Sports...

[ChadW346]

I know you guys have got great hockey, and great DII football, and I hear good DII women's basketball, but if there are two things I would miss about my current school it would be my friends here, and this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=91SMhXJ79rQ

This was last night's game against Northern Iowa. That was easily the most fun sporting event I've ever been to. You guys see any moments like this in the Ralph, Betty, Alerus, etc.?

[Blue Side Up]

I haven't been to a b-ball game since freshman year and it wasn't like that. the football games are like that plus we are moving to D-I. the hockey games are a lot like that though (at least when we are winning, not happening too much this year). when the wcha west regional tournement was here last year it was so awesome. plus the gophers got beat by holy cross. what a great night that was!!!

[JaceTheAce]

Hockey

Football's where it's at!

[ChadW346]

Originally Posted by Blue Side Up

I haven't been to a b-ball game since freshman year and it wasn't like that. the football games are like that plus we are moving to D-I. the hockey games are a lot like that though (at least when we are winning, not happening too much this year). when the wcha west regional tournement was here last year it was so awesome. plus the gophers got beat by holy cross. what a great night that was!!!

Speaking of the D-I move, UND is rumored to want to join the Gateway Conference for football, which is what Southern Illinois is in right now. It would be interesting. You guys already played at UNI last year and pulled out the win in what was designed to be a typical college football "let's pay to play a lower division team and beat them by 80" type game. I thought that was cool, especially considering that UNI was the 1-AA National Championship runner-up the year before. The Gateway is a pretty fun, competitive conference in the sort of bland 1-AA world, though.

[Blue Side Up]

Originally Posted by ChadW346

Speaking of the D-I move, UND is rumored to want to join the Gateway Conference for football, which is what Southern Illinois is in right now. It would be interesting. You guys already played at UNI last year and pulled out the win in what was designed to be a typical college football "let's pay to play a lower division team and beat them by 80" type game. I thought that was cool, especially considering that UNI was the 1-AA National Championship runner-up the year before. The Gateway is a pretty fun, competitive conference in the sort of bland 1-AA world, though.

there is a lot of opinions on the D-I move. it is pretty cool, but i don't really know if it is going to work that well. i don't know if we have the student population or the population in the surrounding area to support D-I athletics. do you know what the smallest D-I school is? it would be interesting to see what their student population/area population is.

[amorris311]

wake forest is extremely small. and they are d-1a. i go to a small division 1 school in ny but football is d-1aa. we suck at football though so i cant argue.

[Blue Side Up]

I think our student population is maybe 12,000, at most.

[amorris311]

lot bigger then mine and im 20 min from central park. and def bigger than wake forest.

[Blue Side Up]

Originally Posted by amorris311

lot bigger then mine and im 20 min from central park. and def bigger than wake forest.

wow, i never thought there would be a D-I school smaller than us. i guess there is hope for us, as long as they don't make us change our name to a shape or a color.

[amorris311]

there are a lot of small d-1 schools out there. it all depends on how much your school wants to fund the athletics.

[ChadW346]

Originally Posted by Blue Side Up

there is a lot of opinions on the D-I move. it is pretty cool, but i don't really know if it is going to work that well. i don't know if we have the student population or the population in the surrounding area to support D-I athletics. do you know what the smallest D-I school is? it would be interesting to see what their student population/area population is.

I'm not sure about who exactly is the smallest or has the smallest fanbases to draw from in D-I. There are all kinds of private schools with enrollments under 10,000, but for whatever reasons draw large numbers of fans. The schools I like to think of like that would be places like Duke, Bradley, Creighton, etc. Those are all pretty big basketball schools. For football I can't really think of too many schools below 10,000 students that have strong programs (besides maybe Wake Forest), but some of the big time D-I schools like Notre Dame, Miami, and Boston College have relatively smaller number of students.

Southern Illinois, for example, statistically (I don't have the numbers) has the smallest population base in our basketball conference. The town itself has about 35,000 when you count the students. Our total enrollment is at 21,000, and for basketball we usually draw anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 students every game. We average around 7,000 total fans every game, which I believe is 4th in our conference.

The whole attendance issue is kind of big down here, because a lot of people debate that we should be selling out (about 9,900 fans) EVERY night with our improved quality of play in basketball over the last five years, but it is a really complex issue, and the things I bring up only scratch the surface. For football, it's even worse. We usually peak at around 13,000 fans for two games during the middle of the season, and it slowly declines to around 7 or 8,000 for the last few games of the year. Some people debate the weather being an issue, our location, large amount of other outdoor activities in the area, high school sports being such a huge deal here, and the list just never ends.

I kind of veered off on answering your question, but it's kind of a complex one, and I thought my school would be a great example for that, because we have so many factors for our attendance figures. It is crazy.

[Blue Side Up]

i would say grand forks is about 35,000 people.

[Bignellyxx]

Yeah there are plenty of D1 schools smaller than UND but many of them push all of their money into a single sport such as basketball. Most small schools don't have the whole deal with the three NCAA money makers (football, basketball and hockey) It's going to be fun watching UND make the move to D1. I personally don't think there will be a problem with football and womens basketball moving up. With other sports it will not likely be pretty.

The football games are probably the best games to go to. Since i came here as a freshman the crowd at the Ralph has became really hockey stupid. People will pull some chants out at the worst possible time.

[Bignellyxx]

Originally Posted by Blue Side Up

i would say grand forks is about 35,000 people.

A little more than 49,000 only including the students with permanent Grand Forks Addresses. It's not losing population like the rest of the state. East Grand adds another 7,000

[ChadW346]

Two things UND may have working for them is the fact that they have great facilities for their three big sports, and that they are the "flagship" of the state, so to speak. Money is another big problem where I'm at now, compared with the likes of say, University of Illinois. Our facilities our dated, to say the least, and there is really no way to improve them to attract fans, recruits, etc., and result in even more money. We've got this Saluki Way plan going which would include a new football stadium and a renovated arena, and some new classroom buildings among other things, but financing it is big problem right now. I think the estimated price tag is at least $250 million total, and since the idea first came about in Sep. of '05, they have only raised $400,000 in donations. Now they talk like they want student fees to increase to cover this stuff, but enrollment is also decreasing here, so that is something that they're dealing with as well. I think UND is probably in a decent spot to make the jump, and who knows? Maybe they could be the next Boise St. in years to come.

[undsioux1]

Originally Posted by ChadW346

I know you guys have got great hockey, and great DII football, and I hear good DII women's basketball, but if there are two things I would miss about my current school it would be my friends here, and this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=91SMhXJ79rQ

This was last night's game against Northern Iowa. That was easily the most fun sporting event I've ever been to. You guys see any moments like this in the Ralph, Betty, Alerus, etc.?

One of THE BEST football games I've ever seen was frosh year Sioux vs. St. Cloud. We were down 28-3 at halftime. Sioux come out first drive of the second half and fake a field goal on 4th down to score a beautiful touchdown. We ended up winning 29-28 on a last second field goal by our kicker who was probably the best kicker in D-II. The place just went nuts, even if it was half empty from all the fans who left. Later that night the hockey team went on to beat UMD in hockey, which also sported one of the best college hockey fights ive seen. My throat was gone for the next week from yelling so much that day. There are some extremely fun moments in sports up here, you just have to go to the games to catch them. Only the hockey home games are broadcasted on TV, but you should be at those anyways.

That gopher vs. holy cross was also one of the best games ive watched, even if the Sioux wern't playing. I have the radio clip from the holy cross announcers on my computer, guys just went nuts after that goal in overtime.

[Blue Side Up]

Originally Posted by undsioux1

That gopher vs. holy cross was also one of the best games ive watched, even if the Sioux wern't playing. I have the radio clip from the holy cross announcers on my computer, guys just went nuts after that goal in overtime.

My friend used to play hockey for Holy Cross and watched the game with some old teammates in Boston. I called him right away after they beat minnesota and the place was so loud. Healmost decided to come up and see the Holy Cross/Sioux game. probably better he didn't though.

[CAFFEINE]

I <3 hockey. I particularily liked the UAA series a couple weekends ago.