Lets nip all this in the bud. I've never heard of any school, except the Gophers, receiving broadcast rights fees for college hockey. And the Gophers probably only net somewhere around $100,000 from FSN-North after its all said and done.
Schools like DU & UND pay part of the production costs to televise these games. In return they receive a bunch of pretty worthless ad time and more important, the games are televised. DU likely uses their WCHA Final 5 income to fund the production costs.
Five years ago DU probably had 18 games or so on Fox Sports-Rocky Mountain. This season is down to six or so, plus around six men's hoops games and a couple of women's hoops games. DU still pays around the same amount as before, but they're trying to push hoops out on the airwaves at the expense of hockey coverage.
Since Root Sports is owned by DirecTV fans outside of the region can usually only see games via Dish Network or DirecTV. CBS Sports Network has a far larger footprint than Root Sports-Rocky Mountain.
NCHC teams will only have 24 conference games, so 10-12 non-conference games could be televised elsewhere. That means that UND & DU could still have some non-conference games on FCS-Central/Atlantic/Pacific & Root Sports.
The NCHC teams will be paying the production costs of the conference games, so its doubtful that anyone will be receiving a check for broadcast rights. Likely they will fund the TV with profits from the NCHC Tournament in MPLS.
The Big Ten schools won't be receiving larger payouts for their games either. In fact since BTN will televise more hockey games, the schools will likely incur less profits since they co-own the network. As we all know the B1G schools get $10,000,000 plus checks annually from the BTN.
One of the reasons DU & UND were upset with the WCHA was that they wanted to use the Final 5 monies/profits to purchase TV time for a league contract. The smaller schools counted on the $100,000 annual checks and balked at the idea.
