JohnboyND7

Brookings, now Vermillion and Omaha(if the team is doing well), Tulsa is out of the equation now. If, and only if, the Bison are having a good season, I can drive to games. I have only taken the time to go to Brookings, but with USD and Omaha joining up, if the team is good, I'll make an effort to go watch. I should have phrased it differently, and pointed out that my getting in the car to watch games, I also was including the MVFC football games as well. I tend to look at the Summit/MVFC as the same thing even though they are seperate.

Very poorly put together post, but a post anyway, I have never said I have "moved on." I enjoy when NDSU and UND play against each other in competition, and all the smack talk that goes along with it. I don't really see the point in smacking the Summit for basketball. SDSU gave Baylor a pretty good game. Montana got absolutely demolished by Wisconsin. Neither league is exactly awesome. That is great that UND has had success in hockey. Those are some big-name schools on your list. Newsflash, they aren't big-name schools because they are good at hockey. I notice that when you list the teams UND plays in hockey, you forget to list Bemidji State, St. Cloud St., Duluth, Mankato, Colorado College, and a host of other D-2 or D-3 nobodies. If hockey was nationally big, such as football, and all the big names put teams on the ice, you know darn well that UND would be irrelevant. UND is very good at a sport that is not big outside of a few areas (Northeast, Michigan, Minnesota). It is not stepping up to "play the big boys" when 30-some of the 60 or so teams are D-2 and D-3. Say UND was dominating basketball, baseball, or football, I'd say well done! But hockey...is a different animal to compare things to considering very few division 1 programs play it. Football, is more difficult to be good at. Always has been, always will be, and to those bigger schools you listed, always will be more important. Ask Michigan fans what they love most? Bringing home a football title. Wisconsin more known for the Kohl Center? or Camp Randall? Who is the most famous athlete from Boston College and most loved? Doug Flutie. Competing against a significantly larger playing field makes for a tough time. Competing against the likes of Texas, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, etc. in football is not possible for a school in our area. They have coaches who make more money than our entire football budget has for a season. The fact that Boise State was able to successfully build a team that can occasionally compete with the best teams is impressive, but not everyone can be so fortunate as they have been. So NDSU competes against the likes of Northern Iowa, Montana, Montana St., SDSU, Georgia Southern, etc. because that is how the system is. If you feel the need to smack on the FCS system, maybe you should contact your school administration and ask them to return to Division 2. After all, you seem to care more about hockey. Moving up to Division I about destroyed the University of Northern Colorado's program. Or pull a Nebraska-Omaha and totally drop football, after all, what is the point of playing football if you can't play against Alabama and LSU? This year, now that you ask, I chose not to go to the SDSU game on the road, NDSU's team really faded after Christmas and I didn't feel like wasting money to go see SDSU beat us. I made the trip up to Grand Forks for the basketball game. However, for football, I was able to travel to the SDSU game, and the Minnesota game. This season I will be able to hit up the Colorado State game, the UNI game, and USD game. That means 3 road trips and none of them will be too terribly long.

I am a big Irish fan. Must say I don't know any delusional fans anymore. The delusional ones were the bandwagon ones who stuck around a tad longer because Notre Dame generally rocks at football. But with Notre Dame still being pretty average, the delusional ones are gone. And now it is just to sad people like me left to cry after yet another 5-6 loss season.

You sir, made little-no sense. I'd say NDSU has a kid (football? 9 titles). The Sky is a fine conference, if NDSU wasn't in the Valley/Summit, they'd be in the Sky by now. I for one, enjoy the Valley a lot. The Summit as well. I enjoy being able to get in the car and go watch some games. UND benefitted from going D-1 at a time that the Sky really was looking at expansion. This is obvious by looking at the schools that are going to the Big Sky next year. But hey, tell yourself whatever you have to. Have fun with the nickname stuff. I hear popcorn speculation has prices continuing to rise for awhile longer. Oh, and tell Hakstol thanks, won a bit of cash on his "honor roll" kid this weekend.

Making it best of 3, all on the road, your basically telling the home team, "Hey, as long as you don't totally suck it up, your moving on." 1 game. Make it count. Can you imagine the 1980 Olympics if the US had to play against the Soviets best 2 out of 3? And you realize that football does not use that format. Football says, "You got one game. Let's see who is better." I like it that way. Agree to disagree.

Best of 3 is lame. Gives the better teams too big of an advantage. They already get to play at home...now you want the crappier team to pull off two upsets? That is asking a lot. Now if you want to make it a best of 3 with game 2 being at the lower seeded team, it would be fair. But then you have both teams traveling a lot and taking up time which is also lame. No best of 3.

FCS football will never be what DII is now. DII trashed all the scholarships. They wouldn't do that to FCS. But if they for some reason did, NDSU would again be forced to find a new home for football, and that home would be in a higher division. I'm guessing UND would wait a few years to see NDSU be successful before jumping up. If FCS gets to the point of being a pathetic shell of its former self, the Big Sky will get hit hard too with Montana and Montana State bailing. I hope everything gets worked out and NDSU/UND, and any other school who has some dreams of being at a level they can compete at, can find a steady safe home.

Seems like someone is mad that UND got handled in the playoffs, in the city where the opponent was from.

What is FTA? That sounds like a cool deal.

All I said was I'd imagine hockey isn't getting the ratings lacrosse is providing. If you have two shows, and one of them isn't getting that good of ratings, you take it off the air and put a different show in the timeslot. As I stated, there could be other reasons, but those require people to start looking and different scenarios rather than just the basic reason certain shows are on tv and others are not. And as for the NDSU fans who aren't able to attend games, sucks to be them, better start emailing ESPN now then so by the time football is here, they can watch the game at home. I do believe a lot of places do in fact have espn3. The people I know from places other than North Dakota usually have it or have little trouble finding a bar that has it or ESPNU. Sometimes if you want to see a game of FCS football or NCAA hockey, you are going to have to put in some work to see it. Yeah, it is inconvenient, but it is part of life.

Well just throwing it out there that if you want to watch a game, there is usually a way. You do realize that ESPN is doing what is good for them then, if hockey is so popular, by putting it on ESPN3 or ESPNU. This encourages people to complain to ISP's for ESPN3, and to get ESPNU long term. Maybe UND hockey would get better ratings, but from what I hear and see, it is tough to know considering how popular lacrosse is getting, especially out on the coast. NDSU was screwed out of having a couple games on tv, not like I cared, I live in Fargo and can go to the games if I want. I also am able to travel to away games if I feel a need to. It definitely would blow if they bugged out early on a hockey/football/any sport I follow to go to a lacrosse game...to me, lacrosse is weak and looks like something we'd screw around with in gym class. I could not find any numbers suggesting lacrosse is more popular. I am guessing there is some reason why ESPN would rather have lacrosse on instead of collegiate hockey. Lacrosse getting better numbers is just one theory, the ESPN3/ESPNU effort to get more widespread and using the hockey/fcs to get it more common could make sense as well. Lacrosse is getting big and more widespread now, nothing would surprise me anymore when it comes to it. Maybe don't get so butthurt next time someone makes a comment.

I'd imagine that the regular season lacrosse gets better ratings if it is getting the television time. Either way, it is on ESPN 3 correct? Go watch on that. If you don't have that, go to a bar and they might.

I'll take 'Sota. Unless they can't put that third period behind them from a week ago...but if both teams play normal, 'Sota 2-0 or 2-1.

and 15,000 people who never go to the games to start going regularly....

It'd be pretty dang tough for there to be no one with any Aztec blood. Specially with all the raping and pillaging the Spanish were probably doing.

Plenty of people outside Fargo care. You ever been to the cities the weekend the Bison and the Gophers play in football? All those stores have a ton of crap near the entrance so that they can make some money off of visiting teams fans. I would assume they do that any week they anticipate a lot of fans from an opposing team coming to a game, isn't your final 5 going on in......oh! the Cities! Sioux stuff sells better probably for a variety of reasons. UND fans tend to be fixated on owning as much Sioux stuff as possible. Jerseys, alternate jerseys, etc. Most NDSU people I know, like to have a few different NDSU shirts. UND is popular within the hockey community, so you will see a lot of that around especially if you are somewhere that has hockey there. Honestly, I am not going to care a whole lot as to which team sells more merchandise. As long as the Bison are doing well in sports I'm pretty content.

Well that didn't go too well for them. SDSU really playing Baylor tough. I dig it. Only down 3 with like 12:00 to go.

Did you get dropped on your head as a baby?

Don't say that. Auburn/Alabama is everything that is wrong and right with sports. NDSU/UND while fun, and to be taken seriously, is no Auburn/Bama

Alright. The Curling Championships in North Dakota were the biggest sporting event in North Dakota history. It was WAY bigger than the world junior hockey tournement, on account of it wasn't a JV tourney. It was so big! All the best curling(one of my favorite winter olympic sports) teams from across the world were in North Dakota! It was amazing. And to think, I got to see the Peyton Manning and Tom Brady of curling IN THEIR PRIME. Too bad you could only watch Ovechkin and Crosby in the flesh when they were pretty young. Bison/Sioux game....that is small-minded to think it is a big event for the area and especially inside the state of North Dakota. World Junior Hockey and World Curling Championships should always be in North Dakota! Events of those magnitude (especially the best curling teams in the world coming here) will bring North Dakota the kind of exposure we all could appreciate, right Dave?

You are making the most pointless argument ever. Yes, more people around the world would be interested in the JV hockey tournement. We'll just put it this way....if you ask the people in the area (North Dakota, Minnesota, and maybe even South Dakota) what they'd rather have, the World Juniors or a Bison/Sioux game, most people would take the football game. Who cares what some schmuck in Canada or Sweden thinks is bigger? To the people here, and those are the people whose opinion really matters, they'd love to see a NDSU/UND game when both teams are relevant. Heck, even the people who like watching FCS football would probably love to see the game just because message boards have shown them the amount of bad blood between the fans.

And back then they weren't what they are now. If LeBron James played in some basketball tournement here when he was in high school that doesn't make it the biggest sporting event in the state's history....

By world I presume you mean Norway, Sweden, Finland, western Russia, Czech Republic, Canada, and Northern United States of America. That is hockey. Nothing wrong with being popular in a small population base. I wrestled in high school, that wasn't super popular everywhere either. The only truly worldwide sport is soccer. After that, is basketball, After that, based on population that plays it, probably American football. Considering we have more kids playing football in american high schools than registered hockey players worldwide, at the very least, it is bigger than hockey. No arguing that. Hockey is fun to watch, and I thoroughly enjoy watching my Philly Flyers and my Golden Gophers...hockey is not as big as football. An NDSU/UND football game, is the most important sporting event that North Dakota has.....when UND plays Minnesota in hockey, it is fun for hockey fans. When NDSU and UND play in football, it is fun for everyone. Deal with it. Quit pretending some stupid junior hockey tournement is more important than NDSU/UND football. Would you rather see UND beat NDSU 21-10 in football, or Team USA beat Team Canada 2-1 in hockey....if you'd rather see the second, I question you claiming you are a UND fan.

This is true, though it certainly helps it is in a nice venue compared to the dump that it is the BSA. Though I don't know more than 5-10 people who are NHL fans while I know about a lot more who care about basketball. But yes, you are 100% correct that the Force games are fairly popular around here. I was raised in Colorado Springs, Napoleon and Jamestown. I have left the city limits of Fargo. I wouldn't say it is an odd statement...hockey is big in a select few places. It is very large in Grand Forks. That is just how it goes. If it was big everywhere, you'd see the smaller towns have hockey teams like they do in Minnesota. An NDSU/UND football game would be wayyyy bigger than the ovechkin/crosby showdown.

I was unaware of a Crosby Vs. Ovechkin game. I'm guessing most of the state really didn't know anything about it either. I know it is hard to hear this Dave, but hockey is irrelevant in North Dakota outside of Grand Forks unless it is UND hockey. An NDSU/UND football game would have about 1000x the interest that any non-UND hockey game would ever generate in North Dakota.