UNH Hockey Off Season Thread 2026

[Potluck]

If true, how do you explain the massive growth in football and basketball budgets at public schools over the last few decades?

For state schools it's driven by alumni/state resident interest. It's for school development for the most part. But show me a school that's positive revenue and I'll show you once that it's a huge money loser. Of course, there's also that matter of who is doing the books.....

Do we even need to talk about the financial disaster that is subdivision (1AA) football?

 

[Snively65]

Looks like Alex Gagne's dim chances of getting his name on the Stanley Cup this Spring just ended. But he should have a solid Plan B, as the Colorado Eagles have advanced to the Calder Cup semifinals in the AHL, so getting his name on a storied Cup this season are still very much alive.

AG could join some other notable UNH alums with their names on the Calder Cup. No shame in that.

 

[Dan]

Many of you might be aware that educational funding is hot topic not just in New Hampshire, but in several states. In Ohio, for example, one gubernatorial candidate thinks spending is in such a crisis he proposes to eliminate or merge several state universities.

Nevertheless, one such, cash-strapped school has seen fit to extend their MBB coach with a 450K raise (850K base) and an annual 150K retention bonus. They will also significantly invest in all aspects of the basketball program and facilities. They’ve identified their reasons for doing so as winning games/championships, post-season appearances, fan engagement/attendance, earned media attention and profi…err…successful revenue generation…

Apparently for one mid-major university, winning games HAS made possible what was, for so long, deemed impossible.

 

[Chuck Murray]

Many of you might be aware that educational funding is hot topic not just in New Hampshire, but in several states. In Ohio, for example, one gubernatorial candidate thinks spending is in such a crisis he proposes to eliminate or merge several state universities.

Nevertheless, one such, cash-strapped school has seen fit to extend their MBB coach with a 450K raise (850K base) and an annual 150K retention bonus. They will also significantly invest in all aspects of the basketball program and facilities. They’ve identified their reasons for doing so as winning games/championships, post-season appearances, fan engagement/attendance, earned media attention and profi…err…successful revenue generation…

Apparently for one mid-major university, winning games HAS made possible what was, for so long, deemed impossible.

I'd love to see the overall impact on the formerly moribund Big Ten+ school in Bloomington IN, with their newfound success on the gridiron.

Putting that aside ... I'll share the following state rankings (not by school) and point out how well NH performs in them vs. other New England states.

States Overview - Rich States, Poor States

A comprehensive resource that ranks the economic competitiveness of states using fifteen equally weighted policy variables

www.richstatespoorstates.org

 

[Jellsville USA]

Early predictions- https://x.com/CollegePuckNXT/status/2059995234319093912/photo/1

 

[Snively65]

I'd love to see the overall impact on the formerly moribund Big Ten+ school in Bloomington IN, with their newfound success on the gridiron.

Putting that aside ... I'll share the following state rankings (not by school) and point out how well NH performs in them vs. other New England states.

States Overview - Rich States, Poor States

A comprehensive resource that ranks the economic competitiveness of states using fifteen equally weighted policy variables

www.richstatespoorstates.org

I think that ALEC and Arthur Laffer are evil.

 

[Chuck Murray]

I think that ALEC and Arthur Laffer are evil.

Fair enough. I'm not a huge fan of Greenpeace. Yet we still manage to get along, and tolerate differences of opinion. It's the American way.

 

[Carmine Scarpaglia]

That cliff is actually timed around the 2008 financial crisis, there were a LOT fewer babies born 2008 to 2012. The 2008 financial crisis actually started in August of 2007 and reached calamity in Sept 2008, for those that don't remember. For New England public school enrollment forecast is a 13% drop in students from 2024-2028 and as of 2026 that forecast, last updated 2022, has been accurate. (Demographics is destiny)

There was a really interesting tweet about this in response to another interesting tweet about finances for some notable schools:

Universities had 17 years of warning. They responded by doing the opposite of what the math demanded.

In 2008, American birth rates fell off a cliff. The Great Recession made people stop having kids. Those never-born children would be turning 18 right now. The number of U.S. high school graduates peaked at roughly 3.9 million in 2025. By 2029, that number drops 15%. By 2041, it drops by nearly half a million students per year.

Every school in this tweet had access to the same Census data. They all saw the same curve.

Administrative positions at U.S. colleges grew 60% between 1993 and 2009, ten times the rate of tenured faculty growth. Non-instructional spending (student services, administration) grew 29% from 2010 to 2018. Instructional spending grew 17%. Average tuition at public four-year schools went from $3,500 in 2000 to $10,560 in 2023. Yale now has more administrators than undergraduate students. 5,460 administrators for fewer than 5,000 undergrads.

They built the cost structure of a growth company on top of a customer base that was mathematically guaranteed to shrink.

The split in this data tells you everything. Clemson, Syracuse, Duke, UNC, and Indiana are all cutting because the model broke. Alabama, Ole Miss, and the University of Florida are turning away more applicants than ever. Harvard gets five applications for every spot. The middle is where the cliff hits. Elite schools absorb demand. Everyone between elite and community college fights over a shrinking pool. The Fed published a study in December 2024 predicting 80 colleges will close in the next five years. Since 2016, over 100 already have. In 2024 alone, 28 shut down. One per week.

These program cuts and layoffs are a decade late. The birth rate data was sitting in Census spreadsheets the entire time. Everyone in higher education administration saw the enrollment cliff coming. They hired more administrators anyway.

Not sure if this direct link will work:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Universities had 17 years of warning. They responded by doing the opposite of what the math demanded.<br><br>In 2008, American birth rates fell off a cliff. The Great Recession made people stop having kids. Those never-born children would be turning 18 right now. The number of U.S.… <a href="https://t.co/0tI8qYNR94">https://t.co/0tI8qYNR94</a></p>&mdash; Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta) <a href="https://x.com/aakashgupta/status/2056599739949568113?ref_src=twsrc^tfw">May 19, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>