Re: NCHA membership changes?
Let's say you need to add two teams to your conference. Your goal is to add two teams so you can get an automatic qualifier. You will need to pay a little bit more for travel, but you have this factored in. You can probably rule any of the MIAC teams as it wouldn't make much sense for any of them to break conference. You look at the NCHA. Rule out Adrian right away because of distance. Next rule out Norbert because you ****ed them off pretty good already. Rule out Aurora as well because it would make no sense for a new team to leave the conference so quickly. You are left with CSS, MSOE, CUW, Northland, Lawrence, Marian. Marian, Lawerence, CUW, MSOE would all have much worse travel schedules if they join, so rule them out. We are now down to Northland, CSS and Finlandia.
Travel for Finlandia is actually less if they join the WIAC. The furthest trip they add is 5.5 hours to Falls, which is about the same time it takes for them to get to MSOE. They lose the massive 9 hour trip to Adrian out of it. The rest are pretty close (within about an hour) of the trips they are already making. Finlandia has already been an associate member of the WIAC in many other sports. I would consider them to be the easiest and simplest to join, so let's add them.
We are now down to two choices, Northland and CSS. CSS would save on their travel a lot, however, you kind of kicked them out of the conference a few years ago and that probably isn't a good thing. Let's look at the positives from the Northland side. Their travel would get dramatically reduced. Their longest trip now becomes 3.5 hours. Traveling to GB for them was over 4 hours. The travel for the majority WIAC schools to Northland isn't all that different in time to CSS. Northland has had involvement with the WIAC in the past as well. I would guess that they would be much more likely to join than CSS.
