Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

[Carmine Scarpaglia]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

Can't wait for PAC10 hockey!!!

[Red Cows]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

Yeah, I wouldn't trust Trev Alberts to do anything good for Omaha if its in direct competition with Lincoln. Not with the way he called his Wrestling Coach the day his squad just went back to back to back to be 3 time NCAA D2 National Champions, to tell him that they're cutting the program. Hell, I was you, I would be **** scared of Lincoln announcing that they're adding hockey, because I would think that there would be some underhanded deal worked out where Omaha would soon announce after that they're dropping Hockey, where Lincoln would soon turn around and announce that they've hired Dean Blais and will have most of those poor student athletes from UNO getting a new home at UNL.


Fear the Corn good sir, Fear the Corn!

Yup, I have even had UNO supporters postulate this line of thinking to me as well. However, with the building of UNO's new arena (construction is underway--it's dual rink facility with with an $87.9 million dollar price tag) it pretty much shoots this one down in flames.

That would be an awfully nice venue (and pricey) for UNO to use if reverting back to club status.

By the way, most folks around here understand why Trev Alberts did away with wrestling and football. If he hadn't, there wouldn't have been ANY athletic department at UNO for very much longer. I, for one, certainly don't have any problem with what he did or why.

[bigblue_dl]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

Yup, I have even had UNO supporters postulate this line of thinking to me as well. However, with the building of UNO's new arena (construction is underway--it's dual rink facility with with an $87.9 million dollar price tag) it pretty much shoots this one down in flames.

That would be an awfully nice venue (and pricey) for UNO to use if reverting back to club status.

By the way, most folks around here understand why Trev Alberts did away with wrestling and football. If he hadn't, there wouldn't have been ANY athletic department at UNO for very much longer. I, for one, certainly don't have any problem with what he did or why.

bigmrg just gets his panties in a bunch over it because he thinks D2 football is the greatest thing since latex condoms.

[Ralph Baer]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

Will Rogers is doing hockey? I thought that he was dead.

[Red Cows]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

bigmrg just gets his panties in a bunch over it because he thinks D2 football is the greatest thing since latex condoms.

Football at UNO was a drain on the athletic department. TOTAL attendance during UNO's last season playing football? 24,436 for 7 home games. This wasn't an anomaly. That was a fairly normal number.

Throw in the financially untenable situation the hockey program faces at the CenturyLink Center, where UNO derives NO revenue whatsoever other than from ticket sales and doesn't even control all the seats in the building (which are the best seats in the house, too) and Trev had little choice.

[umhockey91]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

I think that as ADs at schools like Rutgers and Pitt will look at programs like Penn State and UConn.........and think why not us? It can be a money maker at many of these schools......especially where they get an automatic invite into the Big Ten.

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

By the way, most folks around here understand why Trev Alberts did away with wrestling and football. If he hadn't, there wouldn't have been ANY athletic department at UNO for very much longer. I, for one, certainly don't have any problem with what he did or why.

The "How" and "When" certainly left much to be desired, at least as far as the wrestling team went.

I get how the football program needed to go, but how was the wrestling team so dangerous to the health of UNO's AD?

[Red Cows]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

The "How" and "When" certainly left much to be desired, at least as far as the wrestling team went.

I get how the football program needed to go, but how was the wrestling team so dangerous to the health of UNO's AD?

The answer is "Which side of this argument do you believe?":

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/n...ory?id=6488960

I'd like to point out that Trev Alberts has no motivation, financially, personally, or otherwise to be disingenuous about all this, while most of the complainers about the whole thing DO have an axe to grind.

There is more to this story than meets the eye here, too.

[Red Cows]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

For all you Rutgers hockey fans:

http://www.fanatics.com/COLLEGE_Rutg...rsey_-_Scarlet

[slowe]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

Interesting timing. Just found this article discussing the Rutgers team and how they could fit into D1. It doesn't say much other than it would be kinda cool. Still not a bad read though.

http://www.dailytargum.com/sports/fi...7a43b2370.html

[el_norte]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

No.

Nebraska, Iowa, Northwestern, and Illinois all more likely due to BTHC.

Nebraska (Lincoln) is very much on their way to being hockey ready now. They just approved funding for a two sheet ice center that would provide practice sheets, and based on the rendering possibly women's hockey, with the men playing games at the brand new and much larger Pinnacle Bank Arena.

http://www.1011now.com/home/headline...251435431.html

They would still need a lot of funding for scholarships and coaches etc, but they could seriously be hockey ready within the next 5 years or so.

[Red Cows]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

Nebraska (Lincoln) is very much on their way to being hockey ready now. They just approved funding for a two sheet ice center that would provide practice sheets, and based on the rendering possibly women's hockey, with the men playing games at the brand new and much larger Pinnacle Bank Arena.

http://www.1011now.com/home/headline...251435431.html

They would still need a lot of funding for scholarships and coaches etc, but they could seriously be hockey ready within the next 5 years or so.

I've addressed the issue of Husker hockey and this facility (the Breslow Ice Center) numerous times in various threads over the past 3 years.

In as small a nutshell as I can make it:

Whether the Huskers go D-1 with their hockey program (they have one, an ACHA team) will be almost totally driven by fans, boosters, and, perhaps, the Big 10 Conference itself, no matter what pronouncements you currently hear from the school on the topic from Shawn Eichorst and the Athletic Department. If the right boosters (read: the NU Foundation, among others) want this, then what Shawn Eichorst says/wants isn't really going to matter in the end. At Nebraska, the tail DOES wag the dog.

The Big 10 Hockey Conference really doesn't "work" with 6 teams and my bet is that the conference is going to work towards getting a couple schools to add teams. Does anybody really think they want to stay static at only 6 teams? I sure don't. NU, with the addition of this building, will then have the practice facility they will need to sustain such a program (a problem that currently plagues UNO, I might add), besides the arena needed to actually play in.

So, Nebraska has cleared the facilities hurdle although the Pinnacle Bank Center would then have to shoehorn into itself a hockey program along with NU men's and women's basketball and along with the building's litany of concerts and the like.

Funding is not really a big issue at Nebraska, either. The NU Foundation has cash reserves in excess of a billion dollars. For those that don't know, this is the fundraising side of NU:

http://nebraska.edu/nu-foundation.html

This is a "private" corporation. To give you an idea of the scope and scale of this operation, the NU foundation has 250 full time employees. You want to know how Nebraska is what it is, where it is, look no further than to this organization and then think about who some famous NU alum are, starting with people like Warren Buffett on the business side and Johnny Carson on the entertainment side of things. This is the reason why Nebraska has facilities that take a back seat to no one, anywhere, and endows a large number of sports programs (for a state and school this size) and has one of the 10 largest athletic department budgets (note: I said BUDGET, not revenues) in the U.S. I mean, this is a school that has a volleyball, only, facility, that seats more than 9,000 people (and sells it out every single night) to give you an idea. They have state-of-the-art sand volleyball facilities at NU, for crying out loud. The Huskers even have a bowling facility, for THAT program (in which Nebraska is a national power with few peers, I might add).

Nebraska is an utterly unique situation where there is almost no competition for sports dollars from pro teams and little of consequence from other collegiate institutions, except, perhaps, from Creighton basketball.

One big hurdle, one that everyone always seems to want to gloss over, is Title 9 considerations. This is a biggie and is already a "problem" at Nebraska since they currently already endow more male athletic scholarships than female athletic scholarships. The "simple" solution would be for NU to also add women's hockey at the same time. That's where this all gets complicated a bit since they need a place to play, too, and the demand for dates at the Pinnacle Bank Center would seem to be getting stretched mighty thin at that point. They wouldn't seem to be able to play in the Breslow Center, either, since, as currently envisioned, this facility is only going to seat 700 or so. I couldn't really envision a situation where the University would allow the women's team to play in a hole like the Icebox in Lincoln (which seats 5,010 for hockey and is currently home to the Lincoln Stars of the USHL) so this is an issue that would have to be addressed, somehow. Locker rooms in the Icebox would be just the tip of the iceberg there.

It's worth mentioning in this discourse that Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln was built with all the piping put into the floor if they want to make ice there and that that this was a last minute addition to the building.

Hmmmmmmm.

So, for a school the publicly says they have no plans to add hockey, they sure are doing a great impression of someone that is, now aren't they? This gives you something of an idea of the disconnect between what the school says, and reality. It's also worth mentioning that Eichorst has just over year on the job as A.D. and he may not really realize, himself, just how much all of this isn't really "in his hands", as yet. He may get a dose of that later this year since there is a VERY significant portion of Husker Nation that wants Bo Pelini gone and if the football team doesn't have an "acceptable" upcoming season, Eichorst is going to find out just how little say he has, because that sentiment is then going to then come to a screaming crescendo. It's close, now. He is in Pelini's corner, obviously, but that isn't going to matter if the "right" people decide otherwise. Ask Bill Callahan and Steve Peterson about that.

My bet is that you are correct and that hockey is in the offing at Nebraska at some point in the not too terribly distant future. And, I think the most plausible scenario for this to happen is that they are pushed that way by Jim Delany and the Big 10 itself, since the conference would seem to need to add a couple schools. Under the circumstances, Nebraska is by far the most ideal candidate in the Big 10 right now in terms of the infrastructure, monies, etc. needed to do so.

And, they have a ready-made rival just 50 miles up the interstate, too.

[WeAreNDHockey]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

As an aside to all this, there has also been some off-the-radar discussion here about the Big 10 admitting UNO as an affiliate, just in hockey. I've had people tell me the Big 10 would never do this, but, the horse was let out of that barn when the Big 10 admitted Johns Hopkins to the Big 10 as an affiliate in men's lacrosse. If it can be done in lacrosse, it wouldn't seem to be much of a reach to add a hockey team that way. I know UNO fans that hope this might happen because, in theory, it probably scuttles the notion of hockey at NU, despite my belief that if NU had a team, it would help UNO, not hurt them. Plus, UNO is part of the same university system here in Nebraska as NU is so UNO isn't the same sort of "reach" for the Big 10 as John's Hopkins is.

The B1G is on record as saying they have not considered any school as an affiliate for hockey to date and do not envision doing so. I don't know why this misinformation persists. It is almost as confounding to me as all the talk that Notre Dame considered joining, either as an affiliate for hockey (which again, the B1G publicly stated would not happen) or by bringing the entire athletic department aboard. The B1G will not be adding affiliate teams for sports where they have enough teams to qualify for automatic NCAA bids. Period. The only reason Johns Hopkins was brought along was to reach the required number of teams for NCAA auto bid purposes. The conference is adding the sport I'm betting because the newest additions to the B1G, Maryland and Rutgers, have long competed -- and likely looked to continue to compete -- in the sport.

Oh and another New Jersey native who plays hockey well enough for a good NHL club to pay him a lot of $$$ doing so is Kyle Palmieri. I believe he was born in Montvale, NJ. He played his hockey growing up on Long Island though.

[FireKnight]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

There had been some interest, or at least discussion, of hockey at Maryland in the past. They also have a ton of money in the coffers; maybe not Nebraska but significant. Now that they're going to the B1G, I would bet that conversation might start again. Back in those days, there was also a lot of discussion about USNA adding hockey. They have the approval in Annapolis and they don't have to worry about Title IX; maybe a team in the area might spur their interest again.

I guess the best thing for us to do if we want to see the sport grow is to support what currently exists. That, and thank Doc Emrick, because he might just be the biggest college hockey advertisement out there.

[Red Cows]

Re: Will Rutgers and/or Pitt ever do hockey?

The B1G is on record as saying they have not considered any school as an affiliate for hockey to date and do not envision doing so. I don't know why this misinformation persists. It is almost as confounding to me as all the talk that Notre Dame considered joining, either as an affiliate for hockey (which again, the B1G publicly stated would not happen) or by bringing the entire athletic department aboard. The B1G will not be adding affiliate teams for sports where they have enough teams to qualify for automatic NCAA bids. Period. The only reason Johns Hopkins was brought along was to reach the required number of teams for NCAA auto bid purposes. The conference is adding the sport I'm betting because the newest additions to the B1G, Maryland and Rutgers, have long competed -- and likely looked to continue to compete -- in the sport.

I have, for the most part, considered the notion pretty silly myself. Frankly, if the Big 10 conference really wants to get to 8 teams or some such, they have the bankroll to assist a school(s) to do so. They might entertain that notion if member schools balk for financial reasons, if need be. And, if it was in the league's "best interest" to do so, they might take that approach. By that I mean, financially, logistically, reputation-wise, prestige-wise, or television-wise. All these potential reasons are intertwined, really.

I just don't think the Big 10 stays at 6 schools if they can help it.