Lennon pushing for UND to move up?

[BisonInTexas]

Exchanged emails with my little brother (UND grad), and he said Lennon has threatened to quit if UND does not move up. Of course, this is hearsay, but he has pretty good contacts in the UND athletic department. I can see his point - it will be devastating to UND's recruiting in ND and MN if he has to recruit against a D1-AA program 80 miles south. Oh well, maybe Babich can find a position for him on his staff ;D

[Bisonguy]

I don't think Der Fuhrer Ralph or Dean Blais would allow und to make the move. ;D

[BisonInTexas]

I agree. BTW, does anyone know where I could find some dollar amounts for athletic budgets in the NCC? Specifically, I want to see how UND and NDSU compare, as I am getting in an email war with said little brother (gotta love being the only NDSU grad in a UND family!) about UND moving up to DI with NDSU.

Craig

[Guest]

Not sure where you can find the budgets for the whole NCC, but UND's athletic budget is currently $5.8 million.

[Bisonguy]

I thought UND's budget was higher or maybe it will be this year. Men's and women's hockey, if memory serves me right, was around 3.6 to 3.8 million.

[Guest]

My understanding was the women's hockey would only add about $500,000 to the athletic budget for the coming year. I believe the $5.8m did NOT include that, so tally it up to $6.3m for this year.

[Bisonguy]

I see. I read somewhere (Fargo Forum, maybe) that the budget for women's hockey would equal men's hockey, which was slated to be $1.8-1.9 million. Do the women play fewer games, or where are the expenses cut?

[Guest]

Huh -- now I can't seem to find the source, but I swear I just read it today. Perhaps I'm incorrect, though.

I think they have lower scholarships, staff, and coaching costs. Not really sure about travel/number of games.

[BisonInTexas]

Thanks for the info, Friendly Sioux Fan. I appreciate it.

Craig

[tony]

Yeah, thanks Friendly Sioux Fan, I think the number you gave for UND's athletic budget is the same as the one I read but can no longer find a source for.

The 5.1 million figure was NDSU's 2001-2002 budget, it's up to 5.5 million this year.

[Guest]

Well, here's my source for the women's hockey budget:
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforksherald/2002/04/14/sports/3060633.htm

The exact wording was:

There are 18 sports offered at UND, 10 of them for women. The latest addition, Division I women's hockey, means the UND athletic department will have to find a way to raise an estimated $500,000 next year for the program's first season.

You could interpret that as meaning women's hockey costs $.5m OR that UND is short $.5m of what it costs to run women's hockey.

[Guest]

I wouldnt be suprised to see Lennon go to Sac State where Terry Wanlis is now AD. Other und cocahes may make the move as well. There will be opportunity there in a football program that needs complete rebuilding from the ground up.

[Guest]

I could've almost predicted this...

Come on, everyone knows UND & NDSU have a hard-on about each other.

I'll just go down the list:

NDSU plays outdoors for years........then moves into the Fargodome
UND follows up with the Alerus

UND has jumbotrons installed in the new Alerus......NDSU just had jumbotrons installed this year.

I think these two schools almost need each other, and they realize it. For what better reason to buy something than to more or less say, "UND has jumbotrons.........we(NDSU) need them too!" And that's why we have them.

Don't get me wrong, I AM a Bison fan....and I'm not knocking NDSU admin. but to say UND won't move up when NDSU is.......is not only outlandish, but, generally a bad move on UND's part. Come on.....NDSU and UND are D1 schools.......if it talks like a duck and walks like a duck............it's a duck.

[Guest]

Thundar the Bison:

You're correct. There is a 'synergy' (and I hate that word but it's the best I can come up with right now) between UND and NDSU: Each pushes the other to get better. Look at all of the "back and forth" that you could quickly point out. To believe one could succeed at the next level without the other is naive.

Even SDSU's president says that the best way for them to go D-I would be to have the NCC go D-I. The NCC gets better because no one can stand to see the rest of them get ahead, so they all drive harder toward the one perceived to be in front. It's no different, and maybe truer for UND and NDSU.

And now a little jab all in fun: I can see you are a reasonable and rational Bison fan. Why? There's UND at the heart of your name, ThUNDar. :o ;)

[Guest]

'und' may be in my name....but don't worry - I bleed green and gold.

on a totally unrelated side note.....I went and picked up my student tickets at the BSA this morning. Yes, if you didn't know it before....I AM a student (but not for very much longer, I'm graduating...woohoo!) Anyways, enough about that.

Back to me getting tickets. We showed up at 7:15AM, and were already 150 people back from the front. There was 6 or 7 kids who camped out. Now, that is devotion! When I finally got my tickets at 8:20, they had kids lined up from the BSA, all the way across the parking lot to the football practice field!! No lie!

I personally saw a kid rolling in there with 22 student ID's and walk out with 22 tickets. These tickets are a hot commodity, as you can imagine....but good news, we have 4000 seats available to us! You may think this is a bad thing...people getting multiple tickets with different ID's....but they are also having us show our student ID to get into the game....so I guess that solves that. That would be amazing to have 4000 students cheering the Bison on!

Also, I have some extra tickets to the Bison/Sioux game (on the Bison side, of course) if anyone would like to buy them. Just drop me an email.