If the WCHA were to have a tombstone, it'd read something like this:
WCHA
1951-2013
"Money Kills"
In the end, it was the almighty dollar that killed the West's premier collegiate hockey conference. The first symptoms were the Gophers and Badgers in step with their Big 10 (Now 12) brethren who play hockey in their own conference and what will give the six teams in that conference a captive television platform come the 2013-14 season. The money illness then spread to Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Ohio as teams from those states picked up their sticks for their premier conference, called the Collegiate Hockey Conference, and left their conferences en masse to end the conference and put the CCHA in jeopardy.
As a college hockey and WCHA fan and blogger, I'm split on this issue. While the obvious feelings of sadness and anger of slamming the door on the remaining schools is there, I also can't blame the schools for doing what they did. After all, we live in America where capitalism is king and the want to up the ante with the CHC I get. Why play programs in your conference like Michigan Tech, Mankato, or Bemidji that do get some people in the house while programs like UND, UMD and Denver have RABID fan bases, travel well and fill the building weekend after weekend?
This doesn't excuse the reports in Friday's edition of the Anchorage Daily News where the members of the CHC outright lied to the rest of the WCHA of the plans saying nothing was going on. If the CHC was in the works, they could have been outright with their plans and given the leftover schools time to figure out their own plans. Instead, these schools and those in the CCHA who have been left behind are left to wonder where they'll play come 2013-14 if at all. Thanks CHC, you and your greed have made the world of college hockey more uncertain than Brett Favre's football season!
-Andy Sorensen, CHW Blogger
Im sorry your Mavericks were left out but lets be realistic. The Mavericks in a league like that would have about 5 wins.
ReplyDeleteI will miss the WCHA a lot, but blaming UMD, North Dakota, Denver, Nebraska Omaha and Colorado College for going behind the back of the league and doing this is wrong! Mcleod brought in Nebraska Omaha and Bemidji State to replace Minnesota and Wisconsin but the league would not have been the same and although, new to the league, Nebraska Omaha took the chance to get out before there was nothing but below average to average teams left in the league so the new league formed and went down from 8 teams to 6...so what it will still be a strong conference that can compete with the big 10.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI'm not just talking as a Maverick blogger/fan, but for the rest of the WCHA and CCHA that remain. I have no problem that the six who left left, they're free to do so and I thank them for their time in the league and respect their desire to have tougher intra-conference competition.
What troubled me was that, unlike the Gophers and UW's departures, there was no real warning for the teams to get their ducks in a row instead of having to scramble like this. This will also lead athletic departments to hastily determine whether Division I men's hockey has a future at their school. We're taught at a young age that "honesty is the best policy" and if those six schools were honest with the league back at the Final Five we may not be in the disorganized tailspin we are now.
-Andy Sorensen, CHW Blogger
umm the league doesn't start until 2013-2014. plenty of time
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