fightingsioux4life

And competing will require having more than one big time donor. The Engelstad family is stepping up, but we need to court other potential donors (former players, successful alums who love UND and its programs). NIL is the biggest financial challenge we've ever faced.

This is great news. But we must broaden our donor base. We can't keep relying on one donor.

Little of both.

Anyone else a little concerned about the relative silence on this thread?

Where are you getting this? Please don't say Judy's Tavern.

The position closes at 11:55pm today: https://careers.und.edu/jobs/associate-head-coach-men-s-hockey-grand-forks-north-dakota-united-states So I imagine an announcement will be coming tomorrow sometime.

Several unheralded guys were key players on the 2016 team.

Can we just focus on the guys that want to be here? I honestly don't care who said what to whom about whomever.

Blais almost always got the most out of what he had to work with.

Gopher hockey fans pull that card whenever they lose a recruiting battle for a Minnesota kid.

I wish I could upvote this more than once. 😁

I for one am anxious to put the chaos and dysfunction behind us and focus on the future.

Hang in there. Mankato would make a great replacement for Miami when they leave (which is only a matter of time).

It's hard to distinguish between the true stuff and the b.s.

A lot of people didn't understand the post.

How many of those people care about hockey? How many of those people even know their alma mater sponsors hockey? We have always had to go up against bigger schools with bigger enrollment and larger numbers of alumni. This is just another challenge for us to overcome. We can either 1) Rise up to meet it or 2) Give up and don't even try. I'm choosing #1.

We're waiting.

Enough of the market size b.s. Reaching out to alumni and former players goes far beyond the city limits of Grand Forks. These are people who love UND and love the program just as much, if not more, than the people here. But you have to reach out to them and court them. Explain how crucial this is to the future health and success of the program and I think they'll respond big time. But it won't happen organically.

-First he needs to finish filling out his staff. -Then he has to plug all the holes in the roster. -Then he has to make sure our verbal commits don't leave us. I agree with you 100% on more effort and energy being needed with NIL from everyone. But Jax hasn't been on the job for even one month yet. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will the 1883 Collective.

I agree with you for once. The team goes winless and he's suing on Title 9 grounds? This case is DOA.

The one in Florida, right? 😝

This is a pet peeve of mine. Everytime someone portals from one place to another, immediately people start throwing around six and seven figure numbers without any credible proof to back it up. Does anyone really believe that USD football players were getting seven figures apiece to portal out? If they were that good, they wouldn't have ended up in Vermillion in the first place.

Our NIL efforts have been too little and too late so far. If we can get our act together, I think we'll have another card we can play in situations like that. UND simply cannot allow itself to be dragged down to mid-major status in hockey. It would drag the entire athletic department down into a black hole from which there would be no escape. We need to get our crap together and do it quickly. Bring back the swagger.

Isn't this the same coach that finished his last season winless?

BU has no football and is low level mid major in BB. So based on your criteria, they don't belong on your own list. Denver has more Nattys than any of those "big time" schools you mentioned. The national championship has been dominated by either 1) small private schools or 2) non P4 schools since realignment in 2013. UND has always been at a disadvantage when it comes to media market size, population base, enrollment, alumni base and so on. And yet, REA is full of green and white banners. It's time to get our swagger back and stop looking for straw men to blame for our problems.