Re: >>>>> RIT TIGERS 2009-2010 <<<<< Rockin' Part 2 - The Playoffs
Re: >>>>> RIT TIGERS 2009-2010 <<<<< Rockin' Part 2 - The Playoffs
Well, it's hard to say specifically anything about another league because the status quo can't be maintained. D-I hockey is in drastic need of realignment. The hiring of Paul Kelly by the commissioners to help grow the sport is just a first step. The five leagues that will be left next year will need to find a way to realign into more and smaller conferences to provide room for growth for the sport.
RIT, especially if all its athletics go D-I, would be a good fit in a realigned league of teams from New York State. You could build a league from among St. Lawrence, Clarkson, Colgate, Cornell, Union, RPI, RIT, Canisius and/or Niagara, for example.
I had a conversation with a prominent coach a couple of years ago at the Frozen Four. He agreed that what college hockey needed was about seven or eight conferences so that there would be room to grow the sport and to have more inter-conference play. A realignment into smaller leagues with a regional focus would allow that. Remember ... you need just six teams for the AQ in D-I. The current 58 teams could split into 9 leagues and maintain AQs.
A radical reshaping of the D-I landscape is needed.
Re-alignment isn't a matter of if it happens, its a matter of when it happens. Make no mistake, it will, sooner or later. The death of the CHA conference really is starting to make the matter more of a front burner topic for the
powers that be in college hockey.
The concept of a NYS based conference has been brought up in the past when re-alignment was discussed. It's logical on a variety of levels, ranging from the control of travel costs (which is becoming a HUGE issue in college athletics as the economy continues to impact athletic dept. budgets and is the subject of some serious focus at present by the NCAA) to the fact that the level of competition between the schools isn't totally un-balanced. The Ivy league schools for years have contemplated their role in the college hockey landscape due to their lack of athletic scholarships, and there has also been rumblings of a "non athletic scholarship" conference in the past, which RIT could also fit into, alongside the other Ivy league hockey schools, such as Cornell, Yale, Brown, Harvard, etc.
The current system is broken and has been for some time. It's only as recent events have unfolded has it become more clear that its long since past time for a re-alignment. Atlantic Hockey serves as a prime example of this. It will have enough teams to logically have 2 divisions next season (which it won't do), yet other conferences are turning away teams and leaving them with no conference in which to play. Logic has long since failed to hold water in this situation. How does AHA have Air Force as a member (I understand the theory of having the 2 military academies in the same hockey conference), when the closest team to them represents 2 time zones travel distance and some expensive air travel? It's simply illogical.
The biggest stumbling block to all of this will be conferences that currently have regional TV deals in place. The money for some of those deals isn't exactly small change, and the NCAA is going to have to work very hard with all parties involved to make sure that they don't have a significant, negative, economic impact upon those conferences member schools, who often all share in the revenue stream from a conference wide TV deal.
