I will try not to flame (no guarantees!!).  Let's take a look at your
proposal and what it means.

You will take a school like RPI (one of only 3 of the current ECAC teams to
have ever won a national championship) and relegate them to division 3
because RPI (like Clarkson) is division 3 in all other sports.  As I think
you will agree, placing a team in division 3 will automatically make them a
division 3 team.  The scholarships go away, the better players with
aspirations of going pro will no longer look to schools like RPI or Clarkson
because the route to the NHL becomes much more dubious when you play
division 3. You could be a great division 3 player but, frankly, who's
watching.

Ever been to the Field House when RPI plays Cornell?  It's probably like a
Clarkson-SLU games except that the Field House holds 5000+.  How many fans
do you think we'd see at a match up between RPI and SUNY-Potsdam?

Yes, it's been a long time since RPI has been in the national spotlight.
But you don't have to go back too many years in ECAC history to see how
topsy turvy it can get.  Exclude Cornell who always manages to skate near
the top and Harvard who usually (but not always ) is up there and you will
see that up until this decade, Brown, Dartmouth,Princeton and Yale were
notorious bottom dwellers.

BC in division 1?  Makes sense.  Remember when BC won the title in 2001 in
Albany?  It was the first time they won the title since 1949.

So let's go with your idea of the new paradigm.  The perennial powerhouses
get bigger and the non-division 1 schools go away.  You've just destroyed
the hockey programs at 24 schools (58 current teams less the 34 left after
your purge).

The next question is obvious.  Why?  What evidence do you have that by
eliminating the smaller schools, that hockey will, all of a sudden, become a
national sport?  Been following the TV ratings for the NHL lately?  Look
like they're blooming into a national sport in the US?

And what do you have left?  You used BC - Michigan as an example.  What
about North Dakota, Miami, Bowling Green (I can name a dozen others)? Are
these schools that have national sports recognition?  No offense to the
Fighting ex-Sioux, but who in the world has ever heard of North Dakota
unless they're already a hockey fan?

And one last item.  Let's just suppose that you're right.  Let's suppose
that thinning the herd works and all of a sudden there's a TV contract and
overwhelming success for college hockey.  What happens then?  NC$$ steps in
and raises the ticket prices so that only the rich can afford them?  The
money in college hockey gets so overwhelming that the inevitable corruption
follows, graduation rates drop as the world's top hockey players go to
college for the sole purpose of being noticed on their way to the NHL?
Pretty soon, we'll have have another BASKETBALL.

The moral of my story is, be careful what you wish for!!!

(See how good I was.  I never even mentioned that RPI has won two national
titles, but Clarkson hasn't won any ;-)


On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Joe LaCour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> At great risk of being burned at the stake ---
>
> Hockey will not expand until it breaks the paradigm.  To do that, The
> Powers That Be must decide if they want to be a (primarily) Northern USA
> niche sport or a national sport.  If it is to be a National Sport, it has to
> get more name recognition schools in the game and in the tournament.   What
> happened in last year's tournament was nice, but that needs to be a one-off
> and get the name schools back in there.
>
> It's real nice that UNO and BSU are now in the WCHA, but they're going to
> be bottom dwellers for the foreseeable future, and unless they catch
> lightning in a bottle come tournament time, they have no shot whatsoever of
> making the NCAA tournament.  Ditto for UAH assuming they get accepted into
> the CCHA. And frankly, the ECAC is now like the Ivy League in basketball -
> primarily a one and done league.  So just like all the other college sports,
> there are the perennial sharks and the perennial minnows and TV just wants
> to see the sharks come the post season.
>
> To that end I am being Curtis LeMay on this - blow it all up and start anew
> with only D-1 schools qualifying for the D-1 tournament.  D-I will be down
> to 34 teams, which means the best we can hope for is 8 teams to make the
> tournament - I doubt the NCAA will stretch the access ratios to get to 12 or
> keep it at 16.  They'll be 4 at large berths divided up between the HWA and
> HEA.  I can't see the ECAC or Ivy getting more than one bid.  So, here we
> are:
>
> NCAA Division 1:
> Hockey West (10 teams can grow 2 more) -- Denver*, North Dakota*,
> Wisconsin*, Minnesota*, Michigan*, Michigan State*, Notre Dame*, Bowling
> Green, Miami (OH)*, Ohio State
>
> Hockey East (9 teams - can grow 3) -- Maine* BC*, BU*, Northeastern,
> Providence, Massachusetts, Vermont*, New Hampshire*, Connecticut
>
> ECAC League (9/3):  Air Force, Army, Holy Cross, Sacred Heart, Colgate,
> Quinnipiac, Niagara, Canisius, Robert Morris
>
> Ivy League(6/2):  Brown, Cornell*, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale
>
> NCAA Division 2:
> East:  AIC, Bentley, Mercyhurst, Lowell, Merrimack, + 6 DII playing D3
> West:  Alaska, AK-Anchorage, Ferris State, Lake Superior, Nebraska - Omaha,
> Western Michigan, Alabama - Huntsville, Bemidji*, Michigan Tech,
> MSU-Mankato, UM-Duluth*, St. Cloud St., Colorado Coll* (they're going to
> have to move up, sorry, but D-III doesn't exist out there, but they'll keep
> the scholarships).
>
> NCAA Division 3
> Clarkson, St. Lawrence*, RPI, Union, RIT + 72 more
>
> The * schools have made the Frozen Four since 2000
>
> Having gotten rid of the no-names, there is a stronger possiblity of a
> national TV contract (Yea, who am I kidding).   Maybe E$PN, maybe the NHL
> network, but they will have name recognition schools to work with.  As much
> as I love Clarkson, we are not a well known school outside of the hockey
> world.   Who would care if we were on National TV?  Would the casual fan,
> who has no knowledge of college hockey. tune into see Clarkson - SLU?  But
> put Michigan vs. BC on, and BOOM!  instant name recognition and you may draw
> the casual fan in.  You could even do a Hockey East vs. Hockey West shootout
> where we have schools travel across the country to take on their
> counterparts on a weekend.  Instant made for TV events!
>
> You can talk all you want about traditions, but when the gold talks,
> tradition has a way of being squeezed out.  My only concern is that some
> schools have arenas that were designed for D-I and now they will be in D-II
> or D-III.  They may have a lot of excess capacity on their hands.  In fact,
> CC probably has the most to lose in this scenario.  Their natural rivals are
> up in Division I and I do not think CC wants to go all the way up there. The
> Denver and USAFA games were sell outs.  Will UNO or the Alaskas tickle the
> fancy of the folks around Colorado Springs?
>
> What schools may jump in?  One criteria is that you have to have your own
> rink.  Rent-a-rink teams must be the primary tenant with their own locker
> room / shower facilities.  So let's try Iowa State and Illinois to HW, Rhode
> Island and/or Penn State to HEA, Navy  to the ECAC, and Columbia and Penn to
> the Ivy League.
>
> I will now don my asbestos suit and be prepared for the flames.
>
> Joe LaCour
> CCT '77 & '78
>
> PS, this really destroys D-I women's hockey.
>