jdub27

The article from the blog is from recently. The information they are using to cite a Summit site visit and base their claims off of is from 2010 (which UND eventually canceled due to being accepted into the Big Sky).

They might be cut but it will have nothing to do with the WAC, which I want to point out requires men's soccer and baseball. Pretty bold strategy for UND to cut baseball if a move to the WAC was imminent. It is almost like Ed Schafer wasn't aware of this whole WAC thing.

If S&D is safe, soccer would likely be the only other one possibly on the block until any final decisions are made on conference affiliations. Tennis is required by the Big Sky, so they are safe unless UND moves Olympic sports to the Summit. On top of that, I'd be surprised if they cut two women's sports and no men's sports, especially due to participation numbers and scholarships given out. I still don't think this is enough and guessing there is some final decisions hinging on conference affiliations.

Since I already gave my thoughts on a couple of the recommendations, I'll finish out with the list: • Increase ticket prices by 25 percent across all sports for which tickets are required. - 25% is a little steep but ticket prices haven't increased much recently and I was surprised there wasn't any bump this year with season tickets. Season hockey tickets only cost $420/seat before donation so increasing by 25% move the price to $525. Increases in football, MBB, WBB and whatever else would be pretty minimal but you also need to be careful when raising prices without a strong demand. The big caveat with this one is whether it includes Champions Club donations or just the ticket price, which would make a huge difference. • Increase the distribution of ticket revenue from 48 percent to 60 percent. - Not sure exactly how this contract is worded, but I actually do think that if possible, this is something that should be looked in to. I believe that UND contracts with one of the REA entities for this. • Reduce the number of complimentary tickets. - Seems logical on the surface without actually knowing how many tickets are being comped. Likely will make a minimal impact though depending on the scenario could end in a few negatives. • Restructure the agreements with the Ralph Engelstad Arena and the Alerus Center. - Likely easier said than done with the Alerus Center, which I think is already pretty UND friendly to begin with, especially considering the amount of time UND actually uses it. The REA is a whole separate issue and my feeling is that any gains now come at the expense of gains when UND eventually takes it over. Doesn't mean there isn't some middle ground to help out right now but likely more complex than just "restructuring". • Add scholarships to fully fund each sport at the allotment of scholarships permitted by NCAA. - A recommendation to actually increase expenses instead of cut them. By my rough count, this would require UND to add ~25 scholarships on the men's side and ~15 on the women's side (plus FCOA as well). I actually agree with the general theory behind this but it should be done only after they have cut a handful of sports. Cut the operating expenses and move the scholarships over. If they did follow through I'm sure that imbalance wouldn't cause any Title IX angst. • Keep all 20 sports. - I've already said my piece. What a punt.

The Herald actually listed it as "Increase direct institutional support for UND athletics by no more than $7.3 million" which I take to mean as they are suggesting to double institutional support. State funding is being cut, so the increased institutional support will have to come from somewhere within UND (aka the academic side). I don't see that flying. Edit - If it is as Brad described, the Herald worded it poorly (big surprise!) and they must have meant they recommended leaving the institutional support the same as it was despite the state budget cuts. Point still stands about it not flying real well since it would have to come from the academic side. They also recommended increasing student fee for athletics from $10.69 per credit hour to $14.50 per credit hour which is a 35% increase. That would increase student fees to around $4.4 million (~$1.2 million increase). Student fees are high enough right now, no need to increase them further. If Kennedy follows through on these to the extent recommended without cutting anything on the expense side, UND would, and should, get skewered.

Christian Rozeboom's mentions (Though not lakes that I saw, he's busy commenting on GF Herald's facebook page instead. No seriously...)

Two separate issues. Mixed opinion on whether it was dirty or not. The linebackers only other choice was to let go with how he slid down the ball carrier and was about to break free while he was still moving forward. However, regardless of what your feelings on the play, it doesn't excuse adults for sending messages directly to student athletes calling them names and using hashtags like #bounty.

Anderson

Their recommendations are not realistic and because of that, they failed to do what they were asked. I'm not sure how a reasonable person can say that providing unattainable solutions instead of addressing the underlying issue is them somehow doing the job they were tasked with. They complained about not having a say the first go-around and when getting what they demanded, they decided they didn't want blood on their hands. That's their prerogative but don't act surprised when people call it for what it is.

Directed at the linebacker who took down their running back with an ankle tackle. Unfortunate play but the defender did what any other player in the situation would do.

They should be more concerned about the adults in their fanbase who send tweets directly at opposing student athletes for making plays that they are bitter about after losing.

The IAC publicly spoke out about not being included in the discussion when baseball and golf were cut. Kennedy gave them what they wanted this time and they pull this BS. By their own doing, they have completely relegated themselves as pointless. My gut feel is that there were some personal feelings getting in the way of some of the members on making a decision so they punted. Sports will be cut but now some of them think they will be able to sleep better at night taking the cowardly way out. There are cuts that can be made regardless of what conference UND is in. I wouldn't feel good if I was currently one of those sports.

Going to be a perfect day to tailgate. Get out, enjoy the beautiful weather, eat, drink and they go yell loud.

Get there early, walk around and you won't be disappointed or hungry. Stop and say hi to any group and you'll be taken care of.

I agree with this 100%. However it is a completely different argument than what was trying to be made. The athletic department is claiming all of its expenses, it just isn't allocating them internally the way they should be. That has zero effect on the actual budget issue itself, which is what the FargoU fan was trying to claim. It finally got to the point where it forced their hand, though it was explored on how to get through it without cutting any sports (because that sucks to do), but someone finally put their foot down and is doing what is best for the long-term.

Two different things. I have no disagreement that within the athletic department, they need to figure out how they are allocating certain expenses. However that is much different than the shell game that bison73 keeps trolling about yet giving no details on for the last how many months. How UND is accounting for things doesn't effect the athletic budget, just individual programs, which isn't the issue at hand. All expenses that should be attributed to the athletic department are within the athletic department (and I'd probably argue more so because of funds paid to the REA, though that should eventually shake out in the end). Now if UND was running athletic expenses through their dining or housing services and not properly allocating them to athletics, that would be an actual shell game that has an impact, but that isn't what is going on. At least in Grand Forks.

What shell game? All expenses are accounted for within the athletic department, exactly where they should be. A shell game would have them running funds through other departments within UND. It can easily be argued that sport specific accounting needs improvement, but that has zero effect on the athletic budget. The cuts are related to state mandated cuts and a tuition cap that caused a prefixed deficit. I'm confused where you get that they aren't trying to increase revenues? There are two sides to the budget equation, both are being worked on. Only one of them can have a direct, immediate impact and makes for good headlines. But keep spinning your vague conspiracy theories. The timelines of what had caused this, when and how it was handled have all been laid out multiple times. But since you seem to be an expert, are you finally going to actually spell something specific out instead of continuing to claim things that have zero relation to actual events are somehow tied together?

How was this unimaginable? It should have been done a decade ago and there are people within UND who stated at the time of the D-1 move that it was only a matter of time. What is almost more unimaginable is that it took this long. There are a lot of innocent programs, coaches and students who's programs bring in no revenue and cost a significant amount on the expense side (and for the record I enjoy watching many of these programs compete). Besides cuts, how else is there any possible way to balance the budget? Spread resources even more thin? State funding has been chopped so that isn't an option. The non-revenue sports are going to magically start producing revenue. Cutting the budget is the only viable alternative. I won't argue that I have disagreed with some of the decisions that have been made, processes used to come up with them and who has been effected, but there are reasons those decisions were made even though I don't agree with them. Communicating those a little more clear would helps things as well. It seems you are projecting a lot of anger and blame on someone who is finally standing up, cleaning up a mess long in the making and facing tough decisions that need to be made to make the remaining programs stronger. I'd love if UND could sponsor even more sports than they already do, providing limitless opportunities for student athletes. Unfortunately that is not a reality because that requires a lot of money that is not available. Based on current realities, UND needs to figure out what it is going to sponsor and properly fund those programs. I'm happy to see it appears that is exactly what they are working on doing.

If anyone is confused this round of cuts are being handled the way they are, with the input from the IAC and presentations, this article from April gives you your answer. It also says quite a bit about how some of the faculty views athletics. There was no way the administration was going to do it the same way Schafer did it, especially with Kennedy wanting to get off on the right foot with the faculty, many of who already have doubts about him due to not being "academia". That being said, you'd think a group who wanted to be part of the decision making process would at least have a clue on the subject matter, which did not appear to be the case at all.

Considering it gives out ~60 scholarships and has far and away the most participants, of course it is going to have high expenses, that is just simple math. It also actually brings in some revenue unlike the majority of other sports (both on ticket sales and donations). Its tough to say exactly where it falls because some sports aren't being charged the proper expenses.

WS&D offers a max of 14 scholarships. I'm not sure how close "close enough is" (MIH is 18) and the only real way to find out is when you get named in a lawsuit. I also don't know how or if the "facilities" portion would play in to anything but the Hyslop would need some updates if they wanted to do more than just pay lip service to it. I know the facilities themselves have had a few things done but I would guess the locker room/student athlete areas are not where they need to be.

I don't think its really a one or the other answer, but yes, percentiles play a part. I mean there around 50 schools who spend $20 million on football so there is no way that you can even come close to balancing that out on the women's side but if you can show you fund some or all women's sports at the top when compared to peers, than that is where the "tiering" defense or explanation comes in. Facilities play some part as well but there is so much gray area and everything so subjective, that some schools take it too far trying to be in compliance, which is where I believe UND is currently at. And yes, fully agree on your last part. Don't mistake my explanations for defending the decisions being made at UND. I'm just trying to help with some of the explanation because as others have noted, UND isn't doing itself any favors in the transparency department on the reason for some decisions being made. I know that it isn't black and white and there is a lot of subjectivity and I am positive that people may not agree with them or why they were made but at least presenting some of the reasoning would be more helpful than giving no explanations.

Both of them would require around $2 million.

Because this made me laugh, I looked it up. Due to small number of teams, UND would have to be pretty much at the top and would cost roughly $300-400K to get there. Red Ray could definitely provide some home lane advantage. Side note - Vanderbilt spent $700K on women's bowling in 2014!!

I don't believe there is any sort of distinction with FCS and FBS, it is all D1 so they manage to not run into any issues. Also, I don't think UND has any desire to use them as a barometer for compliance. This is my interpretation as well. I think the bigger issue is that UND is low to mid in funding in all of its sports except men's hockey. Because it is an outlier and so high on the men's side, there needs to be proportional offset on the women's side. They have chose to use women's hockey as that offset. They don't have to. Without looking, I would feel pretty comfortable saying that all of their sports are supported in the top 10-15% of D1. Again, UND has one huge outlier in MIH that falls way out of the norm compared to the rest of its sports. Because of the huge difference, there needs to be an offset. Zero disagreements with either of these comments. I'm not sure why it isn't being explained better but really seems to make things worse. Again, the tiering thing is by no means the only thing that is being considered but from what I've been told, it plays a part and is likely the reason women's hockey wasn't even listed as being considered. Don't agree with it and still think their budget can be trimmed with no issues. Tennis would be around $700K more (note that the current budget is around $200K). S&D would be around $850K more.