SDSU's Zack Zenner takes it 46-yards to the house

In my opinion, this was the difference in the football game between SDSU and UND. UND would go on to lose the game 35-28, as a late rally would fall short. All in all, it was an impressive day for All-American Running Back Zach Zenner. On this play in question, Zenner was untouched as he scampered 46 yards to the end zone.

 Zenner Line 

Here's the line on Zenner 37 rushing attempts for 296 yards. Zenner only had one rush for a loss. Zenner also tied the schools record for 295 yards rushing in a game, scoring three touchdown… Zenner’s longest run was for 46.

UND Football: Great anthem picture

Intense @UNDfootball picture. pic.twitter.com/KUWPZlfR2a
— Eric Classen (@eric_classen) September 8, 2013

Nice picture by my Through These Doors friend Eric Classen.

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Dave St. Peter: Renew the UND-NDSU football rivalry

If you haven’t seen this newspaper article it’s worth a look. I agree with what Mr. St. Peter is saying. I think it’s time to renew the rivalry, and he’s right, all of our other teams are already playing each other and they have been for a couple of years now. Looking backwards, Roger Thomas made a huge mistake by not playing NDSU during their transition. It’s time that both schools make this happen.

Dave St. Peter, Grand Forks Herald – As a UND alum and avid follower of all UND athletics, I’ve never been easily impressed by anything NDSU-related. But as a native of the great state of North Dakota, I couldn’t be more proud of what the NDSU football program has accomplished.

Congratulations to Coach Craig Bohl, the balance of the coaching and training staff and all of the players on their well-deserved victory. Best of luck throughout the 2013 football season.

Speaking of my boys, Friday night’s game sparked an interesting discussion within the St. Peter household. That dialogue focused on why NDSU and UND no longer play each other in football.

I shared many stories from my time in Grand Forks detailing personal experiences with the NDSU-UND rivalry — many of which were painful losses both at Dacotah Field and Memorial Stadium at the hands of Bison greats Jeff Bentrim, Tyrone Braxton, Chad Stark, Tony Satter and others.

Each story included the buildup, the pageantry and the legends that accompany one of America’s longest-standing college football rivalries.

In my professional career, I’ve been lucky enough to experience so many wonderful sporting events. Moreover, I’ve seen firsthand how those events have brought communities together — perhaps like nothing else can.

Oh yeah! To our friends to south that say that they would rather watch NDSU vs. Ferris State are delusional. No matter how you spin it, the game against FSU is probably at best a high intensity practice, and let’s not kid ourselves; the Bison would get a better look from their scout team than they will from the Division II version of Ferris State. .

UND Football: Game is on DirecTV FCS 623

LIVE FROM GRAND FORKS
TV: Midco Sports Network (Channel 27, 622, and DirecTV 623)
Video: Watch Big Sky (www.WatchBigSky.com - FREE webcast)
Radio: UND Radio Network (96.1 FM — Grand Forks) - pregame show at 6 p.m. CT
Audio: UND Radio Network broadcast also available at www.UNDSports.com
Chat: Chat live at www.UNDSports.com
Stats: Live stats available at www.UNDSports.com
Twitter: For live scoring updates and game notes follow @UNDFootball

So, my wife informs me that she has to work late tonight, that was news to me and that I have to take our daughter to a friend’s birthday party tonight. Yay! Right?

I said, "You can't be serious? I was going to go to the football game." Was, is the key word here. No problem though, I, like many UND football fans, that don’t have MIDCO will be able to watch the game on FCS 623 DirecTV tonight. So, to quote Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty, “everyone is happy, happy, happy… “

Football season ticket sales reach new heights

Yesterday I checked up with Dexter Albrecht from Director of Ticket Sales & Promotions at the University of North Dakota to see how their “30 Minutes or Less” promotion went.  and it sounds like UND is already ahead of last year’s season ticket total.

“We have sold more tickets than last year, Dexter Albrecht said. “Currently we are already about 100 season tickets ahead of where we finished last year with 4 weeks to go before the start of the season. Below is a story the AP ran yesterday with numbers.”

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – With the benefit of a successful “30 Minutes or Less” promotion on Wednesday, University of North Dakota athletics department officials announced that football season ticket sales have reached their highest total on record dating back to 2005.

Wednesday’s special promotion saw head coach Chris Mussman, his coaching staff and seniors Garrison Goodman, Greg Hardin, Jake Miller and Blair Townsend hand off 57 new season tickets during the six-hour delivery window. Challenged to deliver the tickets in “30 Minutes or Less” to the purchaser’s home or business or there would be no charge, the crew beat the countdown each time.

“We did seven or eight times more sales than we do in a typical day,” UND Director of Ticket Sales Dexter Albrecht said. “With all the buzz around this season and the program, we gave our coaches and players a chance to get out in the community and thank people for their support, while also getting them even more excited about what is arguably the best home schedule in the FCS this year.”

The event started at 10 a.m. and concluded at 4 p.m. and three Champions Club memberships were also purchased on top of the ticket sales.

“We all had a great time with this promotion,” Mussman said. “It was a creative way for us to get out in the community and thank our fans and hopefully engage some new ones as well.”

Mussman and his squad will face one of the toughest schedules in the Football Championship Subdivision this season with four preseason top 10 teams set to play in the Alerus Center. Those matchups include the Potato Bowl game against South Dakota State (Sept. 7), a non-conference meeting with Big Sky foe Montana (Sept. 14) and back-to-back home games with league co-champions Montana State (Sept. 28) and Eastern Washington (Oct. 12).

Season-ticket packages are still available starting at $75 per seat and fans can save up to 50 percent off the face value by purchasing those packages. Single-game tickets

UND Football: Dexter Albrecht explains ‘30 Minutes or Less'

I was able to ask Dexter Albrecht the Director of Ticket Sales & Promotions at the University of North Dakota, a few questions about the University of North Dakota’s ‘30 Minutes or Less’...  Which UND is running on July 31, 2013. It's a season tickets promotion for UND football, where if you order season tickets and you live in the Greater Grand Forks Metro Area and you don’t have them delivered to your home or business by the UND football staffers, student-athletes and athletic department officials in 30 minutes or less, they’ll be free.  

Eric Burton: So, you can guarantee that every UND fans living in the Greater Grand Forks Metro Area that orders a Season Ticket will have it in 30 minutes or less?

Dexter Albrecht : I don’t think I can 100% guarantee that, and that is kind of the hook for this. You can get to most places in town in 30 minutes or less, but we’re limited on cars, drivers, and coaches so if we get swamped with orders it will be difficult to get tickets to everyone. We could be giving some away or a lot away depending on how many orders we get.

The main reason we wanted to do with this was to create awareness to the program, and the great home schedule we have. Last year football attendance increased over 1300 fans per game and currently we have already sold close to as many season tickets as where we finished last year, so we’re on pace for some great ticket numbers. Along with that we traditionally have a lot of people that wait until the week of the first game to purchase season tickets. We wanted to give those people a reason not to wait to purchase their season tickets, as well as maybe get some people who were on the fence about getting them.

If you break it down with the schedule we have I really think you will have a hard time finding a better value for your entertainment dollar in the state of North Dakota, Southern Manitoba, or Northwest Minnesota than season tickets for as low as $75 a seat for 7 home football games with 5 of them being against ranked opponents.

Eric Burton: Also, will the team deliver season the tickets to a person’s place of work if they want; if that person lives in the Greater Grand Forks Metro Area?

Dexter Albrecht: We will deliver these tickets to anywhere that our fans would like, as long as it’s in Grand Forks/East Grand Forks city limits. Home, work, or your own business it doesn’t matter to us.

Eric Burton: Taking a look at the UND football schedule, it looks like UND’s schedule is again one of the toughest home schedules in FCS Football?

Dexter Albrecht: It does look like a tough home schedule and I know the coaches and players are fired up for the season. While it’s a tough home schedule it’s also a very attractive schedule for fans.

To give you an idea of how attractive the schedule is for no just UND fans but casual college football fans, we have actually had multiple people who have purchased UND season tickets this year that have also told me they also have football season tickets for North Dakota State, and Montana State. I’ve also had people tell me they are fans of NDSU, Montana, and Montana St. first, but they live in the area and can’t make all of those schools games purchase season tickets with us because of the value of the tickets and the great home schedule we have. To me that’s great, we’ll take those fans and try and convert then to UND fans, or fans of both schools.  

I would also guess that we will probably have some of these fans of other schools who won’t purchase season tickets with us, but they will still come to a game or two of ours because of all the big games on our schedule. That’s a credit to the Big Sky Conference as well as schools like NDSU, SDSU, and USD. There are a lot of people in the state and region that cheer for success for all of the local Universities and casual college football fans in the Dakotas do not have very far to go anymore to see great college football week in and week out and that’s exciting for everyone.

I would also say that statement translate into all sports (basketball, volleyball, etc) with the four Dakota schools all being Division one now. With us being in a different conference we offer fans of those schools an opportunity to see schools they don’t normally see in the Missouri Valley Conference, and the Summit League which makes us a little unique and I think that is attractive to casual fans. They all know who Montana, Montana State and Eastern Washington are in football or who Weber State is in Men’s Basketball.

Goon’s World would like to thank Dexter Albrecht for stopping by and answering a few questions. UND opens the 2013 season against Valparaiso August 29, 2013,

at 7:00 p.m. at the Alerus Center.  

Season-ticket packages start at $75 per seat and are also available for purchase any time at undsports.com.

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A decent read?



Kurt Snibbe/ESPN.com

Proposed Fighting Sue helmet logo.



Someone posted this article on Sioux Sports – I believe it was a Bison fan. If you haven’t seen this it’s worth a quick look. The reason that UND hasn’t been in March Madness is that UND just finally finished their transition to Division I in all sports, I expect that eventually UND will make the NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball tourneys as well.

Low Graduation Rates? Fine with the NCAA. Two Feathers? OMG! Over at the University of North Dakota, the state's voters recently endorsed a referendum to drop the Fighting Sioux nickname. Right now the school's teams are the -- we'll get back to you on that, as UND teams have no nickname at the moment.

The NCAA ordered the University of North Dakota to drop the Fighting Sioux nickname and cease using a Sioux head image drawn by a Native American artist. The NCAA also ordered William & Mary to cease using a two-feathers sports logo. Yet the NCAA is fine with the University of Utah's American Indian nickname, the Utes, and its two-feathers logo.

What's the distinction here? Money. The North Dakota men's basketball team has not made the March Madness event in 20 years. William & Mary has never made the men's tournament. Neither the University of North Dakota nor William & Mary provides the NCAA with the only thing it cares about: greenback dollars. The University of Utah, on the other hand, has 26 March Madness appearances, including 12 of the past 20 tournaments. Because in the case of the Utes, the American Indian imagery generates cash for the NCAA, all is well.

Since the University of North Dakota needs a new nickname, TMQ proposes the Fighting Sue, perhaps with Johnny Cash theme music.

That being said, UND is usually in the NCAA Division I playoffs for hockey every season but once (missed NCAA playoffs in 2001-02) since 1997 and last season was the first time during the span that UND didn't wear the Fighting Sioux logo during the NCAA tourney. I am not so sure that the Johnny Cash Logo would catch on either. :) I did get a good chuckle out of that one though.

I do think it’s funny sometimes how the NCAA picks certain issues like Sports Team logos over more important issues like graduation rates.

Big Sky TV Launches Tonight

[OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE]

The Big Sky Conference and America ONE Sports recently agreed to a three-year contract extension, allowing fans and alumni to enjoy free video streams of most football, volleyball and men’s and women’s basketball games held in Big Sky venues.  The new contract also calls for events to be available through iOS and Android mobile devices free of charge. 

With the additions of North Dakota and Southern Utah as full members, and Cal Poly and UC Davis as football affiliate members, Big Sky TV will feature more events than ever.

“America ONE Sports has done a tremendous job distributing our video stream feeds for the last three years,’’ said Big Sky Conference assistant commissioner for media relations Jon Kasper. “Now, America ONE and the league are taking Big Sky TV mobile, something we think fans will appreciate.’’

Big Sky TV is entering its seventh season of service, and fourth with America ONE Sports. Through the years, Big Sky TV has brought thousands of events live and free of charge to computers, giving fans access to events that were previously unavailable to be seen. Fans can begin creating new accounts effective immediately.

“Big Sky TV represents the best of college sports and its members’ fans love their teams,” said Bruce Levine, America ONE Sports Director of Programming “We are extremely pleased to continue our association with the Big Sky Conference and for our part in keeping their fans connected with their favorite teams.”

In order to view games, viewers will need to log on to www.bigskytv.org , and create an account. Fans will then need to click on the Big Sky All-Access Pass to receive access to all events during the season. PC viewers also need to have the One Vision Plugin and Adobe Flash installed on their computers. Accounts created last season will work in 2012-13, however fans will need to make sure to click on this year’s Big Sky All-Access Pass.

Mobile viewing through iOS devices is available immediately. The Android version won’t be available until next week.

This season’s schedule of more than 500 events starts Thursday with football action. At 7 p.m. Central, North Dakota takes on South Dakota Mines from the Alerus Center in Grand Forks, N.D. At 7 p.m. Mountain, two-time co-Big Sky champion and fourth-ranked Montana State opens its season against Chadron State. At 7 p.m. Pacific, UC Davis takes on Azusa Pacific.

On Friday, volleyball makes its debut on Big Sky TV. North Dakota, Northern Colorado and Sacramento State are all hosting tournaments this weekend.

North Dakota opens against South Dakota at 7 p.m. Central, while defending Big Sky champion Northern Colorado takes on Oklahoma at 7 p.m. Mountain. At 6:30 p.m. Pacific, Sacramento State battles Boise State.

On Saturday, North Dakota plays at 1 p.m. and at 7 p.m. Central. Northern Colorado hits the court at Noon Mountain and 7 p.m. Mountain. Sacramento State plays at 1 p.m. Pacific, and again at 7:30 p.m. Pacific.

Saturday’s football slate includes two games. At 4 p.m. Pacific, Cal Poly welcomes San Diego to San Luis Obispo. At 5 p.m. Mountain, Portland State takes on NAIA power Carroll College at JELD-Wen Field. Montana’s home game against South Dakota will not be available on Big Sky TV, only at gogriz.com.

The 2012 football season will feature 12 games televised by ROOT SPORTS. Those games will not be available on Big Sky TV, but will be widely available across the nation in high definition on DirecTV and Dish Network, as well as through many cable providers in the Big Sky footprint.

In all more than 50 games will be video streamed on Big Sky TV.

Altru Health System, UND Announce Sports Medicine Partnership

Official Press Release

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – Altru Health System has pledged a $10 million gift to the University of North Dakota through the UND Foundation in support of a sports medicine partnership between Altru and UND. According to UND President Robert Kelley, $9 million will serve as the leadership gift for a new UND Athletics Complex, an indoor practice and competition facility on campus.

 “This is an important first step toward building a world-class sports medicine program,” Kelley said. “When completed, the indoor training facility will include space for academic and clinical studies on human performance and conditioning, which will greatly enhance the University’s and Altru’s roles in sports medicine.” The remaining $1 million is directed to support the replacement of the football turf at the Alerus Center.

 ABOUT THE PARTNERSHIP

President Kelley said the gift promotes an ongoing partnership between two of the region’s largest organizations, both of which are responsible for stewarding their resources in ways that improve our communities. Specifically, Altru Health System has been the University’s sports medicine provider for more than 20 years. 

“The indoor athletics complex will be an asset for the entire University and will impact health and wellness for the campus, the community, and the region. Together, we are implementing our missions to improve the health and enrich the lives of people in our region,” Kelley said.

“This partnership is part of a much larger initiative to improve the health of our entire community,” said Dave Molmen, Altru’s Chief Executive Officer. “This investment extends our educational partnership and provides a state-of-the-art educational laboratory for UND’s students to gain necessary experience in the field of sports medicine and thus, help feed our community with needed health professionals. In addition to training sports medicine professionals, the partnership will conduct research that will advance sports medicine knowledge and techniques. As we like to say, by working together, we all get better.”

Dr. Casey Ryan, Altru’s President, said that “The University plays a vital role in educating future health care professionals. This gift creates an opportunity to improve the university experience for the students, who we rely on as our future leaders to continue our mission of improving health and enriching life.” Altru and UND see this gift as an investment in training the best for the community.

 ABOUT THE GIFT

“This $10 million gift from Altru is one of the largest made in support of North Dakota Spirit | The Campaign for UND, which strives to raise $300 million for UND’s passionate students, inspirational educators, innovative programs and extraordinary places like the new athletics complex,” said President Kelley. It will be paid over 30 years.

Altru’s gift to UND is the most recent example of Altru Health System’s fulfillment of its mission by strengthening ties to other organizations. Last year, Altru became the first member in the nation of the Mayo Clinic Care Network. The relationship brings Mayo Clinic knowledge and expertise to Grand Forks by providing access to systems previously available only within Mayo Clinic. In 2010, Altru announced a gift of $6.5 million to the Grand Forks Park District and YMCA to enable them to replace and remodel fitness facilities.

“This gift will help build a transformational facility that is the essence of the North Dakota Spirit Campaign,” said Tim O’Keefe, Executive Vice President and CEO of the UND Alumni Association & Foundation. “This gift provides immediate excitement as well as the necessary momentum to raise the remaining $26 million of the $300 million goal.” Learn more about the campaign at spirit.und.edu.

 ABOUT THE FACILITY

The UND Athletics Complex will provide a state-of-the-art strength and conditioning area, a student-athlete academic center and sports medicine space for all UND Athletics teams. Additionally, it will provide a practice and training facility for the football, track and field and soccer teams. The facility will serve the community by offering a host site for youth athletics camps and college and youth track and field meets.

 “Our mission is to build champions, and this facility will play a key role in doing exactly that. As UND Athletics has made the commitment to excellence in Division I competition, the need for an indoor practice and competition facility on campus has become clear,” said UND Director of Athletics Brian Faison. “This is a game changer for UND Athletics.”

Are you ready for some football?

I know this isn’t hockey related but it should get you into the mood for the fall... I do think that it’s an exciting time in UND sports as they are now a full member of Division I sports and a member of the Big Sky Conference. The UND football team begins play against the BSC starting on August 30th against South Dakota Mines.