Now that this
yet-to-be-named six team "super league" consisting of Colorado College, Denver, Miami, Minnesota Duluth, Nebraska-Omaha and North Dakota has been announced can we all just sit back, take a long deep breath (maybe a few), think about this rationally and consider the possibility that this could be a great thing for college hockey?
To repeat what I said in the fall when Penn State officially announced their intentions to jump to DI and in the spring when the Big Ten Conference was announced, yes…these are power house teams and yes…even at their worst they will be very good, but if they beat up on each other on a regular basis, someone has to lose. Given that, it's highly unlikely that ALL of these teams will make the NCAA tournament like many of them have done for several years. Just like in every other conference, there will be haves and have-nots and some of these top-tier teams will end up being have-nots.
Of those proclaiming that this new "super league" will be the death of college hockey, they are citing two things to make their case. The first is that this was a sneaky, backdoor move by the five WCHA schools involved and I won't disagree with you there. They could have (and probably should have) made their concerns known during the league meetings earlier this year, but they didn't. So, you can either gripe about it and take the victim approach and wallow in your own self-pity or you can take it like the upstanding, tradition-worthy programs you claim to be and move forward on a path of success with or without their help.
The second point of contention (and by far the most popular) is the assumption that the remaining schools in the WCHA and CCHA will be left for dead and that these top tier programs won't schedule games with them and will turn a blind eye to the smaller schools who rely on hosting games with these big-time programs for gate receipts to fund their programs. Like
I mentioned today on The Pipeline Show, I look at Alabama-Huntsville as a big, fat, shiny example of why you're wrong.
When the CHA disbanded last summer and the Chargers were left wandering in no-man's land without a conference, 14 schools stepped up to the plate and scheduled a weekend series with them (one of them scheduled a four game home and home series) and the Chargers were invited to participate in a mid-season tournament unlike year's past. Eight of those schools were from the WCHA and CCHA including Wisconsin, Michigan State, Ohio State, Colorado College and Nebraska-Omaha. None of those schools have a long standing relationship with UAH and had zero reason to forge a scheduling agreement with them other than they're a DI program who needed to fill out a competitive schedule.
Even this coming year, UAH will play 17 of their 29 games against teams that appeared in the NCAA tournament over the past two years. In case you're math isn't quite up to par, that's more than half their schedule against nationally ranked opponents. The argument that the big-budget programs are going to leave the smaller schools for dead is rapidly disintegrating.
Just this past year, North Dakota hosted Robert Morris, CC hosted UAH, Wisconsin hosted UAH and Canisius, Duluth traveled to Clarkson, UNO traveled to Quinnipiac, hosted UAH and invited RIT to participate in their season-opening tournament, Michigan State hosted UAH and Ohio State traveled to Quinnipiac, hosted Robert Morris and UAH just to name a few.
Those that think the 12 schools who will leave their current conferences in two years will turn a blind eye to those they will leave behind are wearing blinders themselves.
To go back to my UAH example, the Chargers had one of the most competitive schedules in all of college hockey last season and will have one of the most competitive schedules once again this season. Why? Because they can schedule all the non-conference opponents they want. If the remaining programs of the CCHA and WCHA play their cards right, they could have the same level of competition throughout their schedule, but with a bit more variety. Instead of a steady dose of CC, UMD, DU, Minnesota and Wisconsin, they can change things up and play teams like Yale, Cornell, BU, UNH and Notre Dame more often.
Like I said yesterday, I've long been in favor of smaller conferences because it allows more teams to earn conference championships and national recognition through automatic entry into the NCAA tournament, but also because it opens the door for more non-conference games. Right now, most teams have 28-30 conference games and only 6-8 non-conference games to fill out their schedule. With smaller conferences, that split moves to 20 conference and 16 non-conference games opening up more doors for the big-budget schools to play against the smaller schools. There are enough non-conference games to go around for them to each play an AHA, ECAC, Hockey East, CCHA/WCHA and B10/Super League team with six games to spare.
Some have argued that more conferences with auto-bids to the tournament will mean more teams that don't deserve to be there, but I urge you to consider all the programs that will be able to start a tradition of success in a conference with a more even playing field and then remember all the teams that "don't deserve to be there" that have upset the number one seeds these past few years. As Air Force head coach, Frank Serratore, said after their 2-1 overtime loss to the number one seed in the country in the first round of this year's tournament, "Our league might not be as competitive from top to bottom as some of the other leagues, but our top tier teams are able to be competitive with the best teams in the country."
To that point, consider the possibility of expanding the national tournament from 16 teams to 20 and having four "play-in" games - one in each regional - where the teams that are only invited because they earned an automatic bid instead of earning it on merit through the pairwise can battle it out with the teams on the bubble for the right to play the number one seed in each regional and a shot at making their mark on history with an upset. Just a little something for you to chew on….
Meanwhile, I know some of you think I live in a fantasy world filled with puppies and unicorns that dance under rainbows filled with glitter when it comes to my views on the future of college hockey and how all these changes have the potential to lead to unprecedented growth in a variety of areas, but my fantasy world just might be closer to reality that you think.
Julie
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@JulieRobenhymer
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