Re: Is Notre Dame REALLY a Big Ten school?
My take-
Conferences used to be a regional thing where tribes of schools can get together and economically play a sport. And at the end of the season, all is mixed into a tournament or bowl games to decide a national champion.
Then it started to take on more of an economic income device. PSU was added to the B1G, and quickly after that the BTN was formed- which added a lot of money into the coffers of the schools. Then all of the rest of the conferences saw that opportunity and joined into the fun of all of that. At THAT point, the whole point of conferences that we dreamed of in the past changed.
But it only *really * worked for football. It kind of worked pretty well for BB, but BB only conferences like the Big East were blown up by the money of football. Which changed things even more. (which begs the question- how many NC's did BC win for the BE vs. the ACC?)
The problem with all of that- it really didn't work for hockey, since the scales of schools participating varied all over the place- so it made more sense for the small schools to be more the traditional regional(ish) schools and let the big schools be more spread out.
Given ND's level of athletics- it kind of made sense originally that they would go HE. But since hockey is expensive, and ND isn't a hockey school, and there are smaller schools in HE- I see all of that contributing to ND needing to leave.
So lets look at the choices that they have to go- WCHA- the only "like" school there is BG (who have a large athletic budget relative to the rest of the schools). Not a great fit, but it could work. NCHC- like schools- Miami and WMU (the rest are down conferences or not)- again, could work, as the hockey budgets in that conference are clearly more. B1G- the entire conference are "like" schools, and even better, many are already traditional rivals in other sports, let alone the hockey history. Double bonus for how close 3 of the schools are relative to South Bend.
When it comes to simple logic, it just makes sense that ND would be in the B1G.
I'm ok with it.
For many of those reasons, I also see ASU being a member until more western schools start playing hockey. I know that ND complained about western travel, but ASU would be one weekend a year there- which is much less than going to the east coast every other weekend. The "politics" of large athletic programs would not be an issue, too.
My take-
Conferences used to be a regional thing where tribes of schools can get together and economically play a sport. And at the end of the season, all is mixed into a tournament or bowl games to decide a national champion.
Then it started to take on more of an economic income device. PSU was added to the B1G, and quickly after that the BTN was formed- which added a lot of money into the coffers of the schools. Then all of the rest of the conferences saw that opportunity and joined into the fun of all of that. At THAT point, the whole point of conferences that we dreamed of in the past changed.
But it only *really * worked for football. It kind of worked pretty well for BB, but BB only conferences like the Big East were blown up by the money of football. Which changed things even more. (which begs the question- how many NC's did BC win for the BE vs. the ACC?)
The problem with all of that- it really didn't work for hockey, since the scales of schools participating varied all over the place- so it made more sense for the small schools to be more the traditional regional(ish) schools and let the big schools be more spread out.
Given ND's level of athletics- it kind of made sense originally that they would go HE. But since hockey is expensive, and ND isn't a hockey school, and there are smaller schools in HE- I see all of that contributing to ND needing to leave.
So lets look at the choices that they have to go- WCHA- the only "like" school there is BG (who have a large athletic budget relative to the rest of the schools). Not a great fit, but it could work. NCHC- like schools- Miami and WMU (the rest are down conferences or not)- again, could work, as the hockey budgets in that conference are clearly more. B1G- the entire conference are "like" schools, and even better, many are already traditional rivals in other sports, let alone the hockey history. Double bonus for how close 3 of the schools are relative to South Bend.
When it comes to simple logic, it just makes sense that ND would be in the B1G.
I'm ok with it.
For many of those reasons, I also see ASU being a member until more western schools start playing hockey. I know that ND complained about western travel, but ASU would be one weekend a year there- which is much less than going to the east coast every other weekend. The "politics" of large athletic programs would not be an issue, too.
