Jayson Hajdu

Let me begin by saying I admire and appreciate your passion for our women's hockey program. I cannot argue your opinion that the program does not receive adequate coverage because, well, it's your opinion. I can, however, address a number of inaccuracies that may be driving your opinion. Regarding media relations coverage, we sent the exact same* coverage team to the women's hockey regionals as we did to the men's hockey regionals: the SID assigned to that sport, as well as new media director Matt Schill. They provided pre-game, in-game and post-game coverage as we would for a men's game. Additionally, we provided live radio coverage of both the women's regional and conference tournaments, the only visiting team to do so at either tournament. *We did have an intern at the men's regionals to assist us, but he paid his own way, on his own accord, to Grand Rapids. Now, regarding administrative support. Athletics director Brian Faison attended both women's tournaments. Faculty athletics representative Sue Jeno attended both women's tournaments. President Kelley attended the WCHA tournament, but was not able to attend the regional tournament because he needed to be in Bismarck in order to attend the legislative hearings. I'm sure you can appreciate that the president of a University has considerable obligations besides athletics. As for me, I also had other obligations that prevented me from attending either women's tournament. I am the primary media relations contact for our men's hockey program. As such, my job was to staff the men's hockey games during both of those weekends, including a conference playoff series. We can't all be everywhere, so we must assign various responsibilities to other members of our department. Media relations duties for women's hockey are in the very capable hands of assistant media relations director Derek Koenen, and have been for five years now. You seem to be rather preoccupied with me in particular, and with my support (or lack thereof) of the women's hockey program, which is curious considering we've never met (I can only assume we've never met, because you've never attempted to voice your concerns under your real name). But I'll humor you anyway: *My first full-time job in the UND Athletics department was as the women's hockey program's first media relations director. I was the program's primary media relations contact from its inception in 2002-03 through the 2007-08 season. Because there were only two full-time SIDs on staff from 2005-08, I did have to delegate many day-to-day responsibilities to a graduate assistant during those years, but I still stayed as heavily involved as possible. *When I was appointed director of media relations in 2008-09, I lobbied Mr. Faison to add a full-time position to the media relations staff. My primary reason? So both the men's and women's hockey programs could have a full-time SID assigned to them. This would allow for more balanced coverage, plus we could also send an SID on the road for every women's hockey road trip. Mr. Faison agreed, and we've had Derek Koenen on board ever since. *Since 2008-09, we have made two other significant changes allowing for greater women's hockey exposure. First, we began including the women's hockey program in our annual preseason media luncheon. What used to be the annual UND Men's Hockey Media Day Luncheon is now the UND Hockey Media Day Luncheon. Additionally, we began including women's hockey in our weekly Wednesday press conferences. In the past, these weekly press conferences had featured only men's hockey. These have since grown to also include men's and women's basketball on a regular basis. Again, your passion for our women's hockey program is admirable, and I take no issue with you wanting the absolute best for the program. In that regard, I wish there were more like you. What I do take issue with is you (incorrectly) throwing my co-workers under the bus. Please, have your facts straight before doing so. To a far lesser extent, I take issue with you questioning my own professional and personal commitment to our women's hockey program. I addressed the professional earlier in this post; from a personal standpoint, I have had great attachment to the program since the very day it was born. I go to as many home games as I can. Unfortunately, these opportunities are few and far between. During their WCHA tournament, I was glued to the webcast in the press box in Mankato, while half a dozen men's players huddled around me. During their regional game, I was again preoccupied by the webcast while trying to prepare the REA press box for a men's home playoff game. To this day, I keep in regular contact with many alums of the women's program, including several who were on that very first 2002-03 team. A former member of the coaching staff was in my wedding. The fact that my own job responsibilities prevent me from attending more women's hockey games does not diminish my affection for that program. Make no mistake: men's hockey is the engine that drives UND Athletics. This is true in terms of revenue, web hits, media coverage, newspaper readership, ticket sales and just about any other indicator or measure available. Virtually every college athletic department has a signature program and ours is no different. We do not have unlimited resources, so we do have to take this into consideration when strategizing coverage for our sports. That is a reality of college athletics. That being said, I'm tremendously proud of our women's hockey coverage and the gains we have been able to make over the past decade. Coach Idalski and his staff and players have provided us with an elite program. We will continue to strive to provide them with the best possible coverage.

Seriously, that was the maybe worst day possible (in my world) for that to happen. Ended up curled up in the fetal position under my desk until some co-workers came to the rescue.

If you, or any fan for that matter, has any concerns or issues related to athletics media relations, you are more than welcome to address me directly either on this board or via email at jayson.hajdu@athletics.und.edu. I'm not hard to find.

This complaint came up on Twitter last night, too. Commercial breaks, be it TV or radio, are predetermined. They are scheduled according to the official media timeouts on the ice, which are mandated by league rules. These are taken at the same time of every period of every game, and the rules surrounding these breaks are not flexible. Not to mention neither Midco nor Clear Channel are privy to when a coach may or may not substitute their players. We're looking for something that's not here, folks.

I'm not aware of any. Then again, I don't visit opposing message boards, so there very will could be. I enjoy interacting here. I've been a reader of the board for years but didn't start actively posting until the past year or two. It's a very engaged portion of our fan base, so I think it's important to contribute frequently to help answer questions, clear up misconceptions, take feedback, etc.

Saturday's game will be on DirecTV 626, according to information we received from FOX College Sports on Wednesday. No word yet on a potential Sunday game being picked up by DTV.

It has happened at least a handful of times, for sure in Houghton, Fairbanks and Anchorage, but I too would be interested to know exactly how many. You're right -- maybe a postseason summer project for an intern. Numbers are usually quite a bit higher when it's a non-TV game, but this past weekend completely blew away anything we've ever had for a regular season series, TV or no TV.

We had nearly 5,000 people -- a record 4,833 to be exact -- on the live chat Saturday night. We receive literally dozens of comments per minute on a slow night. We cannot accept all of them, let alone read all of them. You're reading into something that's not there.

For the record, I believe I've blocked three people from the chats in four years: two were obvious trolls, and one was trying to post racially-based comments. If Schlossman wants me to block him, he can try his luck by taking cheap shots at the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

"Two Princes" was their best work, IMO.

Oh, how I wish this was actually true

The doubleheaders (of which there will be 3-4) will all be on Fridays, but single games will be a mix of Fridays and Saturdays.

Yes, they were on the website via Cover It Live, much like our game chats. We'll definitely be sure to give advance notice here, as well as on Twitter. Here is a link to the last one we did (crap, it's been three years?), to give you an idea of the topics covered. Brian even broke some news at the end of the chat (MBB scheduling NDSU), if I remember correctly: http://www.undsports...409&SPSID=58715

We've done a live chat or two in the past with Brian -- typically in the summers -- and those did pretty strong traffic and seemed to be well received. We will definitely look at doing another one this year, just no guarantees it will happen until closer to spring. As I'm sure you can imagine, things get awfully hectic for everyone around here as playoffs draw closer for various sports.

While I have an understanding of our media contracts, I have neither been involved with the negotiations, nor I have a gone through the NCHC television contract with a fine-tooth comb. That will have to wait until after the season for me. But Frozen4Sioux is correct: there are some details I am simply not at liberty to discuss publicly, which I indicated in an earlier post. That goes for all workings of our department, not just the league's television contract.

It was in reference to the last line of his post, in which he's pretty clearly making a judgement on an individual based on just one of many measures. It's moot anyway, because I'm done feeding that particular troll unless he has something constructive to bring to the discussion like the rest of you have. Let's get this thing back on track; hopefully that explanation from Matt Schill soothes some of the concerns about webcast quality going forward.

I have no idea what the future holds for Midco, but they've certainly been rather aggressive to date, including accelerating the timeline for their HD conversion.

http://www.undsports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=13500&ATCLID=205670698&SPID=6409&SPSID=58715 And yes, I can confirm that we have neither finalized the remaining funding, nor have we completed construction of the facility, in the 22 weeks since this landmark announcement was made.

You're measuring the success of UND Athletics not by wins, championships, stable conference affiliation, a successfully completed DI transition, record-breaking GPAs, Olympic and professional athletes, an indoor practice facility, or record annual giving, but by whether or not John Buccigross re-tweets a UND hockey highlight?

I asked Matt Schill, who oversees all of our multimedia efforts, to give me a nuts-and-bolts response to those of you who are concerned about the quality of our webcasts going forward. Here is what he put together: We currently stream at a 640x360 pixels with a constant video bit rate of 800 kbps. Meaning if your connection is less than 800 (or you’re using wireless, or have multiple browser windows open using bandwidth), the stream will not be constant. The help desk and the FAQ on our site offers tips to improve the broadcast if you are having trouble: http://www.undsports.com//CreateTicket.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=13500 With an HD stream, we’d upload at 1280x720 with a variable 3,000 kbps bit rate. Meaning that stream will adjust to your connection speed. Higher end internet connections can watch in the full HD, or if you’re stuck in a hotel with poor wireless, the stream will optimize for you. Fans got a taste of it a future UND video portal with the volleyball team played at Texas A&M (http://www.aggieathletics.com/mediaPortal/player.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=27300) Regarding servers, UND’s video and website partner is Neulion, which operates the NHL Game Center, NFL, NBA and many other groups and colleges including Nebraska, Oregon, Duke and North Dakota. Its servers can handle it. I haven’t heard a ton of negative feedback this year. Neulion handles most of it, but it definitely seems less than previous years. We also aren’t streaming a majority of our sports anymore. Maybe the negative commenters figured it out or stopped trying. I also can’t speak to “it’s only UND that has problems.” If they have specific examples, we can dig into what happened or is happening. Otherwise the help desk (http://www.undsports.com//CreateTicket.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=13500) is the best source. And in many cases, even though a person doesn't want to hear that it must be on their end, it usually is. Matt

As it relates to this discussion, it would seem our fans "need" to watch UND hockey but "want" to watch every game on television.

Not an irritant at all. We do understand the frustration and we're all just trying to make the best of a different situation. I would hope everyone keeps this in mind with regard to this (or any) situation: you aren't privy to all of the information behind the scenes. This is why I plead for patience. We ARE going to explore all options for regaining our national television exposure. We ARE going to do everything we can to offer high-quality webcasts. Some of the things we are doing can be discussed publicly, but many of them cannot, and I hope everyone understands this. I've now worked for seven (full time or interim) athletics directors in my 18 years at UND. So I believe I've been through and seen enough to tell you that your current athletics director is an outstanding one. He has put together an administration that a) is highly competent and b) does, in fact, care about the needs and wants of the fans. So, please, I urge you to let this play out. In the end, we may not get you everything you want, but we'll do our damndest to get you everything you need.

This is correct. Webcast would be your only option in this case.

I am a sucker for alliteration.

I've asked my right-hand man, Matt Schill, to put together a response for those of you concerned about webcast quality going forward. He speaks the language, I don't.