Penn State Hockey And NCAA Expansion

Check out this blog post from the Rink. With the arrival of one single college hockey team in Penn State University, college hockey fans are possibly going to have two new conferences? Huh, I guess I have read almost every article out there leading up to and after the Penn State University announcement and that's a new one. Seriously, I haven't seen this one on any of the big time hockey blogs, USCHO, INCH or College Hockey News and those guys are dialed into the college hockey world.

The aforementioned drama is that nearly every other program and college hockey fan is against the Big Ten forming their own conference. Many are upset about the loss of traditional rivals, many are upset that the CCHA and WCHA are already desperately chasing Penn State after denying the University of Alabama-Huntsville entry into their club, and most think that a Big Ten Hockey Conference is nothing more than the rich getting richer and leaving behind some smaller schools with programs reliant on existing conferences and rivalries.

I believe that Penn State's arrival is going to remake the CCHA and WCHA and create two new conferences alongside the Big Ten which won't be ideal for some of those programs and fanbases, but it's best for hockey in the NCAA moving forward. Change is inevitable in college sports. Last season saw the demise of College Hockey America as Robert Morris and Niagara were absorbed into Atlantic Hockey and Bemidji State joined the WCHA. In college football, Nebraska and Colorado left what was considered a power conference in the Big 12 to join the Big 10 and Pac 10, respectively. Utah and Boise State are also on the move in search of a better situation and a bigger payday.

There has been a lot of stuff thrown out there over the summer and don’t you think if USC or UCLA or insert ___________ University were going to have hockey they would already? As we saw with the PSU announcement it takes a lot of money to start a Division I hockey team. On the flip side of this, how many college hockey teams have folded in the 1990’s and 2000’s? I can think of a few; Wayne State, UIC, Fairfield, Iona and the University of Findlay