Thursday, March 25, 2010

UAH; getting you up to speed.


Picture from Save UAH Hockey Last summer and last fall I wrote a few articles about UAH Chargers and their not being accepted to the CCHA. Since UAH has made the NCAA tourney I thought maybe I would bring up a few of the blog posts that I wrote last summer on the issue, Goon's World is a fan UAH and wants only the best for this program. I also think people have short memories or are revisionists when it comes to history and this should refresh people's memories. I have said it more than once that the reason they were snubbed were flimsy at best and stunk of elitism. Like I said before when UAH was rejected that I smelled bullshit and I still do. Ironically UAH begins the season with Notre Dame (which isn’t in the tourney ) and draws Miami University which is 0-3-0 against the CHA teams this season.

The CHA argument.
I was thinking about the CHA and its 11 years of existence. Unfortunately the CHA will disband after 11 seasons of play. With the CHA disbanding, BSU will head to the WCHA, Niagara University and Robert Morris University will head to the AHA, and the University of Alabama Huntsville will head to the independent ranks after being snubbed by the CCHA with what appears to be some flimsy reasoning.

To show the CCHA they made a horrible mistake, the Chargers went out and beat the Fighting Irish to open the season...
[Illegal Curve]
College hockey trips itself again... [Click to read here]
Here is another great article by Tim Schmitt of the Niagara Gazette. I think there are some really good points to this article. It’s funny that after almost one week we still really have only have on record UAF A.D. Forrest Karr comments about ‘some of the CCHA schools having concerns about UAH’s lack of commitment, location and wanting to shore up the other CCHA schools first’ Yeah! A week later it still sounds pretty weak to me and I know I am not alone.

Finally, I am not sure that college hockey is to this point though, when Schmitt says that "the NCAA needs to step in and reorganize the sport’s governing board and insist that the game is bigger than any one school’s financial well-being." While I do agree with that philosophy, I doubt the NCAA would ever step in and do that. For the most part the NC$$ kind of takes a laissez-faire approach when dealing with member schools. Nor would I want the NCAA to step in.
Check out this post [Click to read]

More UAH. [Click to read]

I still smell B.S. [Click to read]

I still smell B.S. [Click to read]

UAH officials stunned by CCHA decision [Click to read]

This was an article that I wrote last summer that refuted the driving/flying distance argument.
Flying driving to Omaha Nebraska? There isn't much of a difference in mileage. One could make the argument that UNO is a lot closer to the schools in the WCHA than the CCHA. I checked the mileage on a few of the distances of travel and this is what I came up with for distances to UAH. I don't buy that argument. That isn't the reason for not allowing UAH or it's not a very good one.

UM - UAH 651 miles
BGSU - UAH 585 miles
OSU - UAH 510 miles
MSU - UAH 672 miles
NMU - UAH 990 miles
ND - UAH 560 miles
LSSU - UAH 951 miles
NMU - UAH 657 miles
MU - UAH 442 miles
UAF - UAH 4137 miles
FSU - UAH 768 miles

Here is the distances from UNO to the various schools in the CCHA.

NMU - UNO 684 miles
UNO - MSU 672 miles
UNO - UM 692 miles
UNO - UMiami 707 miles
UNO - UAF 3270 miles
UNO - NMU 765 miles
UNO - FSU 684 Miles
UNO - ND 545 miles
UNO - OSU 781 miles
UNO - LSSU 903 miles
UNO - WMU 597 miles
[Goon's World - UAH travel distances]

BallHype: hype it up!

6 comments:

  1. given these distances, the average team will have to travel about 57 more miles to get to uah than they had to travel to get to uno.

    since there would be 7 home series' at uah, that's an average of about 400 more miles per year teams will have to travel to get to uah versus uno.

    seriously? 400 miles per season for all teams? that's their reasoning behind denying uah membership? pretty weak if you ask me.

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  2. Can somebody tell me why the WCHA didn't take UAH?

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  3. UAH isn't in the WCHA footprint. They already have 12 teams.

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  4. Plus, UAH was offering $$$ to help offset travel costs (I have heard $5,000 and $10,000).

    I think the biggest hang up was that UAH plays in a city run convention center (VBC), and right now, the Huntsville Havoc of the SPHL get all the prime weekend times. This relegates UAH to playing a lot of 5:00 and 3:30 games on Friday and Saturdays as the VBC will try set up a hockey double header. I think the CCHA was looking for something in writing, even though the VBC verbally said they would give UAH the 7:00 time slots for CCHA games.

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  5. marooned - we went for uno first, but had they decided to stay with the ccha, i imagine we'd have hit up uah.

    i can understand why the ccha is bitter. we took one of their teams and then held the expectation that they should take an inferior (opinion) team to replace their lost team. at the same time, uno chose to leave and uah fits better, geographically speaking, into the ccha than the wcha.

    i imagine the ccha will eventually pick up uah, but a win or two this weekend would really help uah's chances of getting in.

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  6. Thanks krango. I s'pose it makes sense. At least my beloved Beavers got it.

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