Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

[EQguy]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

The one thing that does frustrate me about these games being played again is that all it is going to do is bring about the "old NCC" talk. I get so sick and tired of people talking about how IPFW, IUPUI, Oakland, Centenary, and UMKC are not attractive games for people to attend. How often were games basketball games with Mankato, UNO, St Cloud, UND and Morningside sold out? The only times these games were attractive is when one of the other teams was highly regarded/ranked nationally and they still didn't pack the place. Take a look at the top 25 games in Frost Arena history, see these guys on it anywhere? I'll save you the time. Northern appears once, Cal-Heyward appears once and the rest are Augie and USD. Now, when UND and USD do appear on the schedule we are going to have to hear all this crap about reliving the old NCC days.

[filbert]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

Why do you need money to schedule in-state rivalries? They'd ostensibly be revenue generators.

For football, my guess is that it would be a net negative--at least every other year, for each school.

I would speculate that a payday vs. an FBS school would easily be as much as what you could earn via gate and concessions for a home game vs. USD, and that an extra home game vs. almost anybody is more than you could earn with an away game at USD.

Either way, every year, mandating this game will take away the potential for the visiting school of:
1) an out-of-conference home game,
2) Lose scheduling flexibility to get another 1-1 or 2-1 scheduling deal with another FCS school, or
3) out one guarantee game vs.an FBS school.

Yeah, in theory you get a decent-to-good payday every other year when you host a football game, but you get pretty much nada those years when you're not the host school. THIS is what I mean when I say that any agreement has to make sense for both schools. The numbers need to be run by people who have a grasp of what the actual revenue potential is, and the athletic departments of USD and SDSU need to decide based on what's in their own best interests.

For basketball, there's really very little economic sense to not play--either an annual neutral-site game in Sioux Falls (maybe in association with an annual Thanksgiving/Christmas D-I tournament in S.F.--my favorite idea) or alternating home and home (if USD gets into the Summit then the discussion for basketball is moot anyway).

The point is that if the legislature wants to dictate athletic schedules then they should be willing to man up and recognize that they are putting a cost--a real financial cost or at least an opportunity cost of lost potential revenue or scheduling flexibility--upon the school that doesn't host the football game that year.

[NoVaJack]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

Filbert, I'll have to disagree, both on money and on overall interest in Jacks' athletics.

1. In FB, if we replaced Georgia Southern (Or McNeese State, or take your pick of our non-confs) with USD and Texas State with UND, even if it's home and home, as it's been with these programs, I believe the financial gain would be tremendous.
2. Even with four schools now either in D-1 or transitioning to D-1, the Dakotas remain one of the most sparsely populated D-1 territories in the country. I believe, as I said in an earlier post, that four programs playing one another would be a multiplier as we all go forward in D-1. Granted, the Jacks and Bison are way ahead in the conversion, but I believe we'd both get a heck of a lot more out of playing one another as much as possible than a couple of big paydays a year. I believe the revival of the rivalries would spark interest in D-1 more broadly and deeply across the two states.

Another thread is hashing over the Summit League visiting The Coyotes and That School With the Mascot That Will Not Be Mentioned .

What WOULD happen if the Summit expanded to 12 with two divisions?
It seems to me it would be a stronger league with an east and west division, something along the lines of what some of the BCS schools do in FB, for instance..
You could have four Dakota schools, Southern Utah and either UMKC or Oral Roberts in the west division, and the Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and La. and either UMKC or Oral Roberts in the east..

You could still have 15 league games if you played each team in your division home and home and the other six once, trading home and home over two years. At year's end, everybody would be eligible for the division playoffs, with the two division champs playing for the championship.

There would be three advantages:
One, you'd save on costly travel, trading those long trips east or south with bus trips nearer to home.
Two, you could build up superrivalries within divisions and a rivalry between the two divisions. How cool would it be to revive the Dakotas' rivalries three times over?
Three, you could schedule more big non-league games, hopefully regional-based with schools like Minnesota, ISU, Gonzaga, etc., etc. There's no reason why we can't play the Wyomings and the Wisconsin-Green Bays and the Northern Colorados as well as the Minnesotas and Iowa's and Nebraskas every year.

There would be disadvantages, for sure.
One I can think of off the bat is that you would not have the two-time visits each season from the six teams in the other division. That might make the rivalries there less attractive.
But most good thing come with tradeoffs.

Just food for thought.

[EQguy]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

Nova, this is exactly what I was talking about. The last time SDSU played UND it was the Beef Bowl in 2003. UND was ranked 16th and only 7300 people were in attendance. As a matter of fact it was the last time there weren't 10,000 in attendance for the Beef Bowl. The UND thing is a fallacy that is brought about by longing for the old NCC days. People were not that interested in them at that time and they might be once but it won't take long for that to go away.

[NoVaJack]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

Nova, this is exactly what I was talking about. The last time SDSU played UND it was the Beef Bowl in 2003. UND was ranked 16th and only 7300 people were in attendance. As a matter of fact it was the last time there weren't 10,000 in attendance for the Beef Bowl. The UND thing is a fallacy that is brought about by longing for the old NCC days. People were not that interested in them at that time and they might be once but it won't take long for that to go away.

Eqguy, I respect your opinion, but I think you are the one looking back on the NCC here. That was then this is now. The only place I might have even inferred an NCC nostalgia it was to say how cool it would be to have the four dakota schools playing as D-1 foes. Different time, different era, different expectations. I think the "Dakotas have arrived in D-1" would be that much more powerful if four institutions were involved. Eventually, anyway.

Do you honestly believe that Texas State or Georgia Southern or McNeese State would outdraw UND in a D-1 world? If you can answer that affirmatively and convincingly, I will defer to your argument totally.

[joeboo22]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

I think filbert is right for the most part telling a university that they have to go with a 1-1 every year with a school could hurt there ability to schedule.... I think that USD will be played quite a bit when they are out of transition but I don't think it will be every year.... I think the first this an AD wants to do is get a D-I guarentee, they do this for 2 reasons, 1 its a lot of money and 2 its an award for the players to go play in a big stadium... then you have the conference schedule.... Then and only then do you look at the other games, which we still have quite a few under contract, It is my belief that there may be some owed games from some southland conference and old great west conference teams that aren't even on any schedule yet....

Basketball, it will happen and it will happen soon.... It wouldn't surprise me if it happened next year.... When they join the Summit League which they will someday we won't even have to worry about it.... i think that playing USD, and UND for that matter if they solve there mascot problems would help the conference.... It may not be a huge game on the schedule but its a lot easier on the kids to drive up to Grand Forks or down to Verm- (if they can get past the funny smelling haze that floats above the city)... then it is to go play a game in the middle of no where on a week night....

[filbert]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

NoVa, I think you may have partially missed my point, which is that if the rivalry in football is resumed, that would lock in an additional away game every other year. Sure, you'd get a reasonably good income from it on alternate years, but is that enough to lock in what's essentially a perpetual home-and-home non-conference series? (Obviously if we wind up in the same conference it is a non-issue).

My question is how does the rivalry home-and-home compare for revenue against other scheduling options?

That's a question, not a statement, btw--I don't think it's necessarily obvious that a home-and-home rivalry series would be the best revenue generator among all of the possible options. That's not saying it isn't, just that I think the question needs to be asked and answered--especially if you're talking about locking it in via legislative order. And it's a question that might have a different answer for each of the two institutions being discussed.

Personally, I'm apathetic on an emotional basis to resuming rivalries. Show me the money.

[EQguy]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

Just one point of clarification. Its EQguy.

I do think there would be a benefit to having the UXD's on our football schedule if it could be later in the year (maybe 5000 show up for UND rather than 2000 for ISU). I also agree that a home and home with the UXD's would also be better on the budget than a home and home with Cal Poly or McNeese.

When it comes to basketball though, I just have a hard time believing other than the first few times we played them that UND would be any better of a draw than any other Summit League team. The game would be a novelty for a while and then it would just be the same as any other game for fans.

What I guess I was getting at is that every time the game would be played it would be talked up with longing for the old NCC (mostly by the media that had been around a while and doesn't really pay attention to what's going on up in Brookings on a decently regular basis). What I would rather see is some of these folks get some knowledge about what is happening and as long as we play these games that's all the media will focus on.

[NoVaJack]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

Just one point of clarification. Its EQguy.

I do think there would be a benefit to having the UXD's on our football schedule if it could be later in the year (maybe 5000 show up for UND rather than 2000 for ISU). I also agree that a home and home with the UXD's would also be better on the budget than a home and home with Cal Poly or McNeese.

When it comes to basketball though, I just have a hard time believing other than the first few times we played them that UND would be any better of a draw than any other Summit League team. The game would be a novelty for a while and then it would just be the same as any other game for fans.

What I guess I was getting at is that every time the game would be played it would be talked up with longing for the old NCC (mostly by the media that had been around a while and doesn't really pay attention to what's going on up in Brookings on a decently regular basis). What I would rather see is some of these folks get some knowledge about what is happening and as long as we play these games that's all the media will focus on.

My bad, EQguy. Sorry 'bout that. Didn't see and will correct original post

[EQguy]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

No offense taken. You aren't the first to miss the small q

[Jacks-02]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

Personally, I would hate for us to give up home/home games against nationally recognized teams like McNeese St., Cal Poly, Georgia Southern, Delaware, etc. for USD/UND. I think playing those teams in other parts of the country helps bring recruits in and is huge for gaining national recognition for the program. One way to get over the East Coast bias hump is to play teams from there and compete against them. It would be tougher to stay in the polls year in and year out by playing an entire schedule of MVFC, one FBS team, and USD/UND every year.

Obviously the financial aspect of any home/home series needs to be considered, but I think there are more important things involved than simply the bottom line.

[joeboo22]

Re: Legislating a Bison-Sioux rivalry

People also have to understand that most likely if we would play them it would be early in the season where we generate large crowds anyways....... the average crowd the past few years before hobo day has been over 10,000.....