Sunday, November 09, 2008

Conference Realignment?

Mike Chambers had an interesting blog post today saying that conference realignment is imminent.

Interestingly enough, the plan that is apparently being discussed is almost exactly the same as the plan I suggested nearly two years ago. The only difference being that I had Wayne State joining the CCHA and UAH being thrown to the wolves, whereas now, Wayne State's program is already gone. And frankly, if the CCHA is going to inherit a dud of a program from the CHA, they would have been better off adding Wayne State, just because it's a short bus trip for most of the league.

4 comments:

gofalcons said...

As a CCHA fan I'd rather get Niagara or Robert Morris than Alabama-Huntsville. We already have to travel to Alaska every other year, now we'd have to go down to Alabama (probably in the off year) as well?

Unknown said...

Seems eerily like Slapshot to me. It could just be people from the CHA feeding this "information" to people to make it seem like there's more interest in the idea than there actually is. Everything through the official channels thus have made things look pretty grim. I don't see how you go from that to a decision being imminent with nothing in between.

I think either way Bowling Green would be tickled pink if they never had to make another bus ride out to UNO...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh74WqVb4WI

Anonymous said...

gofalcons--

That is the one thing I don't buy here. When Nebraska-Omaha was added to the CCHA, the vote was 9-2: WMU and LSSU voted against them. Since UNO was out of the league's normal "footprint", the league bylaws said they had to have the approval of 75 percent of the members--in other words, a third "no" vote would have sunk them. WMU and LSSU did not like the effect it was going to have on their travel costs to add a long bus ride like that, I guess.

Now we have UAH applying to the league. They still need those 9 "yes" votes, but what does UAH bring to the table? UNO had an arena that seated 8300 that sold out every game. At least back then, they had the promise of possibly becoming a big deal in college hockey.

Does UAH have anything that would convince 9 CCHA schools to admit them? Other than the prospect of saving a program, I don't see much.

Anonymous said...

UAH has 30 years of hockey history, one of the largest arenas in college hockey that seats 6,800 and a couple of DII national championships (hmmm...same thing that Bemiji has and a smaller arena slated to be built). It seems funny to be playing hockey in Alabama (yes, I was part of the program in the 80's), but there is something to be said for getting out of the bitter cold of the northern portion of the country and receiving a little southern hospitality (at least until the puck drops).