(08-10-2019 06:19 PM)puck swami Wrote:  

(08-08-2019 09:15 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Personally I am not a fan of affiliate members. I think schools should be all in. Part of a conference’s identity should be that they sponsor a certain set of sports. If your conference mates have a divergent set of athletic offerings and priorities you don’t have a lot of conference unity. I hate to pick on Denver but they are a perfect example of this. Their priorities are men’s hockey, men’s lacrosse, and skiing. Note these are all niche sports that they play as affiliates elsewhere and as a result they don’t sport teams in sports their league does play. That hurts when your conference is on the fence when it comes to the number of teams for baseball and men’s soccer.

As a Denver fan, I think you should find a different school to pick on. The Pioneers have 33 NCAA titles because they figured out a long time ago that a private school can be far more successful in investing in country club niche sports where affluent kids can be difference-makers (DU's prime student demographic) to drive fan interest vs. just being also-rans in sports that everyone else plays, especially when DU is in a locations that is not very conducive to recruiting success in a number of sports (football, men's basketball, track, softball are substandard recruiting areas here)

For example, DU had football for 75 years from 1885 to 1960. Never won a bowl game (in 3 appearances), only won a few league crowns, and in the end, was drawing less than 10,000 per game in 1960. Colorado is a terribly bad recruiting area for football, too. So DU dropped football with its $100,000 deficit and put the money into it's ice hockey team. DU has since won 8 NCAA titles in hockey since 1958 (second all time), selling out most games and generating a seven-figure profit every year. There are only 60 D-I schools playing ice hockey, so your chances for success go much higher than trying to make it in D-I football, where most schools fail and run deficits chasing a few "haves".

DU once had baseball and even went to the College World Series once in the 70s, too but dropped the sport in 1999, due to a lack of regional opponents, poor spring weather here and little public support. Since dropping baseball, DU put the money into lacrosse and has become a national power and sells out every game as a Big East associate member, winning the NCAA title in 2015. Being a lacrosse power has done wonders for generating regular student applications from east coast prep schools, which is a significant market for DU in terms of generating full-pay students, which DU needs as a private school. Lax has been an amazing investment for DU.

Yes, we suffer from a limited sports menu, but if you ask DU fans, we'd much rather have NCAA top 5 calibre programs in hockey, skiing, and lacrosse vs getting killed in football, baseball, track, softball, etc.

As for DU's contributions to the Summit League, what we lack in playing some sports, it is compensated by many successful DU teams in the Summit Sports we do play, as well as the benefits of a large market (TV games on Altitude Sports, etc., fun road trips for visiting fans, the best academics in the conference, great facilities, and a sports budget at the very top of the league in the Summit Sports we do play.

I've been reading posts on this board since about 2014 and this is one of the better posts I've ever read. Well put, PSwami.