Big Ten to add Hockey
I think I know where most of us stand on this...but I look forward to MCA's take, in particular. The Strib article claims that the WCHA will have an "interlocking" schedule with the Big Ten, since the Big Ten schools will still need a lot of games to fill out a schedule. Apparently, the final domino was Penn State committing to add a D-1 hockey program.
Overall, kind of a bummer to see the Gophers leave the WCHA, but it sounds like they'll still play North Dakota, UMD, St. Cloud and others on a regular basis.
7 Comments:
P.S. Big Ten hockey will be a 6-team league, including:
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Penn State
March 21, 2011 at 7:22 PM
And there goes the neighborhood. Feels kinda lame.
March 21, 2011 at 9:10 PM
my tradition hat says this is like the usfl - a stupid idea nobody was asking for.
on the other hand, it's going to crush some of these wcha schools to not play MN and WI and will do the same with the shitty CCHA. so, i suppose it will be good for us. either way, the way lucia has run the program the last few years, maybe Penn State's glorified club team is more our speed.
going to be sad to see the end of the long rivalries that have become pretty great at the U - especially UMD and UND. it's funny that we are now no longer in a league that has four other teams from minnesota.
In any event, it just doesn't feel right. Maybe I just fear change. or maybe i fear what happens when people simply can't let a good thing be. maybe im just having visions of an 18 game nfl schedule.
March 21, 2011 at 11:51 PM
Lame. Could they make this like the Big East in Basketball where you have additional teams that only play hockey as part of the Big Ten? Add the UMD, ND and SCST of the world? Just a thought.
March 22, 2011 at 10:37 AM
Hate is much too mild a word for my feelings about this. Mark my words - this will destroy college hockey as we know it.
More than half the charm of the sport, IMHO, is the ability of schools without significant athletic departments and 5 million alumni, like NoDak, CC, Denver, Lake St., Vermont, and Maine, to not only field teams, but to compete for championships. Implode the WCHA and CCHA and half those schools become immediately irrelevant.
You may as well just make St. Cloud and UMD’s programs D-II. It’s hard enough for them to compete with the Gophers and BC and Michigan as is, but take the only two large state schools out of their conference and they’re dead. Some school with zero hockey history, in a state with very little hockey tradition or culture, but now having massive resources and a television network to throw at its hockey team, like Illinois or Ohio State, is going to absolutely blow up these programs.
Good for Penn State, but they should have been pushed to join Hockey East or the ECAC. We don’t need a 6-team league where one of the teams is still a neophyte on the scene, a second literally just made the jump to varsity status, and the other four hold about half the national championships in the sport’s history. Some people are talking about Illinois and/or Northwestern adding varsity teams, too. First of all, they’ll suck for at least a decade, so why would we want to be playing them all the time? And secondly, adding one of them basically kills one of the Alaska or northern Michigan teams. That’s all those schools have.
Apparently, the member schools of the Big Ten with hockey programs do not understand the product they’ve got with their current conferences. A Big Ten hockey conference is unnecessary and potentially disastrous.
I know this sounds provincial and protectionist and all, but this is strategically not a good thing for the sport. I understand that college sports is driven by the dollar, but this is seriously shortsighted. There’s a limited ceiling on the revenue the Big Ten member schools can bring in from hockey, cable network or not. And that revenue pales, and will always pale, in comparison to football and basketball, which will continue to account for 95% of athletic revenues. So the upside here isn’t that great. You’re not going to get the Chicago, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis markets to give a shit about college hockey, and you’re not going to get Minneapolis or Milwaukee or Detroit to care more than they already do (they have their big rivalries and conference traditions already). You’d also end up with even more of a drastic have’s and have-not’s system than you do already, which would drive away tons of existing fans and not really bring in replacements.
This is terrible longterm for the Gophers in terms of backyard recruiting. Lucia’s already losing a lot of in-state talent, but it’s only going to get worse if you replace the prospect of UMD or Northern Michigan with Illinois. That’s going to tempt a lot more of the Twin Cities high school kids to leave the state – they’ll be close to home so it’s preferable to going out East somewhere, and it’s a huge school with a big campus, better academic reputation than any school in the WCHA other than Wisco, and it’s close to a major city. Minnesota will be supplying most of the Big Ten with hockey talent.
College hockey has a great three-pronged balancing act going. I’d rather see Minnesota and Wisconsin separated from Michigan and Michigan State the same way they’re all separated from BC and BU – they all carry the banner for their conferences and keep a balance through the college hockey landscape. We're now going to piss on that, too, by creating a superconference with four of the seven best programs in one conference, and North Dakota orphaned. The CCHA and WCHA will be reduced to ECAC status within a decade.
So, FUCK THIS. It's horrible, horrible news.
March 22, 2011 at 12:57 PM
MCA - Ski U Mah, my brotha. Nicely put.
I'd like to add that aside from the no-upside MCA mentioned, now the Gophers (rightly or wrongly) will be the Notre Dame of college hockey who were once considered the elite but whenever a Tulsa or Navy beat them it becomes "news" - this kind of thing tears down the Goliath more than it builds up the David - not a good thing for a University already treading water in a sea of retarded athletic development.
March 22, 2011 at 6:55 PM
Brilliant, as usual, MCA. Here is a comment from a Nerd U blog that I read...obviously this is pure hearsay, but definitely backs up MCA's contention that the Gophers stand only to lose on this proposition:
"Minny had to really be pulled along, apparently, as they stand to lose out in terms of (hockey-only) revenue, and they were apparently told to 'take one for the team'. There has to be more to the reasoning why B1G is now sponsoring the sport."
In other words, Czar Delaney told the Gophers to bend over and take it, even though the Gophers' hockey-only revenues are going to decline because of this (since they'll have to revenue-share with the rest of the conference). Also, the general consensus seems to be that other Big Ten schools will be adding programs...this guy is saying that NU might do it, given the Chicago TV market. But as MCA points out, adding NU hockey is NOT going to delivery an incremental Chicago-area TV audience/revenue.
March 23, 2011 at 3:38 PM
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