We have reached game week for the 2012 season. Tomorrow is the first of the weekly press conferences with Craig Bohl, Jeff and I will start the weekly video blog after those as well. Meanwhile, let’s take a closer look at the opening opponent on the 2012 schedule; Robert Morris, a team Bison fans know well.

ROBERT MORRIS INFO

2011 Record: 2-9; finished 8th in Northeast Conference (9 teams in league)

• RMU brings back 17 starters; 7 on offense, 8 on defense, 2 on special teams; Joe Walton, the former NY Jets head coach, is still the head man, he’s the only coach the team has ever known, founding the team back in 1994, he has the field named after him in Moon Township, Pennsylvania.
• This Robert Morris team is vastly different than the one that came to Fargo in November of 2010, that was a senior-dominated team that went 8-2 during the season and earned the first auto-bid out of the Northeast Conference. The one important player that is back from the 2010 game is quarterback Jeff Sinclair, just a sophomore when he was 9 of 24 for 146 yards and an interception in that playoff game, he’s now a senior, coming off a year when he completed 50% of his passes.
• Most Bison fans will know the Northeast Conference doesn’t fully fund for football, but they are getting there, in 2011 the conference upped its scholarship limit, going from 30 to 40 scholarships, so we’re certain to see more athletes on the field Saturday.
• One thing is for certain, RMU never played in front of a crowd that big or loud that November night in 2010, Joe Walton told me that week he had pumped in loud music to prepare the team and was warned by the cops that week to turn it down because the neighbors by the field were complaining. That night 12, 202 made the Dome sound very loud, Saturday night will be a sellout crowd, a banner celebration and a throng of people ready to yell, a scene Robert Morris has never been in before.
• For your nerd stats, here’s a couple; Robert Morris was actually a pretty important guy in the American Revolution; he was an original signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; he was a major financier of the Revolution(I was an American History minor in college).
• Gene Taylor told me the two schools were talking for a while about playing, even before the 2010 playoff game happened, rare to see two schools play this soon after, the Colonials must like the Peace Garden State, besides trips here in 2010 and 2012, the RMU hockey team came to Grand Forks in January of 2011 and the football team will play UND in September of 2014.

It’s game week folks we’re ready, a busy week here on the blog, TV, radio and the paper to get you set and then make sure you’re back here on Saturday, Pre-Game Show, the Live In-game Blog, and then complete Post-Game Show with Jeff and I. Happy New Year!