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WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Tipsy McStagger

Tipsy McStagger

Falling on fans at NHC since 2001
Robertson says he didn’t come up with the idea, but he told WCCO he is pushing to make it happen. He’d like the WCHA, Big Ten and NCHC to team up and coordinate their conference tournaments so they’re all in the same city the same weekend. Ideally, the Twin Cities.

“So it’d be one week of college hockey, and bring us back to the old Final Five days, where it was jam-packed every night,” Robertson said. “And I think that could be very successful.”

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/...with-big-ten-nchc-for-conference-tournaments/

I don't think it is a terrible idea, but obviously this benefits the Big Ten and the WCHA more than it benefits the NCHC.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Tipsy McStagger said:
Robertson says he didn’t come up with the idea, but he told WCCO he is pushing to make it happen. He’d like the WCHA, Big Ten and NCHC to team up and coordinate their conference tournaments so they’re all in the same city the same weekend. Ideally, the Twin Cities.

“So it’d be one week of college hockey, and bring us back to the old Final Five days, where it was jam-packed every night,” Robertson said. “And I think that could be very successful.”

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/...with-big-ten-nchc-for-conference-tournaments/

I don't think it is a terrible idea, but obviously this benefits the Big Ten and the WCHA more than it benefits the NCHC.
Click to expand...
From a fan perspective, the idea of having all three conference championship games at the same venue, on the same day, sounds fun. But lets say you sell out Xcel for that championship Saturday. What is that, 20,000 people? Aren't the three conferences already selling 20,000 seats, combined, for their conference championship games? Where is the growth? Do they just double the current ticket price?
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

I like the premise but that sounds like a lot of hockey games that may not increase attendance as much as people think.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

I don't know about all three at once, for the same reasons SJHovey mentioned (total fans is probably roughly the same), but combining two of them in the X might be a good idea to try to reclaim some of the old WCHA F5 magic.

Still, one has to think something on-campus is a better solution, at least for the B1G.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

SJHovey said:
From a fan perspective, the idea of having all three conference championship games at the same venue, on the same day, sounds fun. But lets say you sell out Xcel for that championship Saturday. What is that, 20,000 people? Aren't the three conferences already selling 20,000 seats, combined, for their conference championship games? Where is the growth? Do they just double the current ticket price?
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They wouldn't be at the same venue. They would be at three different venues at staggered times. Ex. B1G at Xcel, NCHC at Target Center, WCHA at Mariucci. They also talked about selling team passes and super tickets. So if you only wanted to see your own team's games you could do that too. Or you could buy a pass that would get you into all games.

I am assuming the growth they are talking about are people that don't want to pay for games other than the ones their team is playing in. If there are a lot of those people, which I doubt, I guess you could bring in more revenue that way. To me, it seems like the market for these ideas are A. People so apathetic or cheap that they won't spend more than $60-$80 to see their team play in a playoff tournament and B. People who are so insane about hockey that they would buy a pass so that they could hypothetically watch 12 hockey games in a weekend.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

I think it would look better on paper for the leagues if you are selling only "single session" tickets. You're forcing fans to buy a single ticket to let's say three games per day even if they only want to watch one. So yes, between the three conferences you might "sell-out" the building every day. But that concept (nor any other I know of) is not going to bring back the old Final Five atmosphere because you're still only going to get 1/3 to 1/2 capacity during each game. Fans will either arrive late or leave early based on their teams' games.

Not many fans are die-hard enough, or care enough about all college hockey to sit there all day and watch other teams. Just combining two conference tourneys would be enough of a start. Maybe the Bi6 and WCHA since they are both mainly the WCHA and CCHA teams of old. Nobody is going to have hurt feelings if the NCHC is left along twisting in the wind. Separation is what they wanted, so let them have it. They can have their conference tourney in Honolulu for all I care.

While the SuperPass concept to multiple venues is an interesting concept (I was assuming they were talking about everything in one venue and maybe start earlier in the week), I don't know if it works unless it is a general admission type pass. I'm sure each venue will want you to repay for parking every time you roll in so you'll need a SuperParker pass as well. Otherwise you'll spend more on train tickets and parking than game tickets.

Ryan J
 
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Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

I think the mistake that is made is the attempt to recapture the "WCHA F5 magic." It can't happen. That's why it was magic, and not just the product of good marketing.

I never missed a WCHA tournament until the conferences broke apart. I was at the first one at the St. Paul Civic Center, attended all the Bradley Center experiments, the brief stay at Target Center, and ultimately Xcel. There was no "magic" in the conference tournament during those first 12-15 years. Some good hockey games, to be sure. The "magic" was largely the confluence of a number of events in the early 2000's that came together. In no particular order they included the following:

1. A brand new arena in St. Paul, with the development of eating and drinking establishments in the few years that followed.
2. SCSU had become an established, successful program, and MSU had joined the conference, giving the WCHA a solid core of six schools within easy driving distance of St. Paul, and with large alumni bases in the Twin Cities.
3. Tremendous success by the leading teams in the conference. UND came off a period of 4-5 years of dominance of the WCHA in the late 90's, including the '00 championship. MN had righted the ship and would win two championships in a row, followed by DU doing the same, and then Wisconsin to cap a five year run for the conference.

In a way, it's kind of like the MN State HS hockey tournament. All great events like this need "David and Goliath" stories. The WCHA was blessed with having two, three, sometimes four goliaths, and even more Davids. And you need familiarity. Fans of SCSU need to be working with fans of MN, so in the days leading up to and following the games, excitement can build or be relived.

None of the three (WCHA, NCHC, B1G) have all those ingredients, and that's why I don't expect the "magic" to suddenly reappear for any of them. Instead, I think they need to figure out what each of them can do individually to improve their product and fan experience, and move in that direction.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

JohnsonsJerseys said:
Not many fans are die-hard enough, or care enough about all college hockey to sit there all day and watch other teams. Just combining two conference tourneys would be enough of a start. Maybe the Bi6 and WCHA since they are both mainly the WCHA and CCHA teams of old. Nobody is going to have hurt feelings if the NCHC is left along twisting in the wind. Separation is what they wanted, so let them have it. They can have their conference tourney in Honolulu for all I care.



Ryan J
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For crying out loud, Ryan, give it a rest.

To this day I can't figure out why it is that the vast, vast majority of people who continue to complain about the formation of the NCHC are Tech fans. Furthermore, for someone like me who attended his first college hockey games in the 60's and recalls the old WCHA it's even more puzzling. When Michigan, Mich. St., Tech and Notre Dame packed up their toys and moved to the CCHA to form some sort of "Michigan superconference", fans of the six WCHA teams left behind didn't spend any time whining about it. Maybe because we were too busy watching our teams win natty after natty, but that's beside the point.

In fact, when you guys wanted to come crawling back three years later once you learned that it wasn't Michigan who was pulling the WCHA success wagon, we didn't even exact any sort of retribution or contrition on you.

Keep taking your shots, but you aren't scoring any points.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Tipsy McStagger said:
Robertson says he didn’t come up with the idea, but he told WCCO he is pushing to make it happen. He’d like the WCHA, Big Ten and NCHC to team up and coordinate their conference tournaments so they’re all in the same city the same weekend. Ideally, the Twin Cities.

“So it’d be one week of college hockey, and bring us back to the old Final Five days, where it was jam-packed every night,” Robertson said. “And I think that could be very successful.”

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/...with-big-ten-nchc-for-conference-tournaments/

I don't think it is a terrible idea, but obviously this benefits the Big Ten and the WCHA more than it benefits the NCHC.
Click to expand...

If only in the Twin Cities, yes attendance should be higher. But you still will not see MSU, um, OSU, PSU fans there. Nor will you see FSU, Miami, BGSU etc. We just don't travel. Just as Minn/Wis. fans don't travel to Det. Your turning it into a State of Minnesota, N.D. Wis regional Tournament. The formation of the B10 Hockey Conference certainly has screwed up College Hockey. If the things were the way they were, tCHHCoMSU may still be commissioner of the CCHA, and not doing, what he is doing at Munn Ice Arena. As for a solution, rotate campus sites.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

JohnsonsJerseys said:
Maybe the Bi6 and WCHA since they are both mainly the WCHA and CCHA teams of old. Nobody is going to have hurt feelings if the NCHC is left along twisting in the wind. Separation is what they wanted, so let them have it. They can have their conference tourney in Honolulu for all I care.
Click to expand...
I am not sure how the NCHC would be "twisting in the wind", since our conference is currently out drawing the B1G and WCHA combined. This seems to once again be a way for the WCHA to get some subsidies from the bigger schools because their fan support doesn't seem to be enough to sustain their conference. The B1G would probably go along with it just so they could have a less embarassing optic than the one of the crowd in St Paul on Thursday.

Last year the NCHC put 6 teams into the NCAA tournament that got 7 wins, while the B1G and WCHA each got one team in that were both one and done. This year it looks to be more of the same. B1G and WCHA are one bid conferences, NCHC has 4 teams in 2 of which are 1 seeds in their regional. Before the realignment, when was the last time Mankato or Tech got into the NCAA tournament?

As Hovey said, this whining by mostly Tech fans and a few BGSU fans is so old. I am not saying you can't feel however you want, but you don't have to drag it into every thread.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

I also am curious if Tech fans or anyone else currently in the WCHA would have wanted their team to reject an invite if they had gotten one. I was against the forming of a "superconference" but once it was formed I wanted to be a part of it instead of left out. SCSU wasn't one of the first six teams named for the NCHC,a lot of SCSU fans said they were fine staying in the WCHA, and I was in the vocal minority on these threads that said I wanted a golden ticket. So are MTU and MSUM and FSU fans gonna say if they had been invited instead of SCSU or WMU, they would have said thanks but no thanks?
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Tipsy McStagger said:
The B1G would probably go along with it just so they could have a less embarassing optic than the one of the crowd in St Paul on Thursday.
Click to expand...

If there's any conference that could care less about the attendance & being embarrassed, it would be the Big Ten. Having the live TV programming, especially around tournament time when basketball is on different CBS/TNT/TBS/TruTV networks, is more important.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

SOTA said:
If there's any conference that could care less about the attendance & being embarrassed, it would be the Big Ten. Having the live TV programming, especially around tournament time when basketball is on different CBS/TNT/TBS/TruTV networks, is more important.
Click to expand...

The arena could've literally been empty, and it still probably would've made more money than the other two tournaments.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

SCSU Euro said:
I also am curious if Tech fans or anyone else currently in the WCHA would have wanted their team to reject an invite if they had gotten one. I was against the forming of a "superconference" but once it was formed I wanted to be a part of it instead of left out. SCSU wasn't one of the first six teams named for the NCHC,a lot of SCSU fans said they were fine staying in the WCHA, and I was in the vocal minority on these threads that said I wanted a golden ticket. So are MTU and MSUM and FSU fans gonna say if they had been invited instead of SCSU or WMU, they would have said thanks but no thanks?
Click to expand...

Are you nuts? That's like asking, if some felon named Gwozdecky (random name chosen at random) sets fire to your house in the middle of the night while snacking on an ice cream cone, if you'd be willing to leave or if you'd rather sit in the flames.
(I will note that I am grateful to the old CCHA for giving us a home though, and do personally enjoy playing the other UP teams)
 
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Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Tipsy McStagger said:
They wouldn't be at the same venue. They would be at three different venues at staggered times. Ex. B1G at Xcel, NCHC at Target Center, WCHA at Mariucci.
Click to expand...
Segregating the venues by conference defeats the purpose, unless the purpose is to sell hotel rooms. It won't increase ticket sales. I agree that the toothpaste is out of the tube....the old tourney magic cannot be recaptured even by co-hosting the tourneys in the same venue. I think the ticket packages would seem too expensive to people who only care about their own conference games. The leagues just need to focus on building their brands and get used to smaller crowds and less tourney revenue. I was at Van Andel this weekend and I thought it was the right size venue for the WCHA with most lower bowl seats full and a lot of excitement (having FSU and BGSU nearby didn't hurt and Tech traveled VERY well).
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

I'd think you'd inevitably have the "little brother" syndrome, as you had when the ECAC and HE had their tournament at the same venue at more or less the same time.

The luster is off the conference tournaments, and I think it's partially and unintended consequence of the NCAA tournament expansion and by a more transparent and objective way of selecting the field for the NCAA tournament. Too many teams (and more importantly fan bases) know well in advance that they're going to the NCAA tournament.
 
Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

SJHovey said:
For crying out loud, Ryan, give it a rest.

To this day I can't figure out why it is that the vast, vast majority of people who continue to complain about the formation of the NCHC are Tech fans. Furthermore, for someone like me who attended his first college hockey games in the 60's and recalls the old WCHA it's even more puzzling. When Michigan, Mich. St., Tech and Notre Dame packed up their toys and moved to the CCHA to form some sort of "Michigan superconference", fans of the six WCHA teams left behind didn't spend any time whining about it. Maybe because we were too busy watching our teams win natty after natty, but that's beside the point.

In fact, when you guys wanted to come crawling back three years later once you learned that it wasn't Michigan who was pulling the WCHA success wagon, we didn't even exact any sort of retribution or contrition on you.

Keep taking your shots, but you aren't scoring any points.
Click to expand...
Thank you for saying what really needed to be said. I get the angst but my lord do some Tech fans on here know how to continually beat a dead horse.
 
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