(12-21-2014 04:44 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: Lots of schools would love to add men's hockey (including several Big Ten schools that have top level club teams and legit fan bases). The main issues are that (1) few schools can add *only* men's hockey - they almost all have to add enough women's scholarships for Title IX (meaning you're really adding 2 sports as opposed to just one) and (2) the facilities required are extremely expensive and capital intensive. The entry cost is extremely high, which is why the sport has such anemic growth despite pretty good popularity.
SEC would have the additional factors that it would require a large number of start-ups at once to sponsor a competition with AQ into the NCAA championships ... and "home games by one or two SEC schools playing in some other conference" does promise the same appeal for the SECN as "SEC hockey" would offer ... and the recruiting pool is quite shallow as far as supporting six SEC programs goes.
The cheapest time to add the facilities is when you are building a new arena, when you can add ice making facilities to the arena so that you "only" have to have a practice facility ... and when is there going to be a time when there are six SEC schools starting up at once?
The move in AZ makes sense in terms of being able to recruit as a single PAC-12 South school in the PAC-12 South region, not as the first step toward a rapid establishment of a PAC12 hockey league. Similarly, if Bama (or Mizzou) were to start up a hockey program, it would make the most sense in terms of recruiting from a wider area, not in terms of "starting SEC hockey". And with AU-H, even that makes more sense for Mizzou than for Bama.
The most natural TitleIX offset would seem to be women's lacrosse, since lacrosse can often be established with substantial facilities sharing with soccer.
(12-21-2014 08:25 PM)jam2112 Wrote: (12-21-2014 04:44 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: Lots of schools would love to add men's hockey (including several Big Ten schools that have top level club teams and legit fan bases). ...
If the B1G is looking to increase the number of programs it has playing in its new hockey division ...
You read that backward ... BigTen
schools that would like to add hockey if they could does not mean that the BigTen as a conference
wants to add hockey schools. Rather, the BigTen as a conference will have to add a BigTen member's new hockey program, whether it wants to or not, and that fact makes adding a hockey program even more interesting as a project ... if some donor with a lot of bucks steps up to fund the project.