Nick Smith, Bismarck Tribune --- O’Keefe said keeping the nickname would have a major financial impact on UND’s athletic programs. He said it also would have an economic impact on both the university and the city of Grand Forks.Some bloggers have tried to twist the words and put out misinformation and have gone so far to say that respected UND Alumni are liars… Those are pretty big charges, but hey lets not let facts get in the way of a good argument. The words are right there in black and white and I underlined them. This is the same person that has been dead wrong or at least missing the mark through most of the nickname issue.
He said UND is unable to play against several universities due to the nickname. Teams that won’t play UND so far are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota-Morris.
O’Keefe said South Dakota State University won’t be playing UND’s football team following the teams’ next scheduled game. A cross country meet and a volleyball tournament at SDSU also have been pulled.
Justin Sell, the SDSU athletic director, told The Associated Press that the school doesn’t have a written nickname policy. He expressed surprise that the UND Foundation had brought up the issue on Tuesday. Sell said he’d spoken with UND officials a year ago about putting a hold on scheduling further games.
“To be honest with you, this kind of came out of the blue for us,” he said about the UND group publicizing the issue. “We’re just taking a wait-and-see approach until we get more information on where things sit. It’s as simple as that for us.”
If you read the screen shot about and then read the paragraph that was pulled from the Bismarck Tribune article you will see that the message is pretty consistent, they are saying the same thing. I am not sure how this proves that anyone is not being forth coming. I also read where someone said that this is an old issue, it has been common knowledge that SDSU wasn’t going to play UND if they kept the Fighting Sioux nickname.
