jodcon

You're correct, that goes to the winner of the UM-MSU game every year, the "Brawl of the Wild", and it is a big, heavy trophy. I didn't see the last couple BSC trophys, but in the past they have resembled tall stand-up plaques...I think now would be a good time for an upgrade.

It's been poor for a while, it's discouraging to get tickets on the 20 and the student section at the 50 is empty, what a waste.

Maybe a little exaggerated but they shouldn't have to throw a pass all day against Mines, ram it down their throat all day long.

Be a great name for the golf teams tho.

I guess the walleye are really hitting at Devils Lake.

Welcome to the Big Sky Conference all, everybody take a deep breath.

I remember that well...we were driving to the Alerus and I asked my nephew "who are they playing?" and he goes "Sioux Falls, they're an NAIA team, Sioux should kill 'em". Yeah

And it's down to 10 minutes for you guys...

I grew up in central ND and was a Sioux hockey and to a lesser extent football addict growing up, my older brother and his two boys attended UND but I ended up moving to Montana at 17 so I never attended. And you're correct I actually have a daughter who is going to be a junior attending UM right now. I have always followed the hockey team since moving out here but only started following the football team again about 5 or 6 years ago when I happened to be in GF on a couple FB/hockey weekends (unfortunately Sioux Falls was one of the games), so when the offer came from the BSC for me it was the greatest thing in the world because I'm heavily invested (literally) in UM and my boyhood heroes were from UND so it's going to be the best of both worlds.

Ack! Actually that will be a good time, they do a good job on gameday too. I have many, many friends who are Cat fans and we go back and forth, mostly in jest, but as with any fan base there are about a dozen crackhead Cat fans who don't seem to understand that they are only good once every blue moon.

I suppose Bozeman would be the furthest east as far as BSC members, so I'm counting about 2 hours as the official time.

Honestly every UND fan should try to get to Missoula for a game at Wa-Griz Stadium, there isn't any better atmosphere in FCS football than the whole gameday experience there. Tough place to play, but worth the trip regardless of how it goes.

I think the Griz would have given the Bison a better game than SHSU did, they were a little one-dimensional and when NDSU slowed their run way down they were in trouble, After Montana finally figured them out they shut them down the second half, but the damage was already done and they ran out of time. We could have kept NDSU a little more honest on defense with the passing game, but when you give up 300 yards rushing in a half you don't deserve to win so it wasn't to be.

Then they would need bigger logos at the 40's. If that's possible.

As long as Johnson remains on the team and the rest of the offense stays fairly healthy the Griz should have the most dangerous offense in the BSC, they could hang 40 on people pretty consistently with all their weapons. Any questions will be on the defensive side of the ball, aside from a loaded group of LB the defense is a little green, so only time will tell who and how many will step up this year. I would rather not have to win shootout games every week, but with a loaded offense and an inexperienced defense it could come to that. Even so, I feel a lot better going into this season than I have the past two, even though last year ended up being better than expected. Definitely starting to get jacked up for football.

My biggest fear is they try to tie it to the Spirit/Flame program, those would be horrible names.

Only a few on here are downgrading the FCS championship, and mostly to get under the Bison fans skin. When UND gets their first FCS playoff berth everybody will be on board.

If they really do break the remaining D1 schools into 2 levels I would guess they would try to come up with something new for each level, if the second tier remained FCS I don't know what they could call the 3rd tier that would still sound legit. FCS II? Everything I come up with sounds hokey, maybe somebody else has an idea that makes sense.

Maybe they'll go back to 1 AA, then the third tier could be 1 BB, then DII, DIII, NAIA, 9-Man, 6-Man, Collegiate Lingerie League (I could actually live with that one), 6 levels of Intramurals, Under 6' 200Lb. League, Over 180 IQ League... A championship for everybody, let's get those trophy cases full! #watered down

You know nobody is that delusional Alpha.

That is a fact, and this whole thing makes me wonder just how much thought and effort some of these guys put into their votes.

The more I think about it, the more I think that's exactly the case, if 3 of the 28 make the mistake and give us around 60 points it explains the vote both ways, NDSU between that and losing a few spots on each ballot by being idle ends up way down, UND by getting the extra 60 points plus the 76 they were actually supposed to get by playing Fresno tough ends up at 136. Realistically if NDSU has those 60 votes they would be about 10th in a bunched up field, which sounds about right in their bye week, and UND losing those 60 points ends up still 24th in the poll. Now the next week comes along and the 3 voters figure out their mistake, and NDSU shoots back up to where they should be, UND loses those 60 points they shouldn't have had but goes from 76 to 91 points in legit points with a win, which again sounds about right. I would bet money that 3 of the voters screwed up their vote on the Bison's bye week, it all adds up. BUT...UND would have made the poll anyway, so it's really a moot point.

Looking at it objectively NDSU went from 532 points to 359 points despite being idle, while UND went from 0 points to 136 points despite losing (although to an FBS team and playing well). The next week NDSU goes back up to 535 points, UND despite winning goes down to 91 points. I don't know how it happened or why, but you don't lose 173 points on your bye week or go from no points to 136 when you lose and then lose 45 the next week when you win without something being miscounted. I think UND got a good chunk of the votes legit because they played Fresno State tough, but I have a hard time believing that they didn't get at least some of the votes meant for NDSU in that one week, probably 2 or 3 voters made a mistake which cost NDSU between 40 and 60 points. I understand what you're saying WeAreNorthDakota, and I'm not taking their side, but I can't believe that every single one of the voters would drop them 6 or 7 spots just because they were on their bye week, that doesn't happen.

I said as much the first two lines, the line you quoted started "By the end of the year"...that's what I was talking about.

I think there's 2 different issues going on here, the first one is whether UND got some of NDSU's votes during their bye week...I think that happened. The second one is whether or not UND deserved to be in the top 25 at the end of the year because they were still getting some of NDSU's votes...I don't think that happened. By the end of the year the voters knew who NDSU was, they were on a short list of potential FCS champions and were ranked accordingly along with some traditional powers, UND got into the top 25 because...whether you think their schedule was easier than most or not...they finished 8-3 and won their conference. That's probably going to get you into the top 25 in any year. Were they better than most of the 16-25 teams? That's something we'll never know, and neither will the people who vote, they're not going to take the time to analyze things like common opponents and team stats for the last 10 teams in the poll, they'll go more by record and recent performance. In the end, I think the 2 teams were ranked about where they should have been considering their circumstances.