UND and the Big Sky: Who said what, when?



Big Sky Conference logo

 This is beginning to sound a lot like "What did you know and when did you know it?" To me it's also beginning to resemble a Charlie Foxtrot. I wonder what would happen if Al Carlson found out one of the University Presidents from the state of North Dakota had undermined the process?

Chuck Haga, Grand Forks Herald ---- Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, used North Dakota open records law last week to obtain emails between UND President Robert Kelley, the Big Sky Conference and the NCAA since Jan. 1, apparently seeking to learn whether Kelley was working behind the scenes to counter Carlson’s efforts to save the Fighting Sioux nickname.

The Herald also obtained the emails, one of which indicates that Kelley knew about a letter coming from the Big Sky warning that the nickname issue could “destroy” Division I athletics at UND.

Through a spokesman, Kelley denied again Tuesday that he sought the Big Sky statement.

Carlson, the House majority leader and author of a new state law requiring UND to continue using the Fighting Sioux name and logo in defiance of NCAA policy and scheduled sanctions, has raised questions about Kelley’s role in the controversy.

Objecting last week to Kelley’s calling for repeal of the nickname law — while Carlson was trying to arrange a meeting with NCAA officials to press the state’s case for retaining it — the legislative leader said “the well has been poisoned many times by people at the university, setting us up for failure.”

He also suggested last week that Kelley or others at UND encouraged Big Sky leaders to issue their warning about the potentially dire consequences of allowing the conflict with the NCAA to continue.

Carlson, visiting Medora, N.D., with his wife, said Tuesday he has received the emails “but I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet. I’ll do that when I get home.

“I just want to see what the communications were between those folks,” he said. “There might be nothing there. But I’m still convinced a lot of this was set up for failure, and I’m not in favor of that.”

Going forward with President Kelley...

This is beginning to become a friggen side show… To quote Charlie Harper from Two and a Half Men,” I have a bad feeling about this.” It almost appears that nothing good can come out of this fight going forward. On one hand I am sick and tired of being lectured by a Left Coast Liberal that was educated at University of California Berkley (yeah that one, the bastion of liberal thinking)... I also don't need him to tell us what is good for the University North Dakota, it’s like we are a bunch of unwashed rubes.

This is the same University president that has never attended, nor has any emotional attachment to the University of North Dakota or the Fighting Sioux nickname, if anything he has seen the Fighting Sioux nickname as an annoyance or an impediment to UND’s future… I mean think about this; if President Kelley is the university president that's on board, when the Fight Sioux nickname is discarded to the scrap heap of history, President Kelley would immediately be knighted to rock star status among like minded folk (that's the out of touch p.c. do gooders). So I don't really think it’s a stretch to say that President Kelley’s only attachment to the University of North Dakota is a pay check; a very large one I might add, according to the Fargo Forum Kelley makes $330,158 per year.

Unwinnable fight...

On the other hand, I don’t think this is going to be a winnable fight, I am not capitulating, however, I can’t see the NCAA moving one bit on this issue, the NCAA is run by likeminded people that resemble UND President Robert O. Kelley. I have also seen where many of the legal minds say that UND has no standing, nor a snowballs chance in hell of being able to sue the NCAA in court again because they already signed a settlement with the NCAA.

I also think keeping the Fighting Sioux nickname could affect UND’s athletic departments going forward, there is no way in hell that I am going to watch UND and the University of Sioux Falls play in football. I will however attend a football game between UND and any of the Big Sky Schools. I also think that we won’t be able to see the University of North Dakota whoop the Gophers or the Badgers in hockey if the University of North Dakota retains the Fighting Sioux nickname.

I am going to go on record and say I don’t like this one bit and again I am not surrendering but I don’t see a way this works out… I don’t see any other way this ends for the University of North Dakota can keep the Fighting Sioux nickname without facing sanctions from the NCAA… I truly believe that Al Carlson and the UND delegation will go to their meeting with the NCAA and they will tell them that their stance on the nickname is not going to change.

I will also predict that the NCAA doesn’t care what the UND delegation will have to say on this matter, because their minds have already been made up, it doesn't matter to them if them that the Standing Rock Tribal council is “not allowing” their people to have a vote on the measure. In the end it also won’t matter that the Spirit Lake Tribe endorsed UND’s use of the Fighting Sioux nickname, the name thing the NCAA will say is that the University of North Dakota only got one of the two Sioux Tribes to approve the Fighting Sioux nickname. In the end UND will end up changing the Fighting Sioux nickname or risk not being a member in the Big Sky conference.