Bison06

Have you not read through the thread that got shut down? That's all that was being discussed for about two days on there. Regardless, many, not all of UND fans are predicting NDSU will take major step back under the new leadership and new players.

I find it interesting that regardless of what I say, many people’s first instinct here is to be adversarial. I haven’t said anything controversial or degrading in any way to UND. How about joining in the conversation instead of picking out the one small part of my post that you want to disagree with me about since I have Bison in my name.

You seem to be in the minority on this board by saying that the drop off next year will be minor. Winning a national championship requires many things, one of which is things to fall a little bit your way. If you look back at NDSU’s run here, there were many games that NDSU could have easily lost if things didn’t go just right. Georgia Southern and SDSU come to mind. Because of that, I won’t consider NDSU to have taken a step back unless two things happen. They start losing more than one game to FCS opponents in the regular season and they don’t make it past the quarterfinals. A semifinal loss or a championship game loss to me is consistent with the level of play they’ve had in recent years, depending on how they lose the game of course(close game vs blowout)

So you're predicting a dropoff or no?

Many on this board when referencing the coaching changeover and many seniors graduating. We've both read plenty of those comments here.

I suppose it's the same logic that has UND fans saying that UND will compete regularly with NDSU and for national titles because it happened in the past. None of know how next year will play out, but in my opinion, it is far more likely that NDSU will continue to compete for a Top 5 spot nationally, than it is that they will fall out of the Top 25. I guess we'll see.

I completely understand why you’d take this approach, it’s gotta be frustrating to know there is a school following the exact guidelines your school follows yet gets such superior results. Its much more comforting to chalk it up as everyone on their team is cheaters and everyone on your team is 4.0 students who are in bed by 8 pm after they’ve had their warm milk.

What makes you think that NDSU doesn’t have the Rams to reload like they always do? They haven’t stopped recruiting the position and it’s been the strength of the team every year since the 80’s basically. At one point every single star NDSU has ever had on the O line was unproven. I expect the O line to continue to be the strength of the team given the team’s commitment to recruiting and developing those five positions specifically.

Sincerely, you seem to be pretty knowledgeable about football. Out of curiosity, what is your opinion about this change of regime at NDSU and why you feel it is going to be more challenging than the 2013/2014 regime change? To me, it could go either way, as any coaching and QB change can, but I’m just curious if it’s something specific you’re seeing that suggests this changeover won’t go as smooth as the last one.

Does the NCAA have disclosure mandates similar to the NFL? Not sure if the NFL’s mandates are specifically written as gambling mandates, but we all know why they have such strict policies on reporting their injury reports.

This is the first honest answer about the true motives of this feigned outrage I’ve seen yet. I appreciate your honesty.

I understand why you’d feel that way, my logic does tend to cater to the more intelligent posters here.

That’s a fair criticism, I don’t share your concern, but we understandably come at this topic with different perspectives.

Many have and continue to make that conclusion here. Good on you for being reasonable.

And here I thought I was having a reasonable discussion with adults. Had I know your sole goal was to “get to me” like a petulant child, I would have focused my responses to other more mature posters.

Rumors when a story is ambiguous about the exact details? No problem. Ridiculous logic jumps that infer NDSU hasn’t earned each and every championship by being the best team in the nation by a country mile, I’ll challenge that insane notion every day of the week.

So when did the rest know?

How could you possibly know what they knew and when they knew it? Maybe we know when one of them knew based on previous posts, but when did the rest of them find out?

Maybe, maybe not. In both cases, a reporter is choosing to withhold information they have that the public might be interested in

It’s complete speculation on your part that all of them knew about it. Its not like reporters are taking role call on which players are there and aren’t, there’s a lot of guys on the football team. Maybe only a few noticed he wasn’t there.

I’m not trying to be insulting, but that’s a naive stance to take. Reporters walk this line daily, especially in sports. You’re a reporter that wants to get close to players so they give you good stories so you can do your job well? Good luck if your running articles that the players and coaches are unhappy about. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s business. You think the UND hockey team beat reporter writes articles about every single conversation he hears while on the road and team plane and team bus etc? No chance. He wouldn’t be very welcome by the coaches if he/she did that. It’s not covering it up, it’s just choosing to write about other things.

If everything you are accusing them of is 100% true, then at the absolute worst they sat on in for three days and then asked the coach to publicly address it in the post-game press conference. Not exactly Watergate here. If months went by and some outsider uncovered the story and it came to light that way, yeah that’s a cover-up. But three days and then it gets addressed in no uncertain terms, I’m not seeing the major problem.

As you seem to be aware though, it isn’t always readily available what ingredients are actually in supplements as it is an poorly regulated industry. That said, it’s a player’s responsibility if it goes in his body. My only point is to say that it’s very possible that he had no idea the banned stimulant was even in the supplement.

Back to the point that’s been brought up many times, a press release like that is revealing inside information to an opponent heading into the most important game of the year. All of this can be just as easily explained as a strategic protection of a players playing status as it can be a conspiracy to cover it up. Depending on one’s perspective they will decide for themselves which perspective they choose.

I think this is a perfectly rational and reasonable conclusion to draw from all of this. If you think that NDSU and the Fargo media have a mutually beneficial business relationship that they work to preserve by entering what you may consider a grey area of reporting ethics, then ok. What I take exception with are others on this board who are attempting to conflate that relationship with some master conspiracy and diminish NDSU’s success by assuming the whole team is on steroids.