WeAreNorthDakota

5 of us in 113 row 2

If you keep playing like this, tonight will be the last time any of you wear that logo on your chest. Don't let the Fighting Sioux go out like this.

I like these a lot. And an inverse of the black/green for the standard home jerseys would look great as well. I'd love to see those black jerseys once a year.

Not sure about the specifics but I would think that an FBS payday, even from a Ball State-type school, would cover the buyout and leave enough to make it an attractive option especially considering that it would put another D1 counter on our schedule. Losing a home game would suck, but I'd rather have another shot at our first FBS win and then have our home opener against Portland State instead of SD Mines. Gotta think Portland State would draw a bigger crowd and more interest. If that home opener came off the heels of our first FBS win ever, gotta think we'd come pretty close to seeing our first Alerus sellout in a long time.

Temple announced today that they are leaving the MAC immediately for the Big East in football. That means every MAC team just lost a game on their 2012 schedule. All the remaining MAC teams seem to have taken their MAC schedules off their websites but a quick survey of their OOC schedules shows Ball State with only 1 of their 4 OOC games at home. If Ball State was originally scheduled to play Temple at home in 2012 they could be desperate for a home game. Oh, and they do not have a game scheduled for September 1st...........

Ditto for Creighton in the MVC 'ship.

Hunsaker had a very legitimate beef with the clock operator. Anderson had the ball for at least a second before the clock started. Not a chance Mitchell gets the shot off if the clock was started on time.

Damian Lillard. Guy looks like the type of guard who could take over a game and lead Weber State to a first round upset in the NCAA tourney. ESPN has him listed as a junior but he has 4 seasons of stats. He only played 285 minutes in 10-11 so maybe he got a medical redshirt? I hope, for our sake, that this is his last year of eligibility. The guy averages 24.5 a game and has scored 40 twice this season.

Not if the nickname supporters have anything to say about it.

I was under the impression that Faison wanted an annual game and Taylor wanted every other year. Has Faison changed his opinion publicly? And if so, why is the every other year contract not signed sealed and delivered?

So we've proved that the finances are a wash. Now the biggest issue is the scheduling stability. Having a contract to play every year gives us both an iron clad guaranteed home game against a quality FCS team every other year and as inexpensive an OOC road trip as there is in FCS every other year. I'm hoping NDSU gets stuck with a 10 game schedule and Taylor gets his eyes opened to the benefits of an annual game.

You can't honestly believe a game against UNI or SDSU would be a bigger deal to the fans than a game against UND. I know it's been a long time but have you forgotten what those games were like in the D2 days? It was an event for the entire state. I've been to UND/USD games and NDSU/SDSU games and the atmosphere is nowhere near what it was for the Sioux/Bison games. Has an NDSU student ever tried to steal the Dakota Marker? No, but those were the kinds of stories you'd hear about the Nickel. My best friend and his family are the biggest bunch of Sioux-hating Bison fans I've ever met and at every holiday they end up plotting to steal back the Nickel because they can't stand that we have it and they don't. They don't give a damn about UNI except that they know they have to beat them to win the conference. If NDSU and UNI decided not to play each other anymore I can guarantee there wouldn't be a 35 page thread on a message board about it 8 years later. This rivalry is obviously about more than football if it's still just as heated after an 8 year layoff. It's about talking smack to my little brother because he went to NDSU. It's about my best friend's friend's family truly believing they're better than me I'm a UND grad, and me feeling exactly the same way about them. It's about the UND alums at Oxbow Country Club paying more than the NDSU alums to have a Sioux flag flying instead of a Bison flag. You can talk about financial benefit, and scheduling problems, and wanting to see teams like James Madison and Georgia Southern all you want but there will never be a football game played in either the Fargodome or the Alerus that will ever exceed the atmosphere of a Sioux/Bison game. When this rivalry resumes, I'll pay $100 just to get in the door of the Fargodome if that's what it takes.

If only NDSU had an open date that matched up with our SD Mines game. Gotta think that Taylor being desparate for a home game and Faison wanting to get a non-counter off the schedule would be the perfect storm that could get the rivalry started again.

Yeah after seeing Bradley last year I can't imagine he's gonna win a competition over a guy who spent his years at UNC sitting behind a guy who's playing in the NFL now. And if you're not familiar with UNC football, they've churned out as much NFL defensive talent as any program in the country over the last few years. Hanson's been getting looks in practice against big time talents. I'm not saying he's going to be UND football's savior but I can't imagine Bradley has anywhere near as much talent as Hanson and Hanson's got the experience edge by far. Also, I don't doubt that DL has a good football program. I'm just glad we won't have to see a kid go from playing Perham to playing San Diego State in less than a year. I'd bet SDSU has a defensive lineman or two faster than some of the db's Mollberg was throwing against last year. The defensive speed just does not compare.

The difference is that, for us, the Minnesota and Wisconsin hockey series are 2 of the 3 or 4 biggest events of the year for our ENTIRE athletic department. For Minnesota and Wisconsin, the UND hockey series doesn't even come close to as important as any football or men's basketball game (I'll say any Big Ten basketball game for Minnesota). Hockey is, at best, the 3rd or 4th most important sport to those schools.

I would have to think Boston would right up there with the Bruins, BC, and BU. Plus they're by far the biggest city in Massachusetts so I imagine they have the most high schools or at least the largest few, which would give them pretty good odds at a big number of state titles. That's just a guess though, as I have zero knowledge of Massachusetts high school athletics.

Just look at Montana and Montana St this year. If not for Sam Houston, they would have met in the national semifinal game. Can you imagine how crazy the atmosphere would be around this state if the first meeting had a trip to Frisco on the line?

I don't have any articles or quotes but I'm just telling you what I learned in a college course on the economics of sports. An athletic department like Ohio State doesn't report profits because they are able to very accurately predict their revenues and budget to spend as close to that revenue as possible. That's for a department that can build up their expenses to match their revenues. For a department like Montana, they have to cut their expenses to match their revenues to get close to their goal of breaking even. You can choose to believe me or not but that is the way that the business side of collegiate athletics works. Also, I should rephrase what I said earlier. Most athletic departments do lose money technically but its either a small amount by design or a large amount because that's the best they can do. My argument is schools are losing money not because they can't make money, but because they choose not to make money. Right now, UND is likely fighting like Montana to keep as near the black as possible. If they are not allowed in the Big Sky, they will move from being near the black to losing a very large amount of money. Nobody would be able to justify an expense like the IPF while the department is losing 5-10 million dollars a year. Right now, if we are allowed in the Big Sky we would be able to pay for the IPF without digging us further into a financial hole.

Yes, median losses are big but a number like that is misleading when you don't dig deeper. There are athletic departments that struggle mightily and lose 10+ million dollars but there aren't athletic departments that have 10+ million in profits because they operate like a non-profit organization and sink any excess revenue right back into capital investments in things like facilities improvements or staffing budget increases. If it was the goal of athletic departments to turn a profit, that median number would be much closer to zero. And although there are athletic departments that lose boatloads of money and still operate, intentionally losing multimillions of dollars is the kind of business decision that gets an entire athletic department fired. I'm not saying we can only build the IPF if it means we stay near the black. What I'm saying is that if we do not have a conference, we will not be anywhere near turning a profit whether we like it or not. Stacking a 10 million dollar project on top of an athletic department that is already losing money is not an option. It would force the university to prop up the department and sacrifice investments in research and academics.

False. Most athletic departments do not run in the red. Bad athletic departments run in the red and Good athletic departments break even by choice or lose a small amount of money meaning that "on average" collegiate athletic departments lose money. Running in the red by choice in the amount that would cost is not an option.

The difference is NDSU fans claim to have moved on from the rivalry while they still obsess over us. We still obsess over you because we don't want to have to move on in the first place.

And what I'm saying is that if we don't have a D1 conference, we will not be building an indoor practice facility unless 100% of the funds were designated specifically for that cause. Any money that would have to be contributed by the university from general athletic donations will not be going towards an indoor practice facility because without a conference, every cent possible will be going towards keeping the athletic department simply operational.

That is absolutely not true. Say the Fargodome holds 18,500 with 2,000 reserved for students (I'm too lazy to look up the real numbers). If NDSU sells 95% of its tickets for a game against Wagner at an average price of $20 that's a total gate revenue of $313,500. Now you schedule UND and charge an average of $35 a ticket and sell 100% of the tickets. That's a gate revenue of $577,500 and an extra $264,000. How is that not doing anything for your athletic budget? On top of that, you save on your advertising budget because you really don't have to advertise for the game at all, a simple press release announcing the game and its inclusion on all promotional items that include the full schedule will sell it. That's a week or more, depending on how the schedule sets up, where you can cut your advertising budget at least in half. So there's a financial incentive to add on to the scheduling stability and the renewal of the best rivalry series either of our schools has for any sport.

Obviously there are pros and cons to both sides of the argument but considering the history of the rivalry and what it means to the state, the fact that there are pros at all should mean Taylor and Faison need to work through whatever differences they have over the matter and make it happen.

Also, a benefit to the annual series that has only been lightly touched on is the scheduling stability. An annual series would leave no chance for a buyout. Both NDSU and UND found themselves in tough scheduling positions because of buyouts for next season. I imagine both Faison and Taylor would have preferred to have each other on the schedule than the games that got bought out.