Re: Arizona State Moving To D1
ASU will start the Domino effect. The Pac 12 slowly but surely add teams.
Right, just like Penn State has in the Big 10, smack in the middle of hockey country and a whole bunch of other potential opponents that negate or lessen many of the travel issues for any school contemplating this.
That's why Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Northwestern, Illinois, Purdue, Maryland, and Rutgers all have announced plans to become the next members of the Big 10 Hockey Conference. Because finding 100 million plus, even at these fabulously wealthy schools, to get this started in any sort of meaningful way (read: do it right) is so easy to come by.
And, there are so many people just waiting in the wings and chomping at the bit to do this at their PAC-12 alma maters, particularly since there is so much pent up demand to see college hockey (hell, hockey, at all) in places like Tucson, Corvallis, Berkeley, Eugene, et al.
Anybody out there want to share a local news story with us where some other PAC-12 school is
definitively taking a look at this or even seriously thinking about it? Because I am guessing that, beyond the wishful thinking stage, it ain't happenin' anywhere anytime soon.
Before anybody wants to pontificate on the possibilities of D-1 college hockey at their respective school you must remember these 3 things:
1. What is the sports scholarship endowment ratio of men to women at the school? If you are not in a financial position to add women's scholarships in an existing or new women's sport roughly commensurate to what you'd add for men's college hockey, which is 18 scholarships (note: few schools are one-to-one today, even with Title IX), you are NOT adding men's D-1 hockey and you can stop the conversation right here and now.
2. Do you have a place to play
and a place to practice if you don't have the appropriate facilities on your campus? Can your potential program forgo revenue streams like parking, concessions, club seating, team apparel sales, and suites in a building you might have to rent to play in? Because you aren't going to see those monies in a building you don't own.
3. Can you afford to build on-campus facilities, which are going to, at some point, be a must for any really
serious hockey program to recruit to, AND, can you afford to build the new facilities for whatever women's sport(s) you have to add, as well?
I assume that everybody that keeps speculating on this understands that, outside of football, hockey is the most expensive sport to operate and maintain in college athletics? Do you understand how expensive is to own and operate an ice rink?
I just roll my eyes at all these people that think this is just SO easy and it's going to start happening everywhere. If it was SO easy then everybody WOULD be doing it.
Newsflash. No, it isn't.
Unless some big pockets donor comes up with the money at some other school, PAC-12 or not (which is what it took at both Penn State and at ASU), the thought that some sort of domino effect is going to come into play is a non-starter.
The only way I could potentially see some sort of PAC-12 hockey conference really get going outside of all these "mythical donors" is if the conference, itself, out of its own revenue pool, subsidized the start-up of programs at at least 5 other schools besides ASU. And, this would have to somehow make economic sense to the entire conference as a whole and I freely admit that I don't know if it could be done so that it would.
I don't see any school in the PAC-12 adding hockey in the foreseeable future. I don't think the money, inclination, demand, insert your own adjective here, is there to do it.
Sorry to be a downer here but all this talk about other schools jumping on board is just knee jerk wishful thinking. It happened after Penn State and it is happening here. And, the announced, serious attempts to add D-1 hockey at the few schools that have actually tried recently, without a major donation, have
all failed.