College Hockey for the Big East ?

[Boyee]

Marquette doesn't play D1 hockey but has had a club hockey team for a long time. From what I hear they are pretty good. Attendance at our hockey games was around 500/game in 2012-13, but I don't know what it was last year. We have plenty of places to play in town (10,000 seat US Cellular arena and the Bradley Center have both hosted hockey games. Club team currently plays in the suburbs, I think). However, we just started up a lacrosse program, and are still developing a following for that sport. We are already above the NCAA minimum, so there is really no reason to add another sport. The added expenditure involved with adding a women's sport, as well as whatever comes from the recent NCAA vote probably makes it cost prohibitive as well. There's also a storied program at UW that we would have to compete with for any decent recruits. As popular as hockey is in the area, I don't see us picking it up.

US Cellular Arena is now known as UW–Milwaukee Panther Arena.

[Omaha1]

Creighton University has an Independent Division III American Collegiate Hockey Association team.

Ummm, that's news to me and everyone else in Omaha.

[billyjack]

DePaul University has a Independent Division II American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) team, they formerly were in the Mid-American Collegiate Hockey Association (MACHA), but left so they could play higher caliber teams
Georgetown University has a Division II American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) team in the Atlantic Coast Collegiate Hockey League (ACCHL)
Marquette University has a Division II and Division III American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) team in the Mid-American Collegiate Hockey Association (MACHA) (Silver Division, North Conference)
Providence College is the only current Big East school with Division I NCAA hockey which is in the Hockey East Association and has Division II American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) team that is an associate member of the Northeast Collegiate Hockey Association
Seton Hall has a Division II American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) team in the Colonial States College Hockey Conference (CSCHC)
Villanova University has a Division I American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) team in the Eastern Collegiate Hockey Association

Ok, this post above is a little confusing and/or misleading...

To simplify this, and I'm going from memory here:
The NCAA has Division 1 Men's Ice Hockey, which includes around 58 teams.

These 58 teams had been spread across 5 conferences: Hockey East, the ECAC, Atlantic Hockey, CCHA and WCHA.
A year ago, the Big Ten, which had its 5 hockey schools located partly in CCHA and partly in the WCHA, decided to kill longtime rivalries, and started its own conference, creating a 6th NCAA Div-1 men's ice hockey conference.

So Minnesota (WCHA), Wisconsin (WCHA), Michigan (CCHA), Michigan State (CCHA) and Ohio State (CCHA), plus new-to-Division-1 Penn State played in the 6 team Big Ten Conference. The WCHA and CCHA (now named the NCHC) still exist with the schools that remained, most of which have great histories, traditions, and stuff in their trophy cases.

What Boyee is touching on is a separate body from the NCAA, called the "ACHA".
The ACHA is basically like a Division 2, Division 3, etc, to the NCAA's Division-1... but the ACHA breaks itself down semantically as ACHA Div-1, ACHA Div-2, and ACHA Div-3. URI and Rutgers and like Stony Brook are in the same conference within ACHA's Division-1... again,basically Division-2 if the semantics were used correctly... Villanova is in a different conference of URI's division... coincidentally, there are also around 58 teams within the ACHA Div-1 level.

At times, schools choose to upgrade from ACHA Div-1 to the NCAA Div-1... for example, Robert Morris was invited to join Atlantic Hockey a few years ago. URI and Navy, among others, are toying with the idea of moving up, though they would really need an Atlantic Hockey invite at some point (rumors have been flying that the invite will happen).

To further complicate trying to understand this... some NCAA Div-1 teams also have lower grade teams which are in the ACHA level... Canisius and Niagara do this for some reason. I don't think PC does this, though Boyee wrote that we did. Finally, I don't exactly know where "club" teams fit in all of this.

Anyway, I hope I didn't complicate things further!

[billyjack]

Just following up...

As i had mentioned above, Robert Morris recently, and maybe URI and Navy in the near future, would look to Atlantic Hockey for an invite to NCAA Div-1, because Atlantic Hockey is generally considered the weakest of the 6 NCAA conferences. UConn has been in Atlantic Hockey since moving to NCAA Div-1 around 10 to 15 years ago... but next year, UConn is expected to struggle in the stacked Hockey East conference.

The ECAC has won the last 2 national championships (Yale in 13, Union in 14), and had Quinnipiac in the Yale final in 13... prior to that, Hockey East had a string of championships (either BC and BU won in 12, 11, 10 and 09, I think). The ECAC hadn't won since 1989 prior to Yale in 2013. The ECAC has 6 hockey-playing Ivy schools (Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton and Yale) plus Quinnipiac, Union, RPI, Colgate, St Lawrence, and Clarkson.

Atlantic Hockey has Canisius, Niagara, RIT, Mercyhurst, Holy Cross, Sacred Heart, Air Force, Army, American International, Bentley, Robert Morris... so 11 teams now that Connecticut left... so teams are jockeying to backfill that final spot (again, URI or Navy or whomever).

[bmorex]

Xavier actually has a very successful club hockey team. I'm pretty sure they were close to a club national championship in their division in the last year or so.

But I don't see it ever becoming D1 (due mainly to the costs and having to build a facility).

Thanks bmorex for the information on the club program. Do you know where they play?

If X developed such an intercollegiate program I suspect they could play at the Cincinnati Gardens and building an arena would be unnecessary. There would of course have to be a decision as to the nature of the scholarships. It is possible to play with only 6 or 8 scollies and 2 coaches. Some schools offer no scholarships for baseball or lax, if necessary we could go that route.

Of course if grant in aids were offered to men a similar number would need to be offered to women. That is where my next great idea originated. A Muskie women's college roller derby team !

2012 stats on college hockey attendance:

http://www.uscho.com/stats/attendance/d ... 2012-2013/

They play their home games at the Gardens.

[Boyee]

US Cellular Arena is now known as the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.

[notkirkcameron]

Starting a Big East Hockey conference with the 10 schools (or even a share of them plus affiliates, like lacrosse), would be a tough deal for numerous reasons.

1.) High costs, plus having to add a women's sport as well in an era of NCAA Big 5 uncertainty. If there's a pile of money big enough to make a hockey arena, or start a hockey team....or you could plow it back into the basketball team, I have to imagine most Big East schools know which side their bread is buttered on.

2.) Only six NCAA Division I hockey teams have started from scratch since 1980. Only 4 programs (even in lower divisions) have joined Division I since 2000. Over the same time frame, 35 women's hockey teams have joined Division 1. The sport is overwhelmingly used as a counter where you can have opportunities for a lot of female student-athletes.

3.) Only one Big East team currently sponsors Division 1 hockey (PC). In order to reach the minimum 6 teams to get an automatic NCAA Tournament bid, 5 schools would need to create D1 programs. In other words, the Big East alone would need to create more Division 1 Hockey teams than the entire country has produced in the last 15 years. For perspective, three Big East teams sponsor FCS football (Butler, Villanova, and Georgetown). It would take fewer Big East schools to take up football to get an automatic bid in the FCS NCAA Tournament than for hockey.

4.) The Big East is a conference focused on basketball, and hockey season runs concurrently with basketball. The practical effect of this is that unless you have a bottomless bank account, you only have so many dollars to spend on diversions like watching your alma mater play. A person who previously went to..let's say....4 Marquette basketball games a season may now go to 2 basketball games and 2 hockey games. This is a problem because....

5.) Facilities. Many Big East teams play in facilities that are bigger than their needs (St. John's, DePaul, Marquette to an extent, Georgetown, etc.). People leaving basketball games for college hockey games leads to fewer packed arenas, and a less valuable basketball television product.

6.) Competition from professional hockey. Creighton basketball is an attendance success story because it's the only game in town. Marquette to an extent as well because the only competitors at the same time are UWM, the Bucks, who have won 2 playoff series since 1989 (both in their run to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2001 when they were defeated by Iverson's Sixers), and the AHL's Milwaukee Admirals, who are, at best, lukewarmly supported by Southeast Wisconsin. They average about 6k fans per game. However, it is worth pointing out that there is at LEAST an AHL team in seven of the Big East's markets, and at least one NHL team in 5:
Marquette (Milwaukee Admirals)
DePaul (Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Wolves)
Georgetown (Washington Capitals)
Villanova (Philadelphia Flyers)
Seton Hall (New Jersey Devils)
St. John's (New York Rangers/Islanders)
Providence (Providence Bruins)

So not only do you end up with a divided hockey fan market, and a divided college sports market, but this also manifests itself as...

7.) Competition for dates and facilities. The Big East is notoriously one of the latter conferences to release their basketball schedule, in part because of the other tenants in our gyms. Butler and Xavier are the only Big East schools who have no other tenants in their basketball arenas. The other 8 have to negotiate their way around a calendar, and adding another team to the mix won't add more dates to the calendar.
Creighton (Nebraska-Omaha Men's Hockey)
Marquette (Bucks, Admirals AHL)
DePaul (Chicago Wolves AHL)
Georgetown (Wizards, Capitals)
Villanova (Flyers, 76ers, for Wells Fargo games)
Seton Hall (New Jersey Devils)
St. John's (New York Knicks, New York Rangers)
Providence (Bruins AHL)

In many cases, even alternate sites are booked by multiple tenants. The US Cellular Arena in Milwaukee (UWM, AFL's Milwaukee Mustangs, Indoor Soccer Milwaukee Wave), the United Center (Bulls, Blackhawks), and Barclays Center (Nets, Islanders) immediately come to mind. You would likely need to find another facility for hockey teams.

[Noonzy]

PC has is own beautifully revamped arena. Some hockey games are the same days as the basketball games, but different times allowing people to go to both. I don't believe PC competes with the Providence Bruins for fans.

[FriarJ]

PC also sponsors a Division 1 women's team.

[EMT]

PC would never leave Hockey East for a Big East hockey league. That would be like asking a BE basketball team to go play in America East. Hockey East is arguably the best hockey league in the nation. PC is also currently one of the best teams in the league as well. Last year 5 of the 16 NCAA teams were HE.

PC should be top 5 preseason this year and may even show up #1 on some polls.