(04-26-2023 01:24 PM)nodak651 Wrote:  

(04-26-2023 12:35 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-26-2023 12:03 PM)nodak651 Wrote:  

(04-26-2023 07:14 AM)Bronco14 Wrote:  

(04-25-2023 11:54 PM)nodak651 Wrote:  [/b]

From fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2022 Miami slashed its hockey budget by about 500K and increased its basketball budget by about the same. FB Budget increased by about 1.8 million between fiscal 2018-2022. Their hockey travel expenses (2022) are only about 75K more than they were during their last year of the CCHA. Their hockey budget was 40K LESS, yes, LESS than in was in 2013. Pretty sure Miami's AD just wants to funnel money into basketball and football and he is using travel and ASU as an excuse to move into a league that he thinks he can be successful in with a smaller budget. Funny enough, hockey had higher ticket sales than both basketball and football every year between 2013 and now, with 2019 being the only exception. The cost of running a hockey program isn't the problem - the problem is that Miami should be FCS. They spend more on football coaching salaries than they do on the entire hockey budget. Give me a break..

Data all from here: https://miamioh.edu/athletics/public-rec...index.html

Also, Wooden's thoughts on what the NCHC should do in regard to Miami's buyout is obviously an opinion, but it doesn't mean that the ASU/NCHC/Miami buyout discussions aren't legit. The guy talks to more people than pretty much anyone in college hockey and he's one of the best college hockey sources there is. Authors bio:
Adam Wodon -- Managing Editor -- Wodon has been covering college since 1988, and has since spent time as the play-by-play broadcaster for Princeton and Cornell, as well as professional hockey. He has worked on Westwood One's Frozen Four broadcasts from 2011-2015. He worked at USCHO.com for nine years, and on College Sports Television's regular college hockey coverage for three years. He has also worked for ESPN, including the 2004 Frozen Four game broadcasts, and 2003-05 NCAA Tournament Selection Shows. Other work includes television for CN-8 and the ECAC, full-time print reporter roles at multiple newspapers, as well as various radio, newspaper and television news and sports assignments since 1992.

So moving to FCS solves the problem of them wanting to focus on football?

Hockey coaches are cheaper than football coaches, so ANY school is going to be spending less on hockey coaches than football coaches. (WMU paid decades-long NHL coach Andy Murray significantly less than any of our head football coaches for example) Also, I'm always told hockey is supposedly VERY expensive, so something about Miami spending the least on hockey compared to football isn't adding up.

If hockey costs have increased so few for Miami since the CCHA / NCHC realignment, how does moving back to the CCHA help their football & basketball? That's all the more reason to stay where they're at! If they want to focus on football & basketball, FCS or no, MIami's hockey situation is irrelevant.

I understand, funding all 3 is hard as a non-P5. No question non P5 schools have to choose to focus on one or 2 & leave the other out. The problem is they have all 3 whether you like it or not & won't accomplish anything unless they completely cut a sport

My point I guess is that people, especially Frank, always bag on hockey for being too expensive when the cost is a drop in the bucket compared to football, and it really isn't as expensive as people think, especially if you look at the on-campus, alumni, donor, and community support that it creates, per dollar spent. Football programs always seem to get a pass - he was questioning whether or not Miami can afford hockey, when really we should be looking at whether Miami can afford to pump additional money into the FB budget. What was the return on trimming the hockey budget and pumping the basketball and football budgets? If a school is forced to let one of it's most popular and successful programs decay in order to fund an unsuccessful football program that loses even more money, maybe that is where the finger should be pointed at. I'm not saying that Miami should cut their FB program or drop to FCS, I'm saying that, as a factual statement, they fit the profile of an FCS school (along with many others), and if there are financial issues, hockey isn't the problem.

In regard to the hockey budget and the move from the NCHC to the CCHA, I think the logic would be that the program can get more wins per dollar spent. It also may not seem like that huge of a downgrade because BG and the Michigan schools are traditional rivals.

To be clear, I've always been a supporter of adding more hockey programs as a concept. I was completely disappointed when the Illinois hockey program fell through. I believe it would have been a gamechanger for the university and Downtown Champaign.

At the same time, I'm not reflecting my *personal* opinion on whether hockey should be prioritized or not compared to other sports, but rather the reality: the standard to add a D-I hockey program in today's world at least at the P5 level is that it needs to be completely financially self-sufficient on its own without taking any money from football, basketball or other existing programs. That's not MY standard, but rather the standard that the P5 schools have made for themselves.

Even for non-P5 schools, like Miami that we're discussing here, are virtually always going to prioritize football and, to a lesser extent, basketball. It's not that football is being given a "pass", but rather that's simply the reality of the situation. The revenue for any G5 school is going to be driven by their football TV contract, CFP revenue, and NCAA Tournament credits even more than a P5 school. The number of schools like North Dakota where the athletic department revolves around hockey are few and far between (and they're not FBS schools). So, if you want hockey added to more D-I schools, any call to divert money from football or basketball or any sport that's there for Title IX compliance is going to fall on deaf ears.

Once again, it's easy to list off schools that have a whole slew of factors that point to how hockey would work there. Believe me - I've lived through it because I'm thoroughly convinced that there is NO school out there that has more of those factors in place than my alma mater of Illinois. Yet, the rubber meets the road when the reality is that hockey needs to pay for itself in order for it to happen. That's the reality. You have to show a concrete plan on how hockey is going to pay for itself, meaning no debt, no diverting money from existing programs for football/basketball/women's sports, etc. Otherwise, wishing that hockey would be prioritized by athletic departments OVER existing sports is like all of these other fans talking about wishing that conference realignment was driven by geography and tradition or pure on-the-field performance as opposed to money, prestige and power. You're ultimately wishing for a world of athletic department priorities that simply doesn't exist. THAT is the challenge much more than saying hockey is simply expensive - that is a much too simplistic interpretation of what I've been saying here.

Issues I have: It's unreasonable and short-sighted to expect a return on investment from day one. Acting as if investment in sports is a zero-sum game, when investing in hockey allows a school to engage with an untapped segment of an alumni base and potential donors (Illinois was going to use hockey to help finance a new venue for Olympic sports, for example). Sports with almost zero fan support or followings often get new multimillion dollar facilities that are financed by debt. Diminishing returns for every dollar spent on FB at the P5 level. A lack of vision and untapped potential - hockey is extremely successful when you look at the makeup of "D1" programs and consider how niche it truly is - if the sport can grow just a little geographically and at the right schools, the potential ceiling is way higher than people give it credit for. Disconnect between quantity of NCAA programs and the quantity of successful programs at the Junior and the low-end pro level, who have great fan support, passionate fans, and an ability to get arenas built without mega donors.

I don't even really disagree with you here. Part of the reason why I was bullish on Illinois getting its new hockey program was that it could be tied to getting new facilities for volleyball, gymnastics and wrestling (all of which would have been necessary with or without hockey).

However, even if we may personally believe that it's wrong, your first sentence IS the P5 athletic department standard: they need hockey to get an instant ROI from day one or they're not going to do it. Just as importantly, we're often looking at men's hockey alone in a vacuum on whether it's profitable or not (or creates better alumni engagement, fandom, etc.), but that's not the full picture. For the vast majority of schools, men's hockey not only needs to pay for itself, but it also needs to pay for whatever additional women's team (whether it's hockey, lacrosse or some other sport) that would be needed to added for Title IX compliance purposes.

That's another issue that Illinois had (although my feeling is that they didn't want to state this publicly): the school had a male majority a few years ago when the men's hockey program was being proposed where it actually didn't have to add another women's sport for Title IX. However, the enrollment mixed has changed to be 50/50 male/female, which means that we likely would have needed to add another women's sport to comply with the law. That simply totally changes the economics when a new sport has to bring in enough additional revenue to pay for two or more other sports. It's effectively impossible to do that at scale in the P5 outside of football and basketball (which is why those two sports will always get the dollars).