jdub27

Ballpark around 8,300 tickets sold so far. Not sure how that compares to other weeks but is getting near Weber attendance, which was frankly embarrassing. Need to do better this week. Weather should be helpful and make for a nice tailgating morning.

I openly stated that I don't know what is going on behind the scenes but there is something. You yourself have added to some of the speculation about teams in the MVFC, though I rarely see any links or credible sources to back it up. There are people who post here who know things and have posted comments that it isn't hard to read through the lines on. I feel comfortable with what I know from both on this board and in person. I will absolutely be the first one in line to admit I was 100% completely wrong if the WAC thing happens. I also have with 99.99999% confidence I will never have to worry about that. Not 100% because there is always a change for a seismic shift to come out of nowhere, but there is no chance the scenario plays out like you have described many different times and ways. There is no logic for UND to move to the G5 as it sits, increasing travel budgets to be associated with more schools it has nothing in common with.

Patty V has been publicly and privately saying for years that the MVFC has zero desire to expand and the conversation has been dead in the water. For all of the sudden there to be talk about join dates and exit fees, there has obviously been a significant change behind the scenes the last few months in order for conversations to get this far. Not sure if it is WIU, YSU, MSU or something else, but there is something going on that shifted the MVFC stance. Keep spinning it however you want, you are absolutely wrong on it. I'm not advocating one way or another but whether people are in favor of it or not, it shouldn't exactly be a huge surprise to anyone that as soon as the MVFC became a possibility, UND would explore moving into the Summit/MVFC. The Summit alone was never an option due to the need to protect football which is why after the MVFC made it abundantly clear they weren't looking at moving to 11 and the Big Sky offered, UND took it in a heartbeat. Despite the spin, this isn't UND begging to join Summit or crawling back to the Dakota schools, this is a scenario that has always been on the radar but never previously been an actual possibility. Now that it apparently is, UND is looking into it and with budget issues, it would not be a surprise to see them take it. The benefits to the Summit are obvious, get to 10 teams for basketball and solidify the conference further. Not quiet as clear with the MVFC but there are at least of a few possibilities that have been mentioned multiple times on why they have all of the sudden opened the lines of communication.

Interesting wardrobe choices allowed in the fargodome, especially after the recent request by Bresciani to stop the racist chants.

Just give them time to get over that their games to UND will be a quality loss.

AD's don't go rogue and go deep into conversations with other conferences or buy-out clauses with their current conference without the sign-off of the President.

Must be something in the Fargo media water. Dom and Calilou had the committee chair on this morning and continued the whine-fest. They asked him if he was hearing uproars about the prelim rankings from across the country or just pockets. The response was "very isolated pockets". After he was done, they went into a diatribe about the release and how compared to the FBS process, it is such a joke. Here's a hint, it isn't the same. Accept it for what it is and get over it. The process for the initial release was explained but apparently that isn't good enough. He stated this was preliminary, they haven't met and discussed anything in depth. If you want to argue it was pointless to release it at this point, I have no issue with that. They were trying to be transparent and create discussion. Guessing this is roughly what they do at this time every year, they just made it public this time. Take it for what it is worth and move on. However, instead of doing that, the Fargo media specifically stated on the air that NDSU is ranked where they are because people are tired of them. Not because they lost a home game, have won 2 more in overtime and by admittance of their own fans, haven't been playing all that great and aren't exactly blowing teams out (though admittedly keep winning tough games which is impressive). No, instead they openly stated that the rankings were a conspiracy against NDSU. It is nice to have media that care about FCS but take off your cheerleading outfit when you're pretending to be objective.

But overreacting and folding the tent on the season is so much more fun.

Are you Jeremy Jorgenson? This is about as tactful as he was talking to the head of the playoff committee today. I'll sum it up for anyone who doesn't want to bother to listen: 25 minutes of constant whining about some preliminary polls that were put out to generate discussion. I feel bad for the guy coming on to try to discuss it and he did his best to address questions but his answers weren't going to satisfy the radio hosts regardless of what they said (because obviously NDSU wasn't high enough). Oh and the MVFC is super duper tough (literally mentioned by JJ 3x in 15 seconds) and the Big Sky has an unbalanced schedule. Do I agree with all of the rankings? Probably not. Am I going to flip out, start sending tweets to the guy and claim conspiracy over a preliminary poll. Absolutely not. Win and everything takes care of itself.

From Mick Gary chat: (USD beat writer). No clue what it means but it is something I guess

At this point in time, I don't see one happening without the other. UND won't go independent and the Big Sky isn't all that keen on having another football-only member.

Jacksonville has one loss - LSU by 21. Probably living a little bit off last year's reputation. SHSU hasn't played anyone but they have absolutely destroyed everyone they played. Makes it incredibly tough to actually gauge them. They play #10 later in the year, will be big for both teams. 3 and 4 is a coin flip. JMU seems about right No real issues with Citadel, undefeated, including beating Chattanooga Richmond had a big hiccup against Stony Brook but has a few nice wins since plus the knocked of Virginia. They play JMU this week so one of the two should fall. Chattanooga's only loss is to #6 Charleston Southern lost to NDSU and Florida State and has blown out every other opponent except CCU UCA is a little bit of a head scratcher. Loss against Samford but did beat Arkansas State. Feels like it is pretty tough to gauge exactly what the committee was looking for but my guess is wins definitely carries a lot of weight. The only team that has more than one loss is CSU. Will be interesting to see how (and if) this moves over the next couple of weeks However some of the (over)reactions are definitely amusing.

Probably that tough OOC and overall SOS, though I'd guess that one will be right out the window next year with Mississippi Valley State and Robert Morris on the OOC schedule (literally the worst team in the FCS and the other who ranks 100+ out of 125).

You did so well not trolling recently and then you do something dumb like this. NDSU won in OT at home against EWU (who had a chance to win it at the end of regulation). The game was basically a coin flip. EWU also played without their best player for half of the game and NDSU has lost their best defensive player since. EWU also has a more impressive win (WSU>Iowa) and has arguably been playing better football the last few weeks. I'm not saying that NDSU doesn't have an argument for being above them, but the head to head win was in Fargo, in OT and two months ago and I'm guessing that is the only thing you are looking at when you say it doesn't make sense.

Getting them to agree to any sort of home and home would be an improvement.

I know what people's concern is, I have the same one. I was just pointing out the difference in total number of D-1 games because I think it is a fair point to raise. Since UND has 2 more conference games (meaning UND will always have 1 more guaranteed D-1 home game per year), it gives them 2 less games available to schedule OOC games. They still need to get their money games in plus they still need to bring in some lower level competition because they are good warm-up games and those are pretty much the only games that they are making money on at this point in time. There is a limit to how much you beg and money you can offer teams to Grand Forks. It isn't from lack of trying. You can't force the SD schools to sign home and homes when they only want to offer UND a token amount of money to come there and not return.

UND better get used to it, they unbelievably have the same thing facing them next year.

NDSU has 11 D-1 home games. They had to shell out a bunch of money to try to get a "name" game for the SHAC opener and ended up with Arkansas St. UND has 10 D-1 home games. They had an agreement for one more home game in December and the other team backed out.

Considering that the poll has over 17,000 votes and the typical poll has anywhere from a couple hundred to maybe a couple thousand, I wouldn't put any stock in it. Pretty easy to stuff the "ballot box" on the hose as we saw during the nickname polls.

Western Illinois is broke and working just to keep the doors open. They got outbid by Dayton in last year's first round to play in front of 997 people. No one is concerned about having to travel to Macomb.

Sagarin shows UND as roughly a 7 point favorite and Massey says 5. Both closer than I expected assuming Keaton plays.

But look at all those moral victories and quality losses.

Yeah, totally unarmed and non-violent people who were blocking public roadways and trespassing on private property:

Ball carrier split should depend on what the defense is giving up. For example, Santiago should have had a ton of carries vs. Cal Poly (if he wouldn't have gotten hurt) because they were stuffing the middle, leaving the edges and outside vulnerable, which is right up his wheelhouse. If teams are exposing the middle and keeping the edges under contain, then it makes more sense for Oliveira to get more carries. Needs to be a good mix either way and if you can get Santiago going early, its going to be a long day for the offense. Also Norberg needs some credit and he has done a great job blocking and has been excellent as the upback on the quick handoff up the middle.