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Posted

Unbelievable.......

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110313/NEWS01/703139891#uno-plans-move-to-division-i-will-drop-football-and-wrestling

Their AD Trev Alberts is a Football guy or so I thought.....

Wow! I had read that UNO was looking at the Summit, but didn't expect dropping football and wrestling. You have to feel bad for the wrestling team, they just won the D2 national title and are told that wrestling is done.

I wonder what Behrns is going to do.

Posted

Kind of strange. In recent years they have been more of a football and wrestling school and now they are making those drops. Basketball has very little history or fan interest in recent years. This really has to kill what fan base they had. Their administration must of really felt like they didn't know what to do and felt like they were being put in a corner.

Posted

In some ways, this doesn't surprise me. UNO has a huge problem with being non-compliant with Title IX. There are more women students than men, but men receive 66% of the scholarship money. And they don't even have women's hockey (how can a school with men's hockey get away with that these days?). They were always a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Posted

Are there any transfer players on UNO that could fill some gaps for UND?

Would adding Behrns to the staff be considered?

We had shown interested in Kyle Swartz a LB recruit rom Kansas. He committed to UNO this Spring.

Posted

It is rather ironic how NDSU and its fans talked down everything about the D2 and the NCC and how they were moving up to separate themselves from it. . Now NDSU is back in a glorified NCC again. The Big Sky is looking better and better all the time.

Posted

It is rather ironic how NDSU and its fans talked down everything about the D2 and the NCC and how they were moving up to separate themselves from it. . Now NDSU is back in a glorified NCC again. The Big Sky is looking better and better all the time.

Omaha moving to the Summit will also likely kill any chance that Fargo will host the Summit BB tournaments. Now, Omaha and Sioux City will be much better positioned to host, especially since Sioux Falls' arena is such a dump. If UND had been in the Summit, Fargo's chances would be better.

UNO dumping football and not going to FCS also keeps Nebraska and Kansas FCS recruits in play for UND.

Posted

UNO's administration cited several times that their current model was not sustainable. That may be true, I'm not sure that their new model will be either. If they have grand goals of becoming a basketball school, I think it will be difficult to compete for entertainment dollars with Creighton. And I can't for the life of me understand why wrestling would get the axe in favor of men's soccer or tennis, just because the Summit doesn't sponsor it. One would would think they wouldn't have had trouble getting into the wrestling league that NDSU & SDSU are in.............

This move makes how many former NCC teams together again..........

4 together in the Summit. But expanding on that, there are now 8 former NCC members competing at the DI level:

Big Sky

North Dakota

Northern Colorado

Summit League

South Dakota

NDSU

SDSU

Nebraska-Omaha

Missouri Valley

Northern Iowa

Creighton

Posted

In some ways, this doesn't surprise me. UNO has a huge problem with being non-compliant with Title IX. There are more women students than men, but men receive 66% of the scholarship money. And they don't even have women's hockey (how can a school with men's hockey get away with that these days?). They were always a lawsuit waiting to happen.

I knew it wasn't Title IX good down there, but I didn't know it was that bad. Yes, that really is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Somewhat unrelated, but what a day to announce dumping football and wrestling to focus on hockey: The day the Beavers gnawed down the Mavs. Ouch. :0

Posted

I'm surprised by this since they are so competitive in those sports but I guess the school needed to make those changes. Maybe UNO should look at adding Women's hockey and maybe that would let them save the wrestling program?

With the loss of Centenary and their men's soccer program, the Summit would be down to six men's soccer teams. If the two most likely candidates, Oral Roberts or Oakland, get a call to a higher league, the Summit would have issues maintaining the men's soccer autobid (causing issues for UMKC, IUPUI, IPFW, Oakland, etc). Those schools were likely demanding that any new school have men's soccer. Most leagues actually sponsor men's soccer (with certain exceptions like the Big Sky, SEC, WAC, MWC.)

I think the Summit League gave UNO a precondition for membership: add men's soccer. UNO had already planned to drop football to afford the move up, but the Summit's demand to add men's soccer probably caused them to drop wrestling, too.

Posted

UNO's administration cited several times that their current model was not sustainable. That may be true, I'm not sure that their new model will be either. If they have grand goals of becoming a basketball school, I think it will be difficult to compete for entertainment dollars with Creighton. And I can't for the life of me understand why wrestling would get the axe in favor of men's soccer or tennis, just because the Summit doesn't sponsor it. One would would think they wouldn't have had trouble getting into the wrestling league that NDSU & SDSU are in.............

4 together in the Summit. But expanding on that, there are now 8 former NCC members competing at the DI level:

Big Sky

North Dakota

Northern Colorado

Summit League

South Dakota

NDSU

SDSU

Nebraska-Omaha

Missouri Valley

Northern Iowa

Creighton

I do not ever recall Creighton as ever having been in the North Central Conference. Unless it was about five coon's ages ago . . . .

Posted

UNO, Alberts, Douple and the Summit League are getting terrific press from the football / wrestling fallout

With Douples' scruples, he could just as well have been at the helm of the Exxon Valdez.

CBS Sports: Nebraska-Omaha rips out hearts (and Dennis Dodd reams out Trev Alberts

You don't care about the University of Nebraska-Omaha. It's a directional Division II school living and playing in the considerable shadow of the other, bigger directional school down the road.

But you needed to care about UNO on Sunday. For years there was the feeling that Nebraska football was going to kill Nebraska-Omaha football. Too big, too close. Nebraskans love their football but what would you rather eat on Saturday -- steak or baloney? Still, UNO was a nice, little, competitive program that was a credit to its community. It was shocking, then, that the hammer came down Sunday afternoon not from Nebraska's almighty influence but from UNO itself. The school announced it was cutting football and wrestling essentially so it could afford to jump up to Division I in basketball.

...

Actually, Trev, the NCAA mandates that you honor scholarships in cases such as this, so don't go benevolent caretaker on us. This looked more like Enron than college athletics. There was deception at the highest level of the UNO administration. Alberts and chancellor John Christensen countered by saying they didn't know it had an invitation from the hallowed Summit League until last week. Maybe, but the administration's quick acceptance didn't come out of the blue either. This is a decision to made over time -- and shared the people it is going to effect. You don't make it after 20 kids have pledged to play football. You don't do it less than 24 hours after the wrestling team has brought glory to the school.

...

There's another model, one employed by many schools who can't afford athletics -- Division III, no scholarships. Washington University in St. Louis, one of the most prestigious schools, in the country does it that way and is a national power.. But that wouldn't have been big time enough for UNO. Guess we'll have to wait until the Summit League Battle of the Hyphens at Omaha's Civic Arena -- Missouri-Kansas City vs. Nebraska-Omaha. They should be busting down the doors for that one.

UNO vs IUPUI should be even more exciting. ;):D

Posted

I think how UND and USD found football homes this past fall put the final nail in the coffin for UNO football. I doubt UNO wanted the expense of being in the Big Sky as a full member (that is a lot of airplane tickets and charters to buy) and Douple probably told Alberts he pulled his last string with the MVFC to get USD to stay, plus Douple knows that UNO wants to be D1 and he holds the coveted conference admission (which lets him demand UNO to start other Summit sports).

With those facts in place, and no Great West football, UNO would probably have to be an independent in FCS football for the foreseeable future and we all know how awesome that is. Finally, I have a feeling big payout FBS games are going to become few and far between in the next few years as the big schools are finding they are better off playing other FBS schools for that kind of money.

Take all of that with the 2,000 fans they get to show up to the games now and you do not see a formula for success.

Posted

C'mon guys. I feel for UNO football having played against them on several occasions down on their campus but the reality is that their athletic dept was bleeding out cash and was eventually going to die. UNO football was unsustainable in D2 the way it was and the UNO administration had a tough choice to make, D3 for all sports or D1. They had the opportunity and chose to elivate all their sports to D1 with their hockey program. The collateral damage that ensued was inevitible.

If the UNO community is so outraged how come they didn't support football and wrestling. Football has been good there for many, many years yet they are only pulling 2500 or so for attendance? That is horrible. They all seem to be proud of their wrestling yet attendance didn't reflect the actual interest. Bottom line, if you would have put your money where your mouth is and financially supported the teams you wouldn't have lost them. Let that be a lesson to the rest of us that we need to support our athletic teams, even in the down years.

Easy for Dennis Dodd to sit in his tower from far away and write a critical hatchet job, he doesn't have to deal with the reality of the situation. The guy is a puke known for writing such pieces.

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