At 12:19 PM 2/14/00 -0600, David Parter wrote:
>   - travel issues:
>       - There are the occassional mid-week games in the WCHA (last
>         weekend, due to a basketball scheduling conflict, the St-Cloud
>         at Wisconsin series was Thursday-Friday), but they are rare.
>       - According to what I heard on the radio, Wisconsin leaves
>         Wednesday for their Friday-Saturday series at Anchorage.
>
>   - money issues:
>         for many WCHA schools, hockey is their only "income" sport. No
>         one wants to give up their home games with their big rivals,
>         which usually is Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. Those
>         games sell out and bring in the money. That is the reality. It
>         is also one of the reasons some of the schools were concerned
>         about expansion: trading a 2-game home sellout for 2 games with
>         a team no one has heard of is a money-losing situation.
 
 
The biggest problem is that these are two conflicting arguments.
 
If the team is the major revenue earner, then there should be no problems
with scheduling conflicts. With the possible exception of Minnesota, every
hockey team in the WCHA should (and likely does) have priority for
scheduling their games.
 
Furthermore, if these teams are bringing in the bucks then the extra
expense on travel shouldn't be a big deal either; and if the schools are so
concerned about the kids missing class, would it really be so much of an
expense to charter a flight once or twice per year?
 
And don't NoDak, CC and Minn pretty much sell out every game, regardless of
who they're playing? As for their opponents, if their seasonal revenue
hinges on those few visits by the "big" schools, they really need to rework
their budgets. Having one less visit every other year isn't that big of a dent.
 
As for Wisconsin leaving on Wednesday for a Friday-Saturday series... all
that does is show that the school could care less about their kids missing
class. There are direct flights DAILY between Minneapolis and Anchorage;
they could easily play a Friday-Saturday pairing and miss only one day of
class (and I'd bet like most schools, the players don't have too many
friday classes anyway).
 
 
greenie
 
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