originally private mail, Steve suggests this might add to our discussions here on Hockey-L..wts Great article, Steve. Thanks! I wish I had some ideas. I really like having 4 more-or-less equal conferences. It makes for good comparisons and talk. The local team and the "local" conference will be important to the game attendees, and that may maximize local involvement and total revenues. But a super conference has the potential to draw national attention through participation of the bigger schools (still must expand to other big-name schools) and have play at the highest level. This sort of sounds like what happened 15-18 years ago in youth hockey in Eastern Maine. I was an administrator of a 600+ kid, 7 town conference. Some parents wanted their kids to play the best competition and others were quite happy just to have their kids participate. As is quite common and accepted now, we formed "travel" teams that played all over New England and the Maritimes and downplayed the must-win attitude somewhat in the remaining house leagues. That lifted the competition for the best players and our High School teams became much better and kids were now able to move on to D-3 ... and a few here-and-there to D-1 college hockey. But the reasons we did that in Youth Hockey are not present in the present D-I. The Ivies and ECAC limit participation a bit more than everyone else, but overall all conferences are relatively equal with good teams and others. What is to be gained by a super conference? Isn't D-I our current super conference and D-2/3 the other "house teams"? Just rambling, wayne Wayne T. Smith Systems Group -- CAPS [log in to unmask] University of Maine System Co-owner of the College Hockey lists - Hockey-L/Info-Hockey-L/Hockey3 HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.