jdub27

Guessing the 4th year was the compromise for a lower salary (or at least slightly lower than I expected), which wouldn't be the first time that trade-off has been made. Wondering if there are any bonus clauses for league championships or NCAA tournament appearances or any buyout clauses for either Jones or UND. Hopefully the increase in the assistant salary pool was a meaningful bump. Some stability there, especially with current staff, would be a welcome change.

I actually thought about them, but they are full-fledged members of the WAC, so doubt they would be able to pull their baseball team out of there to be an affiliate elsewhere. I mean, he managed to get Oral Roberts to come back, why stray from a strategy that worked last time?

I'm not certain they do, but at one point they were interested (desperate?) for an affiliate home in the Summit before they ended up in the WAC. There just aren't a lot of great options.

You actually need 7 full D-1 schools for a multi-sport conference. I agree, the Summit will do whatever it needs to do to maintain the autobids, even though it may involve taking steps that no one wants to through invites or affiliates that aren't exactly desirable. However at this point in time, UND restarting baseball is an absolutely non-starter. They would undoubtedly have to bring back another women's sports and those two things aren't happening after they just got done revamping the budget to a place they can operate efficiently and effectively at. The only thing that would even remotely change it would be if the OCR's report came back stating that men's athletics were being under-represented to the point that another sport should be offered and I don't see that being the case. I really hope Douple is on the phone with UNC finally asking if they would like to be affiliates for baseball. I don't know enough about soccer programs in the Midwest to know who would be a good choice for an affiliate. Convince SIU-E to change its affiliation from the MAC to the Summit? See if the Air Force Academy is interested in being the same conference as Denver rather than that WAC?

There has been rumblings about NMSU looking at the Summit (and Big Sky) for well over a year now. They aren't exactly thrilled with who they are associated with in the WAC. They help with the baseball problem, but not the soccer problem and are out of the geographic footprint. On the other hand, they are a land and space grant school, which is a positive.

Well, at least you can tell UND's is a hawk and it didn't need to come with a breakdown of what the logo actually was/represented....

I also recall you saying there was absolutely zero chance of UND joining the Summit/MVFC because they were going to the WAC despite people telling you they were actively pursuing it. IUPUI had a men's soccer team, which now puts both soccer and baseball at the bare minimum of schools that sponsor the sport. Those are the two sports that keep the league's autobids alive. I still can't tell if Douple is capable or lucky, seems like a nice enough guy but does little to instill confidence. Past actions aren't exactly comforting either.

A big, key difference: Easton Stick is from Omaha. Rutgers is in New Jersey and garbage. If Stick had turned down the in-state P5 school (Nebraska), I'd consider it a lot more comparable. Regardless, appears to be a talented kid. Obviously no one here knows why Iowa and ISU apparently cooled on him, but whatever it might have been looks like it could be NDSU's gain.

Clearly Kennedy (on the job for just over a year) and Sheila Stearns (current UM Interim President for the last 6 months) must have realized that people were on to the plan to move Montana to the Summit so they had Faison and Haslam slap together a contract for 7-8 years down the road to throw everyone off. For the record, I'm not saying something like this can't or won't happen (in fact I'd love if it did), I'm saying that there is currently no grand master plan to make it happen as we sit today. UND moving to the Summit/MVFC wasn't part of any greater plan than to reunite with the other Dakota schools and cut travel costs.

He actually does in this instance because they've already went through it once with baseball: The Summit was at 6 teams in 2013 but one of them was Omaha, who was not considered a full D-1 member, meaning they were really at 5. Oakland left after the 2014 season, so they were down to 5 (4 counters), making 2014 the second season the Summit was below the 6 eligible team threshold. Oral Roberts came back in 2015, putting them at 6 (5 counters) and the Summit received a waiver for the 2015 season as they had a plan to get back to the minimum of 6 (Omaha finally became eligible in 2016).

It seems a little bit gray but my interpretation is that in order to be eligible for automatic bids, a conference has to be considered a core conference, which requires it to be a multisport conference. There would obviously be waivers and extensions, but if a conference can't meet the definition, then it would seem at some point, they no longer would qualifying for the automatic bids.

If the other schools are added as affiliate members for hockey, wouldn't that cover it? I didn't see if there was a requirement for how many full members have to sponsor a sport, though I wouldn't be surprised if there was one. After IUPUI leaves, the Summit will have 6 soccer teams, but only 5 of them are full members (EIU as an affiliate), thus still in compliance.

Per the NCAA Manual: A conference that doesn't have football must sponsor at least two team sports, excluding basketball, in order to be considered an eligible conference and auto bids to national tournaments. Currently the Summit maintains its autobid on the men's side by sponsoring Soccer and Baseball. I would not be surprised to see UNC finally get accepted as an affiliate member for baseball if they are not looked at for a full time membership. This is were Douple dropped the ball big time a few years ago. Not sure if it would have saved UND baseball, but it definitely wouldn't have hurt their case.

They would have had to have been changed in 2015/16 or 2016/17 and there was no compelling reason to change them and even then, require 2/3's to go along with it. Unless you can actually provide hard proof, than there is zero reason to believe they changed. I also feel like any change would have been reported somewhere or at least on an agenda and would have been mentioned.

You're going to need to come up with a new theory that excludes the timeline you previously provided. Unless something changed in the last two years (which would require a 2/3's vote), that information is wrong. There is absolutely no distinction between the time periods for Olympic sports and football. From the 2014-2015 Big Sky Constitution:

It wasn't UND's choice to wait that long to join the MVFC, it was the MVFC. UND wanted to join both at the same time but for various reasons, they were denied. FOIA emails published by the Herald verify this ss UND was pushing to get in sooner. The Big Sky threw UND a lifeline by giving them a two year scheduling alliance. I've never seen a different requirements for different sports, can you provide a link to that? UND will not technically be a member of the Big Sky for football next year, so I'm pretty sure your info is wrong. The Big Sky had a right to charge an exit fee but since UND acted in good faith and kept them in the loop, it was waived as their entry contract stated it would be.

Both schools along with UNI had stopped recruiting him.

I believe the only two that had UND offers were Enz from Wisconsin and Ogbu from Bismarck.

Can we just have a moderator check the IP's and end this stupid charade?

UND wanted to sign a home/home. What they were offering UND as "pay" to play a one time game in Brookings wasn't worth it.

No, the numbers show he actually does worse with the exact same team in front of him....

You've been waiting how long to let that out......? No one in Grand Forks is selling this game as anything but a body bag game while I seem to remember the Fargo media pumping up Valpo like they were the next coming because they were a "D-1" team. But regardless, you obsession is amusing to the rest of us.

At this point, it becomes the developer's risk, though I would guess you'll find a little bit of crossover. They are the one's putting their money on the line, not the voters, who actually come out slightly ahead since they don't have to pay for the Park District to keep up the lot now.

I agree. Glad to see common sense win out on this one. I wonder how many of the "yes" votes could have told you where Arbor Park actually was a month or two ago, let alone today.