(02-17-2017 05:41 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(02-16-2017 07:25 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-16-2017 04:48 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(02-16-2017 03:02 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I can't emphasize this enough: it took the single largest donation in the history of Penn State for ANYTHING (including academics, football, etc.) to start up the hockey program there. That's a MASSIVE bar to climb.

I would hope aspiring programs wouldn't use PSU as the benchmark. Penn State had a club. It had some sort of facility it was using.

The money came in, and everything went to top-shelf level. That's the difference. Infrastructure was there, but the "growing pains" were dramatically reduced. It's not that Penn State had nothing, Penn State was injected to become as close to an instant contributor at an instant. The facility alone...just ridiculous.

That's a problem, imo. It's that there is this perception that you might have to be Michigan/State, Wisconsin, or Minnesota right out of the gate if you're a Big Ten school, or any program looking to move into D1. That's simply not fair, or logical. But, that might be the playing field now.

Quote:I know for a fact that Lincoln tried to get Omaha into the CIC when Nebraska entered the Big 10. Their reasoning was that Illinois-Chicago was allowed to attend CIC meetings, so why shouldn't Nebraska-Omaha? (Much of the benefit of CIC is meetings to discuss best practices, so if you're allowed to attend the meetings you're effectively "in" the CIC for most practical purposes). But rather than allow Omaha in, the CIC kicked out UIC. Pissed off the folks in Illinois something fierce.

That's interesting! Institutional cooperation...it's still a thing?!

Oh, wait, it isn't in Ohio. Or Pennsylvania.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love nothing more than for Illinois to add Division I hockey. The thing is that they are in the *exact* same position as Penn State was competitively with a long history of a strong club hockey program plus a good home base for recruiting. Yet, the Illinois AD has explicitly stated that unless a PSU-type donation comes through the door, it just isn't happening. He's not even pretending or performing fan service to say that it's even a possibility otherwise.

Even if you don't have a PSU-type donation and want to do it "cheap", it's still expensive. Pretty much all of these schools would need to build brand new Division I ice hockey facilities, and even if they aren't palaces on the scale of PSU, that still takes a lot of money. Arizona State could use Gila River Arena for some games and it's directly in a large metro area, but not many other schools have that type of immediate availability without spending a ton on new buildings. Plus, these schools generally can't just add men's hockey alone. For Title IX reasons, they need to add a women's team (or the equivalent number of women's scholarships in other sports), too. So, you really need to add two teams in practicality at the same time. That's simply a challenge for any athletic department if they aren't spending $100 million like PSU. It would be tough to do all of that with $50 million unless you've got access to existing facilities like ASU.

Why would it take such a big donation? Illinois has a great basketball facility - wouldn't it be easy/cheap to make the baseline seats moveable and put an ice maker on the court?

They already have Huff Hall to handle volleyball and occasionally women's basketball games. So it's not like scheduling would be a big issue like it would for other schools.

A regulation hockey rink is about double the length and width of a basketball court. Getting cooling coils and a cooling compressor installed in an already built arena means a lot of modifications. The seating sight line may not be good either, as most basketball arenas dont check that out before building unless they make it intentionally for good hockey sightlines. The Islanders move to Barclay's Center has been a seating disaster as one side the seats are 20 ft or more above the ice and thousands of seat in the balconies don't even have a view of the ice. Many seat cant see the whole ice unless they look at the overhead screens the full game. Moreover, that arena already had ice coils, which were plastic rather than regulation copper. The NHL is not happy.

Getting someone to build a USHL rink in Chanpaign-Urbana to double as an Illini rink would be much much better. USHL teams (which are 18-20 yo kids playing weekends with no pay in an advanced development league) has been very popular in the Midwest (see Omaha, Lincoln, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids etc) and is a great source of college talent.