I've addressed the issue of Husker hockey and this facility (the Breslow Ice Center) numerous times in various threads over the past 3 years.
In as small a nutshell as I can make it:
Whether the Huskers go D-1 with their hockey program (they have one, an ACHA team) will be almost totally driven by fans, boosters, and, perhaps, the Big 10 Conference itself, no matter what pronouncements you currently hear from the school on the topic from Shawn Eichorst and the Athletic Department. If the right boosters (read: the NU Foundation, among others) want this, then what Shawn Eichorst says/wants isn't really going to matter in the end. At Nebraska, the tail DOES wag the dog.
The Big 10 Hockey Conference really doesn't "work" with 6 teams and my bet is that the conference is going to work towards getting a couple schools to add teams. Does anybody really think they want to stay static at only 6 teams? I sure don't. NU, with the addition of this building, will then have the practice facility they will need to sustain such a program (a problem that currently plagues UNO, I might add), besides the arena needed to actually play in.
So, Nebraska has cleared the facilities hurdle although the Pinnacle Bank Center would then have to shoehorn into itself a hockey program along with NU men's and women's basketball
and along with the building's litany of concerts and the like.
Funding is not really a big issue at Nebraska, either. The NU Foundation has cash reserves in excess of a billion dollars. For those that don't know, this is the fundraising side of NU:
http://nebraska.edu/nu-foundation.html
This is a "private" corporation. To give you an idea of the scope and scale of this operation, the NU foundation has
250 full time employees. You want to know how Nebraska is what it is,
where it is, look no further than to this organization and then think about who some famous NU alum are, starting with people like Warren Buffett on the business side and Johnny Carson on the entertainment side of things. This is the reason why Nebraska has facilities that take a back seat to no one, anywhere, and endows a large number of sports programs (for a state and school this size) and has one of the 10 largest athletic department budgets (note: I said BUDGET, not revenues) in the U.S. I mean, this is a school that has a volleyball, only, facility, that seats more than 9,000 people (and sells it out every single night) to give you an idea. They have state-of-the-art
sand volleyball facilities at NU, for crying out loud. The Huskers even have a bowling facility, for THAT program (in which Nebraska is a national power with few peers, I might add).
Nebraska is an utterly unique situation where there is almost no competition for sports dollars from pro teams and little of consequence from other collegiate institutions, except, perhaps, from Creighton basketball.
One big hurdle, one that everyone always seems to want to gloss over, is Title 9 considerations. This is a biggie and is already a "problem" at Nebraska since they currently already endow more male athletic scholarships than female athletic scholarships. The "simple" solution would be for NU to also add women's hockey at the same time. That's where this all gets complicated a bit since they need a place to play, too, and the demand for dates at the Pinnacle Bank Center would seem to be getting stretched mighty thin at that point. They wouldn't seem to be able to play in the Breslow Center, either, since, as currently envisioned, this facility is only going to seat 700 or so. I couldn't really envision a situation where the University would allow the women's team to play in a hole like the Icebox in Lincoln (which seats 5,010 for hockey and is currently home to the Lincoln Stars of the USHL) so this is an issue that would have to be addressed, somehow. Locker rooms in the Icebox would be just the tip of the iceberg there.
It's worth mentioning in this discourse that Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln was built with all the piping put into the floor if they want to make ice there
and that that this was a last minute addition to the building.
Hmmmmmmm.
So, for a school the publicly says they have no plans to add hockey, they sure are doing a great impression of someone that is, now aren't they? This gives you something of an idea of the disconnect between what the school says, and reality. It's also worth mentioning that Eichorst has just over year on the job as A.D. and he may not really realize, himself, just how much all of this isn't really "in his hands", as yet. He may get a dose of that later this year since there is a VERY significant portion of Husker Nation that wants Bo Pelini gone and if the football team doesn't have an "acceptable" upcoming season, Eichorst is going to find out just how little say he has, because that sentiment is then going to then come to a screaming crescendo. It's close, now. He is in Pelini's corner, obviously, but that isn't going to matter if the "right" people decide otherwise. Ask Bill Callahan and Steve Peterson about that.
My bet is that you are correct and that hockey
is in the offing at Nebraska at some point in the not too terribly distant future. And, I think the most plausible scenario for this to happen is that they are pushed that way by Jim Delany and the Big 10 itself, since the conference would seem to need to add a couple schools. Under the circumstances, Nebraska is by far the most ideal candidate in the Big 10 right now in terms of the infrastructure, monies, etc. needed to do so.
And, they have a ready-made rival just 50 miles up the interstate, too.
