Yeah- I've noticed the Northeastern stuff on NESN. Good for them, seems to be working. Everything about that school is on fire from the hockey program to how selective it's become academically. To answer your question, there's no reason why they can't. Like everything else related to UNH hockey, it's an effort thing. UNH Hockey has had the trajectory of a company like Kodak. Had a good product>rode it out>never innovated>slow death>dead in the water. I just think the road back to prominence for UNH is going to be a SLOG. So much rides on what this new AD does. Kevin Sneddon had the UVM job for 17 years. These coaches never get fired.
Northeastern's progress over the last generation-plus has been transcendent. My late uncle was a junior HS principal who was basically the guy who ran NU's local night school outreach program in my HS years, and I got to sit in on some college level courses when I was still in HS in the late '70's. I can tell you, the curriculum was hardly challenging back then. I also got a summer job during my college years working on the NU grounds crew, so I know that neighborhood pretty well, and it has very definitely improved over the last 40 or so years. There was a reason why NU was always a distant 3rd against BC and BU for many, many years. The folks running the show over on Huntington Ave. deserve a lot of credit, for sure.
Agree 100% with you on the importance of the new AD hire. The Sneddon example is a cautionary tale that should make any diehard UNH fan's blood run cold ...
Chuck, something you've brought up a few times is the ambition/vision/risk/gamble (however you want to phrase it) the University had to build the Whitt. It was a huge risk and it was a massive success for almost 20 years. I'd love to know more about how the Whitt came to be. Who's vision was it? Was it controversial? There had to have been an overwhelming sense of optimism in the program to go for a project like that. I've heard Snively was lively, but I only know UNH Hockey in the Whittemore Center era as I was 7 when it opened and we got our season tickets in 99-00. Now it feels like a white elephant.
First, I'm going to qualify my response here as limited, only because the events that led up to the Arena's construction are mostly of the pre-Internet time period (or at least before I was on-line, circa 1996?) AND several UNH folks on the USCHO boards from the early days of USCHO (and The Whitt) are either no longer with us, or no longer posting. I tried to refresh my own memory with more specifics before responding here, but there is not a whole lot of easily accessible information from sources like the
Foster's Daily Democrat (Dover),
Union Leader and/or the
Concord Monitor on-line to draw from for historical info. That bastion of endless information known as Wikipedia gives you virtually nothing on The Whitt's process, other than it opened in 1995. For purposes of comparison, I believe the TD Garden f/k/a Fleet Center opened in Boston at around the same time The Whitt did, and its Wiki spends very little time on the process as well.
On top of that, we were in the midst of child-rearing mode ourselves, with our youngest arriving in '95, and our move to the WIS Estate would follow and eat up a lot of otherwise free time in '95 and '96. Throw in the advent of PC's being able to talk to each other on a widespread basis for the first time, and it was really feeling like a brave new world out there. Our eldest daughter is about your age, and she really has no recollection of a world without the Internet. But I digress ...
... so to try to generally answer your question, drawing upon hazy memories of the times (and subject to correction by any folks with definitive info on the topic), my recollection is there was a LOT of optimism about the project at UNH, which had really yet to embark upon the massive course of construction that's taken place across campus since. I wish I could tell you who the visionary(s) was, and whether the project was a joint venture of fundraising and public finance (i.e. Concord), but I don't have that recollection. Timing-wise, it was something that probably started conceptually when Governor Gregg was in charge, and it definitely finished during Governor Merrill's time in office. There was a baseline assumption that with most games in Snively selling out, and the program back on the rise, selling the first 3,500 tickets wouldn't be an issue, but the question was, who was going to buy the other 2,500+ seats? Again, this was mostly pre-Internet, and I vividly recall them trying to sell ticket packages to BU/BC/Harvard (?) games in Durham in package form via print ads in the
Globe and
Herald. I also very vividly recall the rink's design was an updated version of Thompson Arena at Dartmouth, where the fans would enter the arena at ground level, and go down to their seats in an excavated seating bowl. Someone like Greg Ambrose or several other "back in the day" posters would probably have more historical details. I'm pretty sure I kept some old-style newspaper articles on the project's progress, opening, etc. but I haven't happened upon them recently (in deep storage?).
So I can't be specific about any "controversy", other than the usual stuff that comes up when someone in education goes to the State for funding beyond the basics. And this was definitely well beyond anything "basic" at the time.
Ironically, with the subsequent evolutions of post-Internet reality, there's probably a really good argument to be made that 3,500 is a better more realistic seating capacity these days, so instead of building a brand-new Whittemore, the powers that be could simply have gone whole-hog on renovating Snively into a more modern and comfortable 4,000 seater? But if you think our arena is a "white elephant" ... you gotta wonder what folks down at BU think about Agganis Arena now? Especially considering it's, what, ten or so years newer than The Whitt??
I'm putting all my hope in the form of eggs into the new AD basket. It could only take one AD with 'Whittemore Center vision' to turn this program around. I'm hopeful the Soccer program is a perfect example of the enthusiasm that a thriving program creates.
Sorry about the long-winded answer to the previous part, teez. I'm with you 100%, hopefully with the long-overdue change in the AD's offices, we'll see Hockey turning around, although I have to confess, it feels like a SLOG as well. I also suspect our near enemy up in the Downeast has stolen a march on us with their adventurous new Hockey HC hire, which won't make things easier. But if Soccer can fill a decent chunk of the football stadium in the bitter chill of November, anything's possible.
