The CCHA Conundrum

This College Hockey News story, which disclosed that Penn State might begin conference play in 2013-2014, a year earlier than planned, hit on Monday. It was treated as news for some reason, even though the Daily Collegian crew reported more or less everything in that article back on February 7th.

The CHN story contained quotes from Joe Battista, including these:

"We don't want to put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage by joining a league too early, but we're part of a bigger picture here. Change is never easy. I think ... if you're looking at the opportunities we have to grow the sport and maximize the exposure, having Penn State and the brand that it brings with it, is a positive thing."

"Michigan has long-standing rivalries (in the CCHA) and they've tended to dominate, so it will push a lot of people outside their comfort zone. I understand, I empathize, but I believe in my heart any time you can add another nationally recognized school to the mix, it can only in the end mean good things. There may end up being smaller conferences that come out of this, which means more opportunity for automatic qualifiers."

A little bit brutal with the honesty, but ultimately, hard to argue with the points made. Unfortunately, and predictably, this once again drew the wrath of some in the NCAA establishment who feel like Penn State is destroying college hockey as we know it.

This Penn State hockey guy Battista obviously doesn't understand D1 hockey. Simply has a woody for the BTHC, doesn't care he's ruining CCHA.

Where was all this concern for the CCHA when UNO decided take the talents of its up-and-coming program to the W?


Can you smell what JoeBa's cooking? Clearly a diabolical scheme to reduce DI hockey to six teams. Or he's just looking out for his school's best interests. One or the other. 

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Big Ten hockey is bigger than Joe Battista, bigger than Penn State and even bigger than hockey for that matter. Battista himself implied as much in that CHN piece:

"When it's all said and done, any of the members of the Big Ten know their conference affiliation on an athletic department basis is what allows their athletic departments to function. That revenue sharing from television and tickets is what pays for a lot of other sports. So that allegiance to the conference is important."

Basically, quit making us a scapegoat when all we really did was a) want an NCAA program and b) accept a large donation to make it happen. The Big Ten hockey impetus comes from the Big Ten university presidents and athletic directors, a majority of whom are not named Graham Spanier or Tim Curley. And it's not an entirely flawed line of thinking either, as the Big Ten in other sports has enabled us (collectively) to dominate the list of wealthiest athletic programs.

For the little that it's worth, I'm on record as being against Big Ten hockey. If you visit the link in the last sentence, you'll see that I have concerns about the future of the small programs and PSU's competitiveness in a meat grinder conference with some of college hockey's most storied programs.

But at the same time, I recognize that it's pretty much inevitable and that it's also the stated preference of PSU administration, so I might as well learn to like it. Part of that process: doing something that may get me killed, at least metaphorically - openly questioning the impact of the departure of the Big Ten schools on the rest of CCHA. Let's take a look at attendance for the schools most consider to be the primary victims of the situation, the CCHA leftovers outside of Notre Dame and Miami.

Since I don't have room to give very descriptive headings, the first column is actual 2009-2010 attendance. The second is the 2009-2010 attendance minus Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State, while the third is an extrapolated total based on the average from the second column and the number of home games from the first column. The format is Total Attendance/Home Dates (Average).

My source for all data is USCHO. I used last season instead of this season because the data for this year isn't complete just yet.

             2009-10 Actual      Minus B10      Extrapolated

N. Michigan  56102/19 (2953)  48867/17 (2875)  54625/19 (2875)

Alaska       51965/19 (2735)  45628/17 (2684)  50996/19 (2684)

W. Michigan  43078/18 (2393)  32844/14 (2346)  42228/18 (2346)

LSSU         37029/16 (2314)  26880/12 (2240)  35840/16 (2240)

BGSU         35248/16 (2203)  24457/12 (2038)  32608/16 (2038)

Ferris State 32355/20 (1618)  24230/16 (1514)  30280/20 (1514)

Forgive me for not seeing a drastic difference there, especially outside of the bottom two. Yeah, Michigan and to a lesser extent Michigan State and Ohio State are name programs that are a better-than-average road draw. They are not, however, keeping otherwise doomed programs afloat, at least not at the gate.

Take it a step further. The adult single-game tickets at these schools range in price from $10 to $20. Multiply each school's price by the change in total attendance, and you get gate receipt losses ranging from $11,890 (Lake Superior) to $31,680 (Bowling Green). Keep in mind that this number is inflated - surely, the cheaper student, youth and senior tickets are part of the ticket sales, and season tickets are generally sold at a discount too. Unfortunately, I don't have access to percentages of each type of ticket, so I'm erring on the other side of the argument. Another factor would be the scheduling agreements with the Big Ten schools mentioned by Battista in the CHN article which, again, mitigates the impact of the transition.

I realize that any financial hit at all is hard to stomach, especially when you're already stretched pretty thin, but let's face it, if $20,000 per year breaks your program, you probably weren't long for this world anyway. Don't forget that - even if Penn State and the Big Ten never happen, what were your odds on Bowling Green still being around in ten years? And even if they do survive, what are their hopes of being competitive at the highest levels? Or giving the university any kind of return on its investment other than the opportunity to gaze longingly at banners commemorating seasons constantly drifting further and further into the past?

That last paragraph probably sounds pretty callous, but you know I'm right. The Big Ten is not bringing big money and program disparity to college hockey. Not in a world where Wisconsin pulled in 316,014 fans at roughly $18 a pop last year (that's $5.7 million in ticket sales alone - Alaska was best from the table above, with an inflated number of $987,335). And certainly not in a world where the CCHA leftovers have a combined three trips to and one win in the NCAA tournament in the last decade. Don't tell me they would mind a better crack at an autobid.

I'm not naive, I know there are other pieces to the puzzle. Big Ten hockey probably impacts the CCHA television deals with Comcast and CBS Sports - only six of 44 CCHA regular-season television games this season did not involve a Big Ten school, for starters. Maybe a frustrated donor backs out. Problem is, I can't predict any of those things and neither can you. All we can do is sit back, watch things unfold (another thing we can't do: control any of this) and hope for the best for all of the schools I've named here, because it's my sincere hope to see every current DI program not only survive, but thrive. They're a vital part of what makes college hockey special, and without them, something important would be lost.

Someone Hates "The Video"

Amidst all the good feelings of alumni weekend and the "We Are - Penn State Hockey!" video, the NCAA hockey establishment is still not entirely in support of our intrusion into the only domain where schools like North Dakota actually matter. In response to the aforementioned video, college hockey blog Goon's World had this to say.

Yawn! If the hockey pundits think that Penn State University is just going to march into college hockey and start winning titles I think they are delusional. Minnesota is an established hockey program and they are having a hell of a time right now in the WCHA, they will be lucky if they get home ice and make the Final Five, they probably are going to miss the NCAA tourney again. Last time I checked Minnesota has all the advantages of a premiere hockey program. Big Ten School Michigan State is floundering this season and sitting in the bottom of the CCHA standings in 10th place. If some think they can just throw money at a big name coach and expect a winning program they are misinformed. I would be surprised if Barry Melrose would know where Penn State is located.

What a tremendously crafted argument. And by "tremendously crafted," I mean the opposite of that.

• I don't think a single person has actually said that PSU will "march into college hockey and start winning titles." I was once misquoted as saying something like that (my actual opinion is in this two-part post from November - 1, 2). Darren Pang says in the video that "Penn State will compete with anyone at the end of the day, and championships won't be far behind." You'd have to ask him I suppose, but since he's not Mayan, I don't think he meant that the "end of the day" is 2012. I would request that Mr. Goon please point me in the direction of someone associated with Penn State who doesn't think we'll take some hard knocks early on.
• Two tradition-laden programs in "hockey states" are struggling this year. Surely this means that a new program in a "non-hockey state" will suck forever. Or it simply means that those factors are overrated when it comes to program success. If tradition and "being established" don't guarantee success - and Goon's World correctly points out that they don't - how important are those things in actuality? If I'm wrong, someone needs to remind UNO that they're located in Nebraska, were founded in 1997, and need to exit the current poll promptly to make room for Minnesota or Cornell.
• We're excited about something that we have wanted since our introduction to Penn State hockey but doubted would ever happen. Sue us.

I haven't even mentioned this post from about a week ago, which smirked at the Buffalo News story about the source of Terry Pegula's fortune.

Want to go toe-to-toe on arena namesakes hoss? I'll see your hydrofracking and raise you this.

[Ralph] Engelstad was a controversial figure. He raised accusations of being sympathetic to Nazism owing to his collection of Nazi memorabilia stored in a private room within the casino-hotel, including a painting of himself dressed in a Nazi uniform (captioned "To Adolf from Ralphie"), a painting of Hitler with the reverse caption, and a collection of antique cars alleged to have once belonged to German Nazi leaders.

On April 20 in 1986 and 1988, he hosted parties to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday at his casino in Las Vegas which featured bartenders in T-shirts reading "Adolf Hitler — European tour 1939-45". Because of this, in 1989, the Nevada Gaming Commission fined Engelstad $1.5 million "for actions that damaged the reputation and image of Nevada's gaming industry."

Why does this guy have such a hard-on for Penn State? Maybe, just maybe, he feels threatened by the possibility of a shifting landscape in college hockey. If PSU is the beginning of a large-scale trend of big schools with big money adding the sport, that probably doesn't bode well for the North Dakotas of the world, no matter their number of championships or their proximity to Canada. I mean, it just took us to (presumably) rip two of the best programs from UND's conference. What other madness might ensue if/when others add programs? I personally don't believe there is such a trend, but maybe he does.

I suppose it could also be his perception of our arrogance, but like I've already said, it's a false perception. If it's neither of those things, I'm at a loss.

Edit: Goon's World clarified his position on Penn State in an update to the post linked above. Well, actually, first he tweeted me to tell me I don't recognize his clearly brilliant satire. The original post is copy/pasted in its entirety here, so you can judge that one for yourself. It comes off to me like he made a poorly-thought-out argument based on irrational feelings, was called out on it, and played the "I was joking, lighten up" card.

Then he went on to explain why he dislikes Penn State so much - because the CCHA told Alabama-Huntsville to take a hike, and it's widely believed that they did so to save the slot for us. How that's in any way our fault, I'm not sure. Sorry for being appealing, I guess. I like UAH, and I'm sincerely happy that our interests in the ongoing conference saga may be aligned after all. Oh, and we get too much attention from people like Doc Emrick. I guess you'll have to settle for NHL Network cramming your team down my throat every weekend. But after outlining why he hates us, he said he doesn't hate us. Must be that satire rearing its head again.

Anyway, thanks for the free pub, good luck with the nickname thing, and see you in multiple Frozen Fours down the road. I'm done with this one.

"The Best in the Country"

As a general rule, I try not to insult the intelligence of the readership with a single-source post - simply sharing a relevant story is Twitter territory in my opinion - and I try to be more thoughtful than bloggers who go "oooh, an article within my area of interest," then basically do a copy/paste with maybe a couple sentences of their own stuff in between paragraphs.

Yeah, that's right, NCAA hockey establishment blogs. Both barrels, until you stop this useless sniping/taking out your frustrations re: Big Ten hockey on us. We have about as much control over it as you do. We're not all pro-Big Ten. We're sorry that Joe Battista didn't abandon his life's work and tell the guy with $88 million to stick it so you could keep playing Michigan Tech and St. Cloud State. Or not. We love Penn State, we love hockey, and for many of us, September 17th was the culmination of a lot of wishing. We're here, we're not going anywhere, deal with it.

What was this post about? Oh right, this article from the Collegian's Tony Barton, which does a tremendous job somehow covering new ground with respect to the Pegula Center, and is therefore worth breaking the rule. If you wondered why there are two architecture firms (Crawford Architects and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson) on the job, this would be the place for the answer. If you thought that Dan Craig was the only ice guru out there, now you know that Penn State has Tim Moore on the design team. Here's the part where I copy/paste the Collegian to tell you that I like the cut of Moore's jib.

“Large sports facilities are very near and dear to my heart,” Moore said. “I’ve been kind of hoping we could be affiliated with this project since it first became public.”

Moore is no stranger to Penn State, as Battista recruited his son, Brian, to play with the university’s club team, the Icers. While his son ended up playing at Division I Bowling Green, the ties to Penn State were made.

The refrigeration technician said his work began with ice arenas 25 years ago, and he and his partner Joel Anderson have worked on more than 200 ice sheets.

As for the championship ice, Moore said its creation is his passion.

“We’ve learned how to do it properly, and we’ve learned what’s important about it,” Moore said. “We know what effects the conditions of the ice and whether it’s fast or slow.”

Moore said the ice system will consist of more than 100 moving parts. He will work to create the most efficient refrigeration units possible that will also be functional year-round.

“We recognize that Penn State wants the best ice in the country,” Moore said. “We think we can bring that.”

There's been some discussion in the Penn State community about how successful our men's hockey team will ultimately be. Some (myself) feel like we're going to have everything in place to be a top program, while others point to the men's basketball program as evidence of Penn State's ability to run a high-profile program that isn't football.

Here's what I feel like I know: Basketball doesn't have a Joe Battista overseeing it, a guy who's been a winner in everything he's done and who has devoted a pretty big chunk of his life to Penn State hockey. He's not doing this to fail. Basketball doesn't have a Terry Pegula, a similarly-wired winner, to keep everyone accountable. Basketball hasn't made a full-on commitment to being the best in the country in every aspect of the program - even the architects and the ice guy, who are less than a week into this, know where the bar is located.

One other note tucked in at the end of the article:

Once a decision is made, the architects, construction team and members from the university will have a kickoff meeting on Nov. 30. It will be the first time the three components come together and begin working on the design.

Sounds like we have a hard date on the construction team's selection, as opposed to the "soon after the architect" line we've heard a couple times.

UPDATE: Barton tweeted to tell me that the construction interviews are next Wednesday.