One of the main reasons I liked college hockey was the WCHA and its uniqueness. Now it just seems like business, not an amateur sport. Enjoyed seeing universities that have little or nothing else like the Alaska and Colorado schools. It was something different from the typical major sports around the country.
Yeah, as fans, that's understandable. But college sports DO COST money. I read once that the U spends a million dollars A YEAR on hockey sticks alone. Maybe my memory is off, that might have been more than one year? But my point is the same, there are expenses to having athletic programs. Very few college hockey programs make money. For the short term, the move to the B1G definitely hurt the Gophers, may have hurt Wisconsin and maybe even Michigan, but it didn't hurt SCSU or Mankato or UMD, UND, Denver, WMU, Omaha or Bemidji St, much less Penn St, Ohio St, Notre Dame or Arizona St. And NMU and BG also have a better chance of getting into the tourney now, but only if they deserve it. The wealth of the WCHA was spread out among 3 different conferences, although the CCHA was lost, so in the end college hockey basically expanded by one good conference, and 2 big schools(PSU & ASU) and if this Illinois thing happens, then it will be 3 big schools and I've heard Illinois is only the 1st of 6 programs earmarked for getting help from the NHL to make the jump to Div 1. This has improved the quality of the teams making it into the NCAA tourney. Long term I could see the NCAA tourney expanding to 18 and then 20 teams, and long term I can see TV money coming into play which will help smaller schools to make the jump up to Div 1 or bigger schools to just start up programs from scratch. College hockey was a niche sport, and sure, we as fans loved it the way it was, but the long term health of college hockey needed it to expand and grow and change. Hopefully ten years from now, after the B1G has won a couple Natl Titles, and hopefully by beating fellow B1G teams in the Frozen Four if not in the Title game, which will add fuel to the fires of the rivalries that will eventually develop over time. I heard the cost of tickets to hockey games are dropping next season, and we all expect the team to be much improved, so maybe next year is the beginning of a new era of Gopher hockey dominance and of the B1G kicking tail in the NCAA tourney as well?
