For a certain state of mind

By Ron Kantowski

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 | 2 a.m.

I saw a quote the other day that said if people were smart, they would move to North Dakota.

North Dakota?

My eyebrow arched, like the late, great John Belushi’s, forming an inverted “V” at my receding hairline.

North Dakota? Really?

This I had to investigate.

The first thing I found was a quote about North Dakota that said, “Winnipeg is like Fargo, only without the action.”

So it’s got that going for it. North Dakota also is the largest U.S. producer of sunflower seeds. Plus, it’s got a cool nickname — the Peace Garden State.

It also expects to have a $700 million surplus in the state government. Property taxes have been slashed, saving taxpayers $295 million. Lawmakers have voted to increase spending on education and health care. North Dakota’s unemployment rate for April was 4 percent — the lowest in the United States.

Meanwhile, back in Las Vegas, UNLV Athletic Director Mike Hamrick was doing cartwheels upon learning the NCAA was going to waive membership fees on account of the flagging economy, thereby saving its members $1,800 each.

Ooooh, a whole $1,800. Budget crisis averted!

I remember when $1,800 was considered lunch money for Rollie Massimino. (Actually, the former Rebels basketball coach was paid an annual $375,000 under-the-table stipend for as long as he stayed employed at UNLV, which wasn’t very long after that secret got out.)

North Dakota is the new Rollie Massimino. It has so much money it doesn’t know what to do with it. It even has begun recruiting laid-off workers from Michigan and Ohio. If you’re down on your luck and feeling unwanted, North Dakota just might be the place for you.

I heard UNLV baseball coach Buddy Gouldsmith submitted his application for residency years ago.

Minot? Why not?

There are only two problems I can see with loading up the truck and moving to Bismarck:

January and February.

It gets cold in North Dakota, and based on Marge Gunderson’s wardrobe in “Fargo,” it’s not a dry chill.

Plus, if you’re a sports fan, what do you do after the college hockey season ends?

The University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux hockey team plays in “The Ralph,” short for Ralph Engelstad Arena, the state-of-the-art facility the late owner of the Imperial Palace bestowed upon his alma mater, where he was a goalie.

Wayne Gretzky has called The Ralph “one of the most beautiful buildings we have in North America.”

The UND Fighting Sioux basketball team plays at “The Betty,” short for Betty Engelstad Arena, a sister facility to The Ralph that opened in 2004. Betty was Ralph’s wife. If they moved Mount Rushmore a couple of hundred miles north, there would be six faces carved into its side.

Relocating to North Dakota also would be the perfect opportunity for local sports fans to get reacquainted with Romel Beck, the former UNLV basketball sharpshooter who averaged 15.9 points for the Dakota Wizards of the NBA D-League last year. Beck plays internationally for Mexico and domestically for North Dakota, so, like James Taylor, it can be assumed he’s seen fire and (freezing) rain.

After North Dakota hockey and the D-League, there’s the Roger Maris museum in his hometown of Fargo and the American Legion World Series, also in Fargo. When the ice melts, there are the Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks of baseball’s Northern League. You never know when Oil Can Boyd might launch another comeback.

The F-M Redhawks play their home games at Newman Outdoor Field, whose fences are the same distance from home plate as those at Yankee Stadium in 1961, where hometown hero Maris broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. Newman Outdoor Stadium used to be called “The Nest” before that guy from “Seinfeld” purchased the naming rights. (Not really, it was Newman Outdoor Advertising that paid $1.5 million.)

What else can I tell you about North Dakota sports? Phil Jackson played college ball there. So did Dave Osborn, the former All-Pro running back for the Vikings. Baseball’s Darin Erstad prepped at Jamestown; Lute Olson at Grand Forks, where he played on the 1952 state championship team. Dale Brown, the former LSU basketball coach, earned 12 letters at Minot State; Bismarck’s Brian Voss was named pro bowler of the year in 1998.

Josh Duhamel, the Emmy-award winning actor and star of the NBC show “Las Vegas,” was born in Minot. He drove the pace car at last month’s Indy 500.

“We all ought to move to North Dakota,” joked Raymond C. Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association. At least I think he was joking.

One last thing you might find interesting before purchasing one of those parkas with the fur around the hood and heading to Lawrence Welk country (the famous champagne band leader was born in Strasburg in 1903.):

There actually was a pro baseball team called the Minot Why Nots, which played in the old Northern League in 1917. But when I clicked on the Internet link for more information, I was redirected to a generic Minot Web site.

On the right side of the home page there was an ad for Las Vegas vacations.