Go To The Game!

[siouxjoy]

I think it's fair to say that the noise factor had an effect on some of our games the last 3 seasons.

Sure, the defense is going to do what it always does, no matter where the game is at, but the opponents sure were affected by the crowd, particularly UNA and UC Davis in 2001.

That is something you have to appreciate the Alerus for

[dakotadan]

The alerus has a much better atmosphere than any game I ever attended at memorial. Memorial is a dump and would have needed some SERIOUS upgrading to be a decent stadium. I was there just the other day and it looks like !@$!. I understand that nothing has been done to it in probably the last five, six year but it looked terrable. I can see UND playing at an on campus stadium again but it won't be for quite a few decades. We would need some alum to step forward and pretty much fund the whole thing, such as a ralph for football. By then the Alerus would be showing signs of its age.

[dakotadan]

I've said many times that when I am rich I am going to build UND a new 75,001 seat stadium. Of course if someone doesn't beat me to it.

[BigGreyAnt41]

The regular season only goes into the early part of November. If you're good enough to host a couple of playoff games you might have a home game as late as the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

The game that's the saturday after thanksgiving is the 3rd playoff game. The fourth game is a week after that, still. Generally the first weekend of December. Last year it got mighty cold. I know I wouldn't have wanted to be sitting outside to watch a game in that weather.

But I do agree, this past weekend would have been fun outside.

[Smoggy]

Yes it's nice to watch FB outside. And Memorial's atmosphere was not good. Because of the track, fans were too far away. If it was cold, the fans wouldn't come. Plus, I highly doubt that we would've hosted Northern Alabama last year if we were playing outdoors.

[dakotadan]

if you were an opposing team would you be more intimated by the Metrodome or Lambeau Field?

If I was playing in the metrodome filled to capacity or to lambeau field with five thousand pleople, I would be much more imtimidated by a full metrodome!!!!!!!!!

What would you be more intimidated by, a full Alerus or three thousand at a cold memorial?!?!?

And just to point out, how many playoff games have been played in the fargodome, how many have been played in the Alerus, and how many have been played in memorial?

[UND92,96]

If what you say is true, then it would only be logical for NDSU to improve after leaving Dakotah Field after the '92 season and moving into the Fargodome in '93. But it didn't work that way. They haven't been the same since.

Certainly NDSU football enjoyed more success prior to the opening of the Fargodome than since, but just as it's unprovable what role the Alerus has played in UND football's tremendous success in 2001 and 2003, it's unprovable that the Fargodome really had anything to do with the fact that NDSU hasn't won a title since 1990. I just can't buy the argument that the Alerus hasn't helped UND football, even if it's just as a recruiting tool. In today's Herald, for example, in an article on the hogs, Mitch Braegelmann from St. Cloud said that he chose UND over St. Cloud St. due in part to facilities. And before anyone says anything about Selke, I believe that plans for the new stadium in St. Cloud were already known when Braegelmann was a senior in high school in 2002-03 so it's not like it was simply a case of anything seeming better than Selke was.

While the more sentimental of us UND fans may very well miss Memorial, I really don't think it was going to be impressive to some 18 year old kid who hadn't grown up going to games there. At least to an outsider, it just looked like kind of a dump. Not to say I didn't like it, but objectively I can see how somebody else would not have seen its charm. And considering the competition for players, especially as you get farther away from eastern ND (the Cities and Wisconsin especially), you need every advantage you can get.

EDIT:

I just found this quote which further supports that even opposing players are pretty impressed with the Alerus:

St. Cloud State junior running back Matt Birkel compared the experience to playing in the $50 million Alerus Center that the University of North Dakota plays its home games in.

"Seeing the fans coming out of the tunnel, it was just amazing," Birkel said. "You go to UND's facilities, you never thought you'd be part of a program like that and we are now."