The University of North Dakota hockey team whipped Quinnipiac and St. Cloud State last weekend at Fargo’s Scheels Arena to qualify for college hockey’s Frozen Four. This is the pinnacle of NCAA Division I hockey, with four teams playing down to see who wins the national championship.
UND has won seven national titles since 1959, though none since 2000. This year’s Frozen Four appearance is the team’s seventh in the 11 seasons Dave Hakstol has coached UND. This fact – six previous semifinal appearances without a title – is a source of much consternation for UND fans, although they pretend it isn’t by saying it’s an amazing accomplishment to reach so many Frozen Fours.
North Dakota State won its fourth straight Football Championship Subdivision national title in January, riding the heroics of Carson Wentz, R.J. Urzendowski and Esley Thorton to edge Illinois State. The Dallas suburb of Frisco again became a big Bison party as an estimated 17,000 fans made their way to north Texas.
The four consecutive titles are unprecedented in FCS and a source of considerable pride for Bison fans, as are the two visits to Fargo made by ESPN’s highly viewed “College GameDay” program.
UND is a premier program in Division I hockey. NDSU is the premier program in FCS (formerly Division I-AA) football.
Let the barking between the fan bases begin again as they debate the following question for the fourth straight year: Which is a bigger deal, UND hockey or NDSU football?
UND fans will say their club is the bigger deal because Division I hockey is the highest level of college hockey, while FCS is a notch below the highest level of college football. UND fans will point to the number of players who’ve advanced to the NHL. They’ll point to sellout after sellout at the 12,000-seat Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks.
NDSU fans will say their club is the bigger deal because football, even at the FCS level, is America’s top sport. They’ll say hockey is a regional, niche sport that few people outside the Upper Midwest and East care about. They’ll point out the 18,700 fans that show up for every home game at the Fargodome, and the 10,000 or so who tailgate before every game in Fargo.
If television ratings mean anything, Bison fans have the edge in the argument. NDSU’s victory over Illinois State drew 1.4 million viewers on ESPN. The games in 2014 Frozen Four in Philadelphia, when UND lost to Minnesota on a last-second goal, averaged 471,000 on ESPN.
Of course, if you’re going strictly by TV ratings the NDSU men’s basketball team would be the biggest deal of all. The Bison’s game against Gonzaga in the NCAA tournament drew 2.1 million viewers on TNT – and that doesn’t include the millions more who viewed the game strictly online. That’s the funniest things of all: March Madness is by far the most popular sporting event of the three we’re talking about here, yet UND and NDSU fans bicker over hockey and football.
It’s all about the round ball!
The truth is, both college hockey and FCS football are regionalized, niche sports. College hockey is king in Grand Forks and regionally popular across North Dakota and Minnesota. FCS football is king in Fargo and regionally popular across North Dakota and parts of western Minnesota.
The argument is really more about entrenched fans of rival schools refusing to acknowledge their hated opponent deserves any credit whatsoever. It’s likely much like the politically charged partisanship in which we currently reside. The far right wing and the far left wing of the political spectrum yell louder than everybody else and make us believe the whole world is divided. In fact, most reside solidly in the middle somewhere.
Same with the UND hockey-NDSU football debate, I believe. Most North Dakota sports fans, other than the hard cores of either school, think both programs are excellent, which they are.
So which is the bigger deal?
It’s an unwinnable argument. I’ll go with what I hinted toward earlier: The Bison men’s basketball team has qualified for two consecutive NCAA tournaments, three in seven years, and won a game last March against Oklahoma. Did anybody imagine NDSU getting to the Big Dance so often, so quickly – and WINNING a game – when the school went Division I? I think not.
How’s that for a bailout?
(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO in Fargo-Moorhead. He can be heard 2-5 p.m. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)