Dustin

not sure how many of these have been announced before.

North Dakota football adds six transfers for 2025 - University of North Dakota Athletics

Stunted/reduced plant growth and poor drainage / waterlogging.

It would an interesting, yet impossible, case study to see how the 1997 flood vs. no 1997 flood affected the next quarter century+. One thing that's for sure is that GF would have had to deal with numerous more floods (like Fargo has) without a robust flood protection system, which would not have been any fun. Another problem with growing Grand Forks is the land on which to expand. Hard to develop residentially to the north - heavy industry that people don't really want to live by. Hard to develop west - run into alkali. Can't develop east - run into the river. That leaves the only option as south - into primo farmland that fetches a pretty penny.

I wasn't offering a commentary on the mayor, simply that there was a lot of exciting things happening during that timeframe that happened to coincide with him mayor.

Big time disagree. After the flood, Grand Forks got a big boost with lots of things that make it great - Alerus Center, Ralph, flood protection system and its associated parks and greenway. What really hurt was the consolidation of media in eastern North Dakota. Losing WDAZ newscasts, and a scale down of the Herald, made it much harder to Grand Forks to be seen amongst the shadow Fargo had begun casting, especially with Bison-mania.

I don't know for sure, because I don't have data, but I think there are two factors at play here: 1) In the past, Winnipeg traffic/tourism helped drive Grand Forks to have more amenities than normal for a town of its size. The Grand Forks restaurant scene really ballooned during the early oil boom. Oil is (was?) a primary driver of Canada's economy, and for a while, the Canadian dollar was on par with the US dollar. With American investment in oil, however, the strength of Canada's dollar against the US dollar has settled back to where it had been historically (around 0.75) and can't gain ground on the US dollar anymore when oil is high. 2) Even though UND is at record enrollment, many of those students are online and not on campus. When there aren't students on campus, restaurants have harder times filling out staffs. It seem like most places close because of lack of workers, not lack of customers.

The closest thing to a "double header" is Nov. 21-22, with an exhibition hockey game Friday night and football Saturday afternoon. Depending on how far UND goes in the football playoffs, there would be potential for football/hockey double headers in late November and December.

Mostly agree with this order. Depending on how good UMD is, they may creep up to just regular second place, not distant. I would also switch the order of Omaha and St. Cloud. ASU and WMU have the potential to take over spots 3 and 4, IMO, if they keep their programs projecting upwards.

So, is this considered a collective? In this case, it is specifically for football, run by UND football alumni? And the contributors are solely UND football alumni, or can the general public donate as well?

I mean, I guess if you have the NCHC app, ESPN+, and Peacock you'd have lots of choices. But I'm talking about a time when there could be a Friday night where UND was Midco/FSSN (sometimes even nationally on Fox College Sports), the Gophers were on Fox Sports North, Notre Dame was on NBCSports, the Big Ten Network had a game, and the NCHC game of the week was on CBSSN.

As players, a combined 7 Frozen Fours and 1 National Champion.

Yes, I remember this now. It's definitely harder to find college hockey on TV on a Friday night now than it used to be.

I hope they at least test the waters with trying to get a contract. If it doesn't make sense, then don't do it.

IIRC, the early years featured games before the new year, but then became a second half only contract later.

This I am not sure of. That was the situation in 2014 with NBCSports, but I am not sure what the Big 10 affiliation did to change that, if anything. the NCHC thought Notre Dame was controlling the narrative too much when it came to TV, so they didn't let 'em in. A mistake IMO.

I like a lot of what you're saying here. Markets like the Twin Cities and Phoenix have to add extra value to the conference that didn't exist in 2014, when Denver (and to a lesser extent, Colorado Springs) were the biggest marketing potential. I'm assuming UND's fans and alumni nationwide is also a factor that makes national television deals possible. I don't know if I'm ready to see the NCHC get too excited about a place like UNLV (yet), but I wanted Notre Dame from the get-go as a charter member. IIRC, their NBCSN (which doesn't exist anymore) contract was part of the deal-breaker for the NCHC. UND, St. Thomas, Denver, ASU, and Notre Dame would be a very strong portfolio to leverage negotiations.

Seems to me that if the conference is willing to give up two seasons of national broadcasts on CBSSN in order to position itself with leverage to get a better deal with somebody else, then the CBSSN deal really isn't worth that much. From the other standpoint, how eager is somebody else to deal with the NCHC? Maybe the CBSSN deal is as good as it's going to get for a conference/sport that is the NCHC. Couldn't the conference sign a 2 year deal and then open it up for a big package deal after that??

I haven't been following this throughout the stages, but I knew some sort of partnership was possible. Could someone give me the long and short of things, in particular how it applies to UND? Thanks.

Is this a dream recruiting class?

Who is Brandon Bostick? I don't see him listed on UND's coaching list. https://fightinghawks.com/sports/football/coaches

Plus, if you’re one of the top two seeds in the NCAA you’ll still have to get past a mid-pairwise team in one shot.

Isn't this viewed mainly a by UND as a recruiting tool for the visiting players? To me, it'd be silly to not showcase the Ralph and facilities to the best American hockey players not yet in college.

I know this is considered a selling point, but sounds like they're being babied to me! I mean, come on, I thought we wanted our guys to be tough. Even Coach Schmidt told his son to stick his face in the ND wind after they landed at the airport.

I would say Chyzyk and Jackson are hitting it out of the park right now. Maybe there'll be more than one F-Hawk logo on the ice in Vegas next April.