I woke up today and saw the announcement that St. Cloud State and Western Michigan had been given invitations to join the NCHC Conference. I thought to myself, wow! Somebody decided to make things happen. It has been well known for months that Western Michigan has been waiting by the phone for this call, but to somewhat of a surprise, was the move to invite St. Cloud. Not to say that they weren't worthy of the invite. They have been a solid program for years with numerous players moving on to the National hockey League, but it's more of a surprise because it came out of nowhere.
All the talk since the realignment happened was that the NCHC was courting Notre Dame and that Western Michigan was a school that they were interested in but St. Cloud never seemed to be in the conversation. To me as an outside observer, it looks as if the NCHC cannot get a commitment from Notre Dame and wanted to be safe and offer two schools elsewhere and try to ensure a conference of at least 8 teams. Was it a good move? Only time will tell. I like the move for a couple of reasons. The first is that the two programs they are inviting are not slouches. As I said before, St. Cloud has competed at the top of the WCHA many times and has a rich tradition of churning out NHL talent. Western Michigan is coming off a great season in which they reached the NCAA tournament and although they lost the coach that got them there, they brought in former NHL head coach Andy Murray to replace him.
The other reason I like the move is that not only does it still leave the door open for Notre Dame to join, but it also makes it more appealing. Although the 6 teams in the NCHC are all strong programs, Notre Dame had to be looking at it and saying, do we really want to join a conference with just 6 teams. Yeah the Big Ten will only have 6 teams but they will have TV exposure and more money that makes only a 6 team conference immaterial. You could also argue that this gives the NCHC some leverage on Notre Dame now. By adding these two Universities they no longer have to make the big sell to Notre Dame. While they would still without doubt welcome them with open arms, they don't NEED them and that goes a long way in who holds the bargaining chips in the future.
So I believe today was a good day for college hockey. You have two conferences out west with 8 teams if these invitations are accepted. It leaves 3 teams as of now as independents for the '13-'14 season, Notre Dame, Bowling Green and Alabama Huntsville. If things become official and it leaves these 3 teams still in search of a conference it will make for an interesting story. Many will speculate but only the Presidents and Athletic directors will have the answers.
I leave the college hockey world and head for a discussion that I have had with many people and in return have had many arguments. That is the NHL deciding to stick with NBC/Versus instead of trying to negotiate a deal with ABC/ESPN. You can't argue with the deal they made in terms of money. NBC ponied up the dough big time, there is no doubting that. You can't even argue with the quality of programming that Versus or NBC does. The on air talent is great and the Versus studio show has grown by leaps and bounds over the years and is very well done. So why is there even an argument you might ask? It is very simple, ESPN, The WORLD WIDE LEADER IN SPORTS!!
For the many people who I have had arguments with about this subject, you can stop reading because you already know what I am going to say, but for the many that haven't, please pay attention. ESPN is the largest sports network in the world and quite possibly growing into the largest network of any kind, period. I have talked about growing the college hockey game with TV exposure, well here is my case for if they really wanted to expand hockey at the pro level.
For all the die hard hockey fans out there reading this, the reason ESPN should have been the company the deal was made with was not because of you. We all know you love the game and that you will search the guide channel for Versus and find that game and watch it day in and day out. This deal was for the part time hockey fans and for the people that don't even watch hockey at all.
When a sports fan comes home and turns on the TV he or she almost immediately turns on ESPN. It doesn't matter what is on there they are going to check it out first before they go searching anywhere else. That is where you can catch that fan!! They turn on ESPN and there it is, Pittsburgh is playing Philadelphia and things are heated. Before that person changes the channel they notice the physical play and fast pace to the game and decide to watch for a few minutes. The next thing you know, they watch the rest of the game and say to themselves, that was pretty exciting, I'm going to watch more NHL games. Even expanding on that, they may want to go checkout a game in person and that's when they get really hooked. But that is a whole different discussion, lets stick with TV.
Yes ESPN probably would have low balled the NHL to a certain extent in terms of a TV deal but in the long run it would have helped grow the sport so much more than NBC/Versus on a global level. You couple in the fact that the NBA is in a lockout with a strong possibility of losing the whole season and the exposure that the NHL could have gotten would have been off the charts. Does anybody else miss NHL Tonight? John Buccigross and Ray Ferraro, what a great show!! They can try to replicate that on Versus, but who will be watching besides us die hards?
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