KSSioux

Friday: Boeser Saturday: Luke Johnson

I will echo a particular poster that a bird logo will be a bad idea and another form of hawk, such as a plane is the only thing that will give the least resistance from the fan base. No form of a hawk is the state bird (see meadowlark) and "hawks" are not unique to North Dakota. If you can possibly do what the nickname committee failed miserably at in "uniqueness" you may be looked at positively.

Friday - Poolman Saturday - Chyzyk

Luke Johnson

I see no need to change the name of the site. It is not affiliated with the school, so there is no issue, and it fits the historical aspect of continuation of the name. You could have a blurb below the title to state that it is about the UND Fighting Hawks.

Austin Poganski

Boeser

Well, if I can guess what is going to happen based on the politics that Kelley has used in this, just wait for Friday (likely afternoon, but anytime of day will let him escape). He will say there is a major outcry and he will return to the original plans. He did this with the "North Dakota" option, as I never did think he was going to add it to the list. That is unless he really wants "Fighting Hawks", and this gave him the perfect opportunity to virtually guarantee that unless there is a great increase in voters due to this debacle. I would love this to bump up the voters, which could cause his plans to backfire if he leaves it at three, but do not think the odds are with that option.

You really do not get it do you. I was predicting what Kelley would say why he did this. Please take your sarcasm elsewhere. I am the probably the most against "participation" awards as you can get. My comments were about how pathetic president Kelley was in this and my prediction was correct. Please attack someone else.

My point was the lack of participation and the closeness of the 2 vs. 3 vote and I was predicting why Kelley did that. Please look at the just added justification and see that I am right in my prediction. I do not want participation, just a real majority vote to win. Please stop degrading people, especially if they are right in their prediction.

I had posted earlier regarding the likely low voter turnout and it was pathetic, at less than 25000. That is how Fighting Hawks made the top, and any of the five would not have surprised me. To change the rules midstream does not surprise me as well, although the closeness of the 2 vs. 3 makes it hard for them to not go with three, especially since Nodaks was the 3rd.

Poolman

I have no arguments with you or JDubs statements, but just wanted to state what Illinois argued was their reasoning. I had friends who went to Illinois that laughed about what they did to the NCAA. In fact, please look up that they have used Chief Illiniwek in homecoming parades since this decision and the NCAA has looked the other direction. I am sure the university would say that they did not approve of it, but it was used in a university sanctioned event. I wanted to point out that they are very different from Utah, as the Piute tribe gave them approval to use Utes.

Actually there was no Illini tribe at all, which is why they got a pass from the NCAA because they could not get acceptance from them since they did not exist and argued that Illini was "all Illinois people". The NCAA said fine as long as you get rid of Chief Illiniwek we will take you off the list. I personally hated that decision since there were a group of Representatives who was going to introduce a bill which would have likely stopped all of this PC nonsense at the very beginning. Just making sure the facts are out there.

It has been interesting to see the comments in this category around their nickname choices, but I want to switch gears to see what people think regarding the voting numbers. We already know that there are just over 80000 eligible voters. I had guessed 75-100K so I hit that close. My issues are what people may think will be the percentages, and actual voters, on the first ballot. Here is my guess without putting the names attached to avoid that criticism. This is just about the vote total. I will give my reasoning afterwards. I think there will be 40000 voters. Nickname A: 27% Nickname B: 24% Nickname C: 20% Nickname D: 16% Nickname E: 13% I personally think 40000 is a generous number and would not be surprised to see 28-30K due to apathy regarding the drop of the "no nickname" option. Obviously, I feel none of the existing nickname options will get close to 50%, and I think the top two put together will barely eclipse that total. This means that there will be less then 2000 votes separating the #1 from #2 and #2 from #3. This should send shivers up the back of any person that is extremely attached to any of the names, as I feel any of the names could end up in the final two. I have my guess what the final two will be, and based on that I believe the second round of voting will actually have as many, if not a higher total voter count than the first round. There is no stipulation that you must vote in the first round to vote in the second round. What bothers me is that decisions that were made have created more apathy to vote than the nicknames being so good to get a high voter turnout. I know this will be spun like this was not a big issue to the fans by the media, but that is not the case and this is why this process has been so bad. I hope the media reports on this and actually gets voter opinions and actually numbers to back them up.

Goon got the statement from a NCAA spokesman and Pete Johnson with UND admin verified. There is no reason to waive anything in the agreement, because not having a nickname met the requirement, unlike what some folks had been pushing. The reason for this all along is because the NCAA has nothing in their bylaws requiring a member university to have a nickname. This is all moot now because it is not an option.

It has been quoted a couple of times from a NCAA spokesman. That was made pretty clear already.

I am not sure why people do not understand the NCAA must also comply with the settlement agreement. This is a legal document and not a NCAA document. It was stated that not having a nickname would have complied. There is no "partial" compliance or gray area of this agreement, which again is a legal document that the courts said the NCAA must comply with. They stated that no nickname, just remaining North Dakota was compliance. Period. If the NCAA tried to sanction North Dakota based on public speech, I would have been willing to deal with that. I know we are now voting for a new nickname, but there have been a lot of people not honest about the "No nickname" issue.

I am not advocating what this fellow is doing, but what you stated cannot be backed up with anything but the fellows statement. The agreement is a document that must be followed by UND and the NCAA. That is the law, not NCAA conjecture. Not choosing a nickname would have met the requirements, since the NCAA does not have any requirements that a school must have a nickname. As far as the complaint issue, the NCAA has no current grounds to sanction UND since they would have met the requirements of the agreement. Please give me their current guidelines about fans speech that would have backed up this fellows statement. I will save you time, because I have looked, and it does not exist. You can make the same statement about them possibly sanctioning UND if people continue to wear Sioux gear and yell "Sioux" when the new nickname is decided. That does not have standing either, but is just fearmongering. This should have been explained quickly, but I do not feel the administration wanted to, and the Almuni Administration has just been hands off in this whole process (other than information for voter id), which is also sad.

I love how you "conjecture". Did I state anywhere in my statement about not voting for Rough Riders or Roughriders. I did not, but wanted to make clear that "Fighting", or even another adjective (hopefully with some support from a majority) could be added to NoDaks. It was stated pretty clear in this process that the names could be adjusted in that way if necessary. As far as on front of jerseys, in some cases North was on top of Dakota (especially in basketball, also in hockey in the 90's), and Rough Riders would not work that way. It could be scripted across in some jerseys, I will agree, but it has its limitations that way.

It can be added to NoDaks once it is selected and it goes to the marketing firm for logo, imaging, etc. These names can be adjusted like that. Yes "Fighting" was added to the Sioux name, but you would get arguments exactly when that happened. Just like Sioux was used you would see "NoDaks" on jerseys and not the word "Fighting". One thing some of the "Rida" supporters on here will not mention is how the name would actually work on Jerseys. It would make it a must to use a logo, like it or not, as Roughrider or Rough Rider (you do not know which you are voting for do you) would be too long to use on a jersey. If a name was used it would likely be "Rider", or shortened some other way if put on a jersey.

Actually, based on the talk of the people on this site in accordance with what they believe regarding what will get us sanctioned, Tomek's helmet would put us in that category. And yes, if a goalie put the Brien logo on his helmet, that would be an issue. I do not have a problem with his helmet, I just do not like hypocrisy.

I find it interesting that folks are talking about feathers on logos being not acceptable, with some of the same people using scare tactics, but have been silent about Tomek's helmet. Have these same people not seen his new helmet design? I am not voting for Fighting Hawks, but it will be sad to see what the designs actually are if we try to make everyone happy.

Poolman

Wayne, hit the nail on the head as far as why I am choosing NoDak's. It has been used previously, has history beyond the other ridiculous options. Any of the nicknames left can be used as a "slur" to the university in some way, and it is the most unique, workable option left for me. I would hope those that wanted the "North Dakota" option left on the table would hop on this band wagon. My opinion is it is the best choice we have.