He looks like the real deal, big body, looks to have a hell of an arm. Nice pick up pulling him from an FBS program.

I don't think it's necessarily better or worse I suppose. I guess I always look at recruiting classes the same way. Fun to get excited about the potential, but until they prove it at the college level, I don't put too much stock in it. Some of the recruits in the past I was the most excited about ended up hardly seeing the field and some of the biggest contributors have been guys I didn't even know were on campus because they were walk-ons. Signing days are mostly PR, nobody is going to do a press conference and say "We were really disappointed with a few guys we missed on, but I guess these guys will have to do". You have to give it 2-3 years before you decide if the recruiting class is a good class in my book.

I don't follow recruiting as close as I used to, but just out of curiosity, what makes you say that?

Sad that people like this exist. This kid is making incredibly difficult decisions about where to move, which adult males(coaches) he would like to be mentored by and where to get his degree from for the next 4/5 years. This decision will literally inform the rest of his life and idiots like this think it's JUST about winning football games. Comments like this only make a kid say, "Thank God I didn't go there, their fans are a-holes". I know he isn't representative of the majority of alums from my alma mater, but it's still embarrassing when they are associated with the school I love.

That money won’t feel like a demotion.

His body is in front, but working really hard to take an objective view I’d say the ball is directly over the yard line.(hard to say for sure as we don’t have the angle directly down the line). Receiver catches/drops the ball also what looks like to be directly over that same yard marker or very slightly behind. My take is they got it wrong. But, it’s one of those calls that due to the limitations of the views was likely going to stay with whatever they called on the field. Refs should have just let it play out and reviewed it, there wouldn’t have been anything concrete to overturn it and the Redbirds would have 6/7 on the board. Hate to see the stripes miss these big ones, but it does happen. As others have said, just because this play got messed up, doesn’t mean it cost ISU the game. Certainly makes the game a lot closer, but doesn’t change the fact that they still would have been down. Impossible to know how the rest of the game plays out. Clearly I’m a homer so can’t be completely objective, I also have to say that, however unlikely due to the fact that the runner had a blocker, Trey did have an angle and is quite fast. He may have been able to tackle the guy if the whistle hadn’t blown. Maaaaybe.

Fair enough, there are equal numbers of NDSU alumni in ND and Minnesota. Given that, wouldn't it be fair to assume that an equal amount of ND and Minnesota people are following and watching NDSU football? So in regards to watching them on TV, why wouldn't you consider those fans who live in Minnesota, who happen to live outside of the Fargo/Moorhead metro as part of NDSU's following?

Much isn't exactly an absolute term. Much means much, many, a lot, an abundance. I never claimed it was all or even a majority. Much of Minnesota follows NDSU football, not sure where the controversy lies here.