Sioux'01

Relax.... RT didn't "give up" the student section. He was required by the NCAA playoff administrators to comply with the tournament rules which actually state that the visiting teams' fans must sit behind their bench between the 30 yard lines. He actually even fought to get them put up into the second row to keep our students where they are but the NCAA nixed it. My guess is that a coach or administrator from GVSU reminded the NCAA about it. RT is a football guy, he knows how important stuff like that is and fought hard to keep it the way it was. For chirst sake he stuck his neck out to get the team the money to fly to Houghton!!!

John Kyvig....he is 6'5".

Shut up Vince, you played football.

Vince, YOU are a little ridiculous!

Valpo is terrible. Take it from somebody who played them last year. You've gotta remember that most of those I-AA nonscholarship teams aren't any better than division III teams (except for the ones out east). Valpo, Drake, Morehead State...all the schools in the pioneer league suck! Don't kids yourselves bison fans, most schools in the NCC would murder any team from that conference.

UND 92,96- Can we lay off Mussman please? The guy is a heckuva coach. I watched everyone bash him after the national championship game and then when he was trying to get the Duluth job. His players love him and they all respect what he tries to do with the game plan. And regardless of what you think you may know, he is a very capable play-caller. As for Ross Brennan, I wouldn't expect too much out of a guy who hasn't played football in two years. I would say he's a long-shot to get on the field on a regular basis next year...but hey, I could be wrong, he's obviously talented. I'm mostly worried about the O-line. There's probably no other position that requires more "development time" than offensive line and I don't see Kuper as a natural tackle so it will probably be Smith unless they've got someone coming up who they think is better.

Noted.

As a current I-AA GA, let me say that probably 90% of I-AA teams around the country would have straight up traded their starting O-lines for the one UND had last season. As for other players on UND's team, it is more difficult to say because they are so well-coached that it is hard to compare their innate ability and determine whether or not they would have been successful at the I-AA level. Digger, Lueck, Gagner, Momerak, Stratton...ability-wise they're middle of the pack I-AA (and I'm only talking about scholarship-giving I-AA schools), but they were so well taught and DEVELOPED at UND that if they were to just jump into another I-AA school right now they would be successful. However, if they were to just start off at a I-AA school and didn't receive the same coaching as at UND, I don't believe they would have been as good of players. Does that make sense? Basically my point is that players at UND are so well-coached that it kind of "exaggerates" their talent. The fact of the matter is there aren't very many great coaching staffs around the country like the one UND has...at any level. So to look at some of these players and say that they would have the same level of success at a I-AA school as they have had at UND is hard to say, because they are so well-coached.

As a current I-AA GA, I suspect that the difficulties that NDSU is having finding I-AA games stems from the fact that the nearest I-AA opponent is at least 7-8 hours away (one of the montana schools or N. Iowa). This means that they would have to fly wherever they play and being that it is usually the responsibility of the home team to foot the bill for transportation costs, NDSU isn't exactly a great addition to any team's schedule because of the drain on their budgets (which, as you NDSU fans will soon find out, is a problem at EVERY I-AA school). UND Vince- do you still use a special keyboard to accomodate your massive fingers?

Whose got the latest on when and who Lennon is going to hire?

I didn't know they had computers on farms...