Well, maybe not the FINAL comment... I've been away, and didn't get a chance
to post this while the thread was "du jour", but offer it anyway.
One of the more important aspects of the competitiveness (or lack thereof) to
be found in any new D-1 conference is this: within any given league, there is
a natural level of competition that prevails from year to year, and it's
sufficient to sustain both player and fan.
What did he say? Think of it this way: in D-III ECAC the South Division is
the weak sister... but within the division, the rivalry is intense, the play
spirited, the fans vocal, and the season just as long as it is for, say,
Middlebury or Augsburg or Wisconsin/Superior or Harvard or Michigan or
Denver. Well, ALMOST as long as for the D-I's, but who's counting, in this
allegory? The point is, that until or unless the new MAAC members play
OUTSIDE of their self-contained conference, they'll be more or less on a par
with the other members of the MAAC, and everyone will be (relatively) happy.
Now, having said THAT, let's consider what kind of Division I competition, as
measured against the existing D-I'ers, it will be: pretty piss-poor. These
are schools who've played D-III schedules for years, and haven't even been
good THERE. What kind of talent will they attract? At least initially,
they'll get all the D-I wannabe's who'll be happy to go home at Xmas break and
brag about being "D-I" players, when the truth is, they couldn't even cut it
with the top-tier D-III programs. It will be a good ten years, minimum,
before any one of them will be ready to vie for a berth in the D-I NCAA's --
if they can get there that quickly. What better example than UMass-Amherst?
I can remember when they revived their program, hearing one of the assistant
coaches tell a prospective player: "We're aiming to be the Wisconsin [in
hockey] of the East." Well, I submit that the Minutemen are a good long way
from being contenders even in Hockey East, much less on a national scale.
Maybe they're still aiming high -- I hope so, else what's the point? -- but
they're just not attracting the kind of talent they need to be taken
seriously. And even at that, they'll take players away from the MAAC, just
for the chance to play in Hockey East.
Does this mean that the MAAC is doomed from the start? Well, no... and yes.
Doomed to be second-tier Division I, yes, but not for ever and ever. I don't
have any doubt that the MAAC will survive and even thrive. But it won't be
"competitive" until all five D-1 conferences are diluted more or less equally.
But by that time the memory of "pure" Division I competition and talent will
be but a dim memory, in the same way that The Original Six are faded images of
the NHL. The fans will be happy, the old-timers will die off and take their
reminiscences with them, and no one will be the wiser. Could Muhammad Ali
have beaten Rocky Marciano? Was Ted Williams a better player than Carl
Yastrezemski? Could Argentina Rocca have beaten Randy Savage? "Virtual
reality" computer matches will "prove" one premise or the other, but in our
hearts we know that Bobby Orr could skate circles around Wayne Gretzky, and
Eddie Jeremiah could strategize Red Berenson right off the bench and out of
the rink. Sure. There's nothing better than an unanswerable question for
keeping a debate alive!
Besides, the whole thing seems a world away when the temperature's pushing 90
and the humidity's the same. And remember: a hundred years from now, no one
will know the difference. It'll all be a buncha statistics, and we all know
how easy it is to lie with statistics...
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