Charger

How do Div. I-A schools average only 80 scholarships for men when they give out 85 for football only? Is that suppose to be Div. I-AA or is it a collection of all DI schools, no matter their football designation? Also are DI-AA non scholarship programs involved in the Average Expense category?

Or just think of the media market that Denver could offer. Does anyone have the numbers for how many houses FSSN reaches. Denver makes since for the Big Sky, UND not so much. I think that UND will eventually be in the Mid-Con.... If they are lucky. I don't think they would get into the Big Sky without NDSU. A travel partner makes going to the Dakotas a lot more do-able, but I still do not think the the Big Sky members sees the advantage of expanding to the Dakotas.

That stills covers a pretty small market. Only seven communities in Minnesota? I just do not think that FSSN is that big of an asset.

Do you guys know where FSSN actually broadcast? I live in South Dakota, but I don't get the channel. I have a feeling it doesn't cover as much area as you like to think. Does the Big Sky really care if they can broadcast to most of North Dakota and parts of South Dakota and Minnesota. I don't think so. UNC was added because they get broadcasted in a major metro area. FSSN doesn't cover anything close to a major metro area. Good luck with the BSC membership.

SDSU has increased their budget from $4.3 million while in D2 to over $6.5 million (last years numbers) and I assume it is higher this year, and it will be higher next year. South Dakota has also lowered out of state tuition starting next year. This will mean our scholarship dollars will go ever further. Education is also cheaper in SD, so although we do not use as much of our budget for scholarships as other schools we could still have just as many scholarships. Now UNC on the other hand only has a budget of S4.87 million and they are a year ahead of us. By the end of the transition we will have a large enough budget to be successful at the DI-AA level ($2.5-$3 million more by your estimates). Does anyone exactly how much of the UND budget is used for hockey? You guys already have a $10 million dollar budget, but I'm guessing 1/3 to 1/2 of that goes towards mens and womens hockey.

As an SDSU fan I do not care if UND goes DI if it helps us secure a conference. I think that your facilities are great, but I'm not sure your men's basketball team would ever be a huge draw with hockey going on at the same time. Football would probably be competitive as well as Women's basketball. It will all come down to money and if you can raise enough to make the move. I realize you guys already have a large athletic budget, but hockey takes it's fair share of that. Still, I expect you will make the decision to move up this Spring. I'm not sure how getting into the BSC would work however with you guys being a couple years behind us in the transition. We would be in a much better situation if you guys had moved up at the same time.

Luckily real coaches are thinking about it and scheduling games. If coaches are scheduling the Jacks in the first year of transition, when we don't belong to a conference, they will definately schedule us in the future. Here's the Jacks DI opponets so far next year: Men's BB Nov. 19, at Butler Nov. 27, at Manhattan Dec. 1, at Wisconsin-Milwaukee Dec. 4, at SE Missouri St. Dec. 11, at Denver Dec, 22, at Tennessee State Jan. 3, at San Diego St. Jan. 17, at UMKC Jan. 29, at Arkansas St. That's nine games, plus I think there's a tournament.

Nope. You've been wrong before with your great sources, so I have no reason to believe this. I'll believe it when I see it in the headlines. I have just as much, if not more inside info then you legend, so I'm not worried. You're right Corella I don't know about baseball, but my personal opinion is that it's not going anywhere. Maybe they'll surprise me, I don't know. As far as football though, State isn't going to drop football.

I don't think SDSU is going to drop baseball. In all the reports and plans for the move to DI, baseball is included. I don't think they'll add scholarships or anything, but I think it will stay around. I think other sports like tennis or swimming would be cut before baseball. USD dropped their program because they were in a lot of problems with title 9 and finances in general. Us dropping football is crazy. Did you hear that from the same person that said AJ was going to Mankato and taking players with him? That was a from a "very very reliable source", right Legend?

What does USD dropping baseball have to do with SDSU ans their success at DI. Unlike USD we have alumni that donate to our sports programs. This might actually be a good thing for SDSU, because the state is being forced to raise student fees for USD, so the same should happen at SDSU. I guess I don't see the corelation between a different school with different administrators and their inability to run an athletic department and SDSU's success at DI, but hey why don't you show me the way.

Don't teams in the Patriot League offer some kind of scholarships. I think they offer money, but they call it a different name. I'm pretty sure I saw a thread about this on anygivensaturday.com.

I have heard that the reason that Southern Illinois didn't host a playoff game was because of finances rather than their performance on the field. I believe thir AD didn't think they could afford it. I'm not sure how they drew a seeded team in the first round though.

I personally don't think the SDSU-USD football rivalry is as important as NDSU-UND. The SDSU-USD basketball rivalry is more important. Usually Augie is the football school and USD is the basketball school, so we have rivalries with them in their respective sports. If you look at attendance, it really doesn't go up that much when we play USD in football. I think it's a bigger deal for USD than it is for SDSU, but they still seem to think we need that game and if we want to play them, we need to come to the Dakota Dome with a "sack of money" as their radio broadcasters said. Good Luck.

There is no way enough NCC teams will move up to make a conference. UND is the only other team that should even think about it. I don't think the other NCC schools have the funding, facilities, or support to make it work.

One more thing. The poster on themat.com that goes by the alias "nccfan" is actually a usd fan. He tried the same thing on the SDSU board and was discovered. His opinions mean nothing..... like most things that come out of Vermillion.

The BOR has given SDSU the go ahead to do whatever they want with athletics. They have full trust in Dr. Oien and President Miller and know they will do what's best for the school. I wish they would have announced they were going DI earlier as well so we could be further in our conference talks, but I think they are still progressing very well. It will be interesting to see if they are admitted to a conference before 2004.

This isn't any new news. I'm still very confident SDSU can find a conference in time. The Mid-Con recently appointed a new commisioner, so talks may start up with them now. There is also some uncertainty with the transition period until the NCAA meets this summer. Finding a conference was known to be the biggest hurdle from the start, that doesn't mean SDSU isn't moving up. I think this is just wishful thinking.

Do you guys know if there is a minimum size the ice has to be in NCAA hockey?

If SDSU was considering playing hockey in SF I would not be for it. I don't like the idea of a team playing their home games an hour away from campus. We would still run into many of the problems I listed for USD, scheduling of the arena, marketing, and beating out the Stampede for patrons. Of course we wouldn't have to play all of our games in SF since Brookings has a rink that opened last year that holds 2500+. The fact that we have a rink already makes a huge difference though. You cut out most of the overhead cost which takes away much of the risk. I would still rather have the athletic department focus on basketball and moving up to DI. So I guess I would actually be against a hockey team at this time unless there was significant demand for it, which I haven't seen. Brookings is the best hockey town in South Dakota, hands down, and there is talk of us getting a MNJHL team, perhaps a farm team to the Stampede. If that team faired well for a couple of seasons then I would look at adding a college team. I don't mind a team from USD or SDSU playing a couple of games in SF, but not the majority of them. I know USD is trying to offset SDSU getting more fans from the SF area, but I honestly don't think the hockey team is going to fair to well. The Stampede has a larger following than the Sky Force at the time because they are winning. The Sky Force had a horrible season, and the Stampede have been the most successful USHL expansion team. They made the playoffs their first year of playing. When the Sky Force are doing well they will attract more fans. As much as I wish South Dakota could have a hockey team like UND, it's not going to happen. Atleast not at this time. If youth hockey and the overall popularity of the sport continues to grow in South Dakota, a team could be very successful in the future.

I don't know if I agree with that. The Stampede has excelent marketing in Sioux Falls, and many people still think it's a semi pro team (shows what most of SF knows about hockey). I also do not think you would get much for alumni at the games. I don't think they would be more inclined to come than the general public just because the team has USD on their jerseys. Hockey was not part of their college life and unless they are hockey fans they would not be inclined to go to games. An average attendance of 6000 would never happen, especially if the Stampede were still around. They only way they would draw even close to the Stampede numbers is if the Stampede left SF and it was the only hockey team at the arena, and with the success the Stampede has had, I don't see them moving on. If USD did add hockey it would be a flop. I've lived in SD my whole life and played youth hockey for 13 years, and it's just not very popular here.

I don't know if I would really call SF and Vermillion rivals because of USD and Auggie. Augustana doesn't exactly have a strong following in SF and they don't have a hockey team, so I wouldn't see this as being a problem.

Does anybody know what the average attendance for Stampede games are?