Re: The NCHC Year Two: Haters Please Form A Queue to the Right
I can still remember as if it happened yesterday when the Big Ten hockey conference officially came into existence. Fans of certain teams that I will not name here went on and on crying about how the Big Ten schools were killing the WCHA and CCHA, only to see those teams go on to form the NCHC. The Big Ten hockey conference didn't kill the WCHA or the CCHA, but the NCHC did in fact kill the CCHA.
Uh... the fans are at the mercy of the school's administration. At some point they have to accept the changes and move on, unless they are Tech or NMU fans, in which case they will just harbor the resentment until they die of a stroke at age 52. It isn't like the NCHC programs decided to form the league solely based on the wishes of the fans.
Also, the CCHA was a garbage league. Look no further than the results of their teams this year and last year now that they have to play non-CCHA teams. Not only that, but the crummy league that was the CCHA would have been down to 7 teams when Notre Dame left. Can you imagine a conference tournament with Miami, WMU, NMU, LSSU, Alaska, BGSU and Ferris? That league would have tried to join up with the WCHA anyway after they realized that every program was losing money.
I have no respect for any of the schools in the NCHC because of the mere fact that they did what they did as a knee jerk reaction to the Big Ten. I'm not going to argue the success of any of those teams on the ice, as some of them are quite good. I just happen to feel that it took a certain lack of ethics to abandon the WCHA and CCHA the way those teams did. They did the very same thing that they accused the Big Ten schools of doing (acting like they're too good for the rest of the schools in their respective conferences). The only difference is the Big Ten schools didn't have a choice, they had an all sports affiliation with the conference with an exemption for hockey only due to the fact that fewer than six conference schools had a D1 hockey program. Once Penn State got on board it was an automatic move on the part of the conference to sanction hockey, the individual schools didn't have a say.
The Big Ten didn't have a choice is complete bull. Rules get changed all the time. If they thought it was a bad idea to start a hockey conference, they wouldn't have done it. Only B1G bobos use this crappy excuse.
For the record, the Big Ten hockey conference is the best thing to ever happen to college hockey for the purpose of getting more widespread mainstream exposure. Casual sports fans who are familiar with the Big Ten name but have never heard of the WCHA or CCHA are now more likely to discover college hockey than they were before.
I love the "for the record" statement that has absolutely no basis in fact. Just a biased opinion of an idiot who likes a B1G team. Do you actually believe this? Casual sports fans don't watch college hockey. If they did, the ratings for the NCAA tournament would be a lot better. If they don't want to watch the best teams in the country play, why would they want to watch the awful hockey played by the Big Ten teams?
The NCHC schools had a choice, they could have remained loyal to the WCHA and CCHA but jumped ship with the arrogant attitudes that they were too good for the rest of the schools in those conferences. Well, that just goes to show the NCHC schools have no class.
They were too good for the rest of the schools. The rest of the schools were punching bags for the past 20 years. At least now on the Island of Misfit Toys they have a chance at winning a conference title and/or making an NCAA tournament appearance once in a while. Why would the schools that actually have successful programs that make money stay in a league where they are outnumbered and have less decision making power than the Anchorages and Lake Superior State's of the world? You also forget to mention the fact that NMU and Tech have both switched between leagues before. So apparently they also have no class, whatever that means.
I think you need to root harder, because the Big Ten is probably going to have as many teams make the tourney this year as Atlantic Hockey.
