GFG

Johns Hopkins endowment is over $3.4billion. Big, but still pales in comparison to Northwestern's $10.20billion endowment. I've never understood why Northwestern hasn't started up a hockey team. They have the money and are in the backyard of a community who currently has a thriving hockey fanbase in Chicago. Illinois is also around #6 in the country in amount of collegiate hockey players. It's just crazy to me that they haven't done it.

Very good article on the downfall of Wisconsin and what's going on with the program. In my opinion, a lot of similarity to Minnesota, minus the recruiting part. Well worth the read. http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/on-thin-ice-once-a-college-hockey-powerhouse-the-faltering/article_cbf81599-fdbb-5453-85f3-b00373c39715.html

Literally nobody I would never go to the tournament in Detroit. Planned on never going right from the start

I think some of it has to do with whatever their deal is with the X. They were much cheaper in Detroit last year.

I'll never succumb to the darkness!

How many schools in the MVC have large enough stadiums and enough sports to move FBS? A lot of those schools probably couldn't do it if they haven't been preparing for the possibility. Why double travel for a worse conference? Because FBS automatically gets you guaranteed money from the CFB Playoff, a conference TV deal that brings in tons of money, increased exposure for the university, local P5 games, etc. Minnesota has been playing a Group of 5 non-conference road game almost every year, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility at all for them to come to UND on a home and home. The potential money to be made by moving up is much, much more than what's possible at the FCS level. Why do you think so many schools have either been moving up or wanting to move up in recent years? It's also why no schools want to drop down to FCS. They would lose A LOT of money. Money rules college sports

I would be ecstatic for those prices

I would jump at that price for sure. B1G is a lot higher. $80 for upper level $80 for lower level corners $150 for lower level between the blue lines $180 for club level Edit: Single game tickets for the Championship game start at $40 a piece

That would be nice...I'm either scalping for the B1G or just watching at one of the bars. I'm not paying the prices they want for an empty arena.

At this point I think it's safe to say the B1G will be involved if it happens. They're the one conference that's brought it up. With that being said, I would bet money that it's with the WCHA if it happens. Financially the NCHC would make sense, but I don't think they'd do it. They're set on making their own brand. So I would bet money on the WCHA/B1G and I'm assuming they would have a contract that benefits both conferences to get each of them larger profits. The B1G couldn't screw them over because if it was a screwjob the WCHA wouldn't be dumb enough to sign the contract.

Idaho has until like May 4th or something to accept their Big Sky invite. No idea on NMSU

There are no conference games in early October, so you wouldn't be waiting around. Conference games don't start until the football regular season is over. That's fine if you don't want to be in the conference, but originally the 'games not on Fri-Sat' argument is what you were making and it wouldn't affect UND at all.

Now cross-reference all of those with football games and other home events, like basketball. All of Michigan States were because of football and all of them were non-conference games, meaning UND wouldn't have been affected if it were a conference game. PSU-SLU was also football, meaning once again that UND wouldn't have been affected at all since conference games haven't started. PSU-Mich was Thursday so they could travel to Madison Square Garden for Saturday's game, so it was agreed upon by both schools. Michigan-Ohio State agreed to the Sunday game for a home and home series with a day of travel. Both teams also have basketball games Saturday, so having the game Sunday allows both schools to market that to their fan bases as their rivalry and not have any other sports to compete with. Michigan-Wisconsin on Thursday December 12...that doesn't make much sense since Minnesota played at Michigan on Saturday December 12th... Basically, UND wouldn't have been affected by any of it. Not once.

I'm not sure why they would say that because it's simply not true. The B1G doesn't do many random day games. Obviously much less than the east coast schools. Of course game times differ because of the time zones, but other than that I don't understand their complaints unless it was more directed at not knowing which channel the games are on since they are on multiple channels now instead of just FSN. I know that's one of the big complaints, too. But my comment was directed at SiouxKid for saying he didn't want UND playing in the B1G because he didn't want to play a bunch of Thursday and Sunday games or whatever, which just isn't true. It's a rare occurrence to play on those days.

I'd love to see this happen, and I think this is the only way you would see it happen. The Montana's, Dakota's etc. going together. I wonder how long it would take for the talks to fruition...I would assume at least a year or 2? Your guesses?

Wow...this could set up for an extremely interesting time for UND football...if they have the opportunity I'd say they have to do it. It will cost more money, but they'll bring in more money with TV deals, P5 games, increased exposure etc. It'll definitely bring more fans to games...worth the risk for UND, IMO.

So basically they're saying that the Big Sky can cut itself to 6 teams, like UND, Montana, Montana State, Idaho and 2 others and go to FBS as long as they use the Big Sky conference name?

With the info that's out there right now it's not a huge issue. It's beyond stupid of the kid and makes both himself (after previously seeing his tweets, it doesn't surprise me at all) and the university look bad, but it doesn't appear that there's anything illegal like rape or sexual assault. He's just one of the most unintelligent athletes I've ever seen on Twitter and I'm surprised nobody ever questioned how he even got into the school if they ever read his tweets.

Honestly, it very well could be. When you're down near the bottom it's extremely easy to move up and down, especially with a win like that. It's fairly easy to move around in the PWR until you start to reach right around #12 and above. Once you get there it's difficult to start moving up because all teams have solid numbers and are usually winning more often than not.

Minnesota had 1..I repeat, ONE game on Thursday this year, and it was last week against Michigan. They had 2 others that were out of their control in the North Star Cup on Sunday and SCSU on Sunday because they had a home football game against Wisconsin on Saturday, making it nearly impossible to have a hockey game that day. That's something they did during home football games while they were in the WCHA, too. You completely blow it out of proportion. Either Minnesota agreed to have the Michigan series on Thursday and Friday to have both games televised by BTN, or else there were other events in the area Saturday (Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championships) that they didn't want to compete with, which is also a strong possibility. The NCHC has had some Thursday games this year, too. Denver and CC just had one two weeks ago, so it's not a B1G thing. Sorry for the rant, it's just a tiring thing to hear when it's almost completely not true.

They'll keep it highly secret until some form of announcement is made if something is actually going. Those were very nice...here's a post from one of the architects in 2008 on that, though: " My name is Lonnie Laffen and my firm - JLG Architects completed the Athletics Facilities Master Plan for UND. The current plan allots space for a new football stadium back on campus at a future time when the Alerus Center can no longer meet the needs of UND's Football program (20 years?). The plan allows for a new stadium of 25,000 seats with a retractable roof. The recently completed parking facility and a matching counterpart would be directly linked by skywalk. The master plan saves and integrates the existing Memorial Stadium seating section into the new stadium " http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/2008/01/forget-all-of-those-pretty-pictures.html Edit: Looks like the retractable roof stadium is the only major project left on the list according to the master facilities plan. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would have a very hard time being convinced by anyone that their master plan is a 25,000 seat retractable roof stadium with plans to stay in the FCS. http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/2007/12/und-is-planning-for-future.html

The B1G will improve, I would be very surprised if it didn't. Adding 2 teams will help big time because it helps spread out the conference a bit more. You'll end up with more 'good' and 'average' teams, instead of 3 decent teams and 3 awful teams. I honestly don't know if I have faith in Wisconsin ever returning to a perennial contender as long as Barry Alvarez is running their athletic program. It's painfully obvious that he wants them to struggle because it funnels more fans to basketball where there's much more money to be made among ticket sales and TV deals. The hockey team may have some decent years, but I'd be surprised if they weren't a bottom feeder more often than not. I feel confident in saying Minnesota, Michigan and Penn State will more often than not be the top 3 teams for the foreseeable future, because we all know Ohio State will never compete and Michigan State is such a disaster that it's going to take quite some time to recover

If Don found a recruit with that name I'd be disappointed if he didn't recruit him 2 conferences, 4 teams each. Thu: B1G semi #1 and WCHA semi #1 Fri: B1G semi #2 and WCHA semi #2 Sat: B1G and WCHA championship games.

I don't think the NCHC would be involved with that. I'd love to combine the B1G and NCHC tournaments at the X the same weekend, but I would bet if that happens that it's the B1G and WCHA since they're the two conferences with rotating venues right now. The B1G not-commissioner guy also said he's been in talks with the WCHA about some sort of scheduling agreement.

At this point I'm okay with having somebody from Thailand if they're going to help Minnesota win