82SiouxGuy

That number for NCAA hockey also includes Division III, but I don't think there are very many that come from that level.

I'm pretty sure that the schools don't officially get their tickets until they are officially in the tournament. That happens on the 22nd, even though everyone knows that UND will make the tournament and will be in Fargo. And I don't ever remember tickets going on sale until the Monday following the tournament announcement, announcements about how tickets will be disbursed at each school are usually made later in the day on Selection Sunday. So none of the tickets should be available until Monday the 23rd.

The first is the quote I originally responded to. The second has nothing to do with the first and nothing to do with any of my responses.

The minor leagues seem to have a similar breakdown, so using percentages seems to be the best way to compare all of professional hockey with all of professional football. How else are you going to compare between sports? You want total players? Approximately 300 NHL players in 2011-2012 came from the NCAA out of less than 1,000 total NHL players. In 2012, 162 players in the NFL came from FCS schools out of almost 2,000 total NFL players. As far as Canadian versus others, I don't remember exact numbers but I believe that Canadian juniors supply somewhere in the mid to upper 40% range and everyone else is around 20%. I think that 2011-2012 was approximately 46% Canadian juniors, 31% NCAA and 22% European plus US juniors and anyone else. In the NFL approximately 67% came from the Big 5 conferences, 20% from the rest of FBS, 9% from FCS, 4% from Div II, and a few odd players from all other sources. Again, NCAA hockey is much more important in supplying talent to the NHL than FCS football is in supplying talent to the NFL.

Since anywhere from 31-38% of the NHL played NCAA hockey, depending on the year, it is safe to say that the NCAA is a major supplier of talent. I'm pretty sure that it is a higher percentage than the number of FCS players in the NFL. In 2012 86.85% came from FBS while 8.32% came from FCS and 3.8% from Division II.

They will become available shortly after the pairings are announced, probably the Monday after Selection Sunday. They can't put them on sale until they know which schools will be playing at that site. They will be handled by the individual schools, and the schools decide how to distribute them. They usually have some kind of priority system to get some tickets to students and some to supporters. Leftover tickets are returned to the venue to sell, usually either Thursday or Friday of that week depending on when the games are scheduled.

It was probably legal, but it wasn't the intended purpose of the money. The money was supposed to support academics, not athletics. Since a couple of schools didn't understand that, it sounds like the Legislature is making themselves a little more clear. But get it straight, the money was never intended to help support athletics in any way. But maybe regular students don't need financial help at NDSU, only the athletes are important enough to get scholarships.

Zero.

Average attendance for the year is just under 1,200 per game. Last year it was just over 1,200. That ranks 3rd in the WCHA and 3rd in the country both years. I would say that holding a game on a Friday afternoon probably isn't going to attract a large number of people. People have jobs, kids have school, UND students have to go party at the end of the school week, etc.

It was 7 years ago. I think he got over it. He's approaching 70 and wants to move closer to family.

I've seen a goal judge hit the light when the shot hit the plexiglass in front of his face.

Usually the tickets go on sale to the general public. I don't believe they have a period for Champions Club. It is usually Spring Break and the students are gone so there are normally plenty of tickets available.

A lot of Champion's Club members never got a chance to get tickets in the first go round. Tickets were long gone well before they got through the list of Club members. We have been Club members for about 15 years and we didn't have a chance to get tickets (I know because we tried). They only had 2,500 tickets to distribute and Champion's Club members buy something like 7,000 season tickets every year.

They might in the future. They bid on it for 2015. The NCAA policy says no regionals at home rinks. But they have limited options of suitable rinks. For the West regional I believe there were 3 bids for 2015. UND and REA bid both REA and Scheels, and I thought that Duluth also bid for their place. For the Midwest regional there was only 1 bid, Notre Dame bidding at home. Scheels won the bid because it wasn't a home rink. Notre Dame won the bid because it was the only bid. The risk in bidding REA is that the NCAA will probably give bids to non-home rinks whenever they can, unless they change that policy. So Minnesota bidding the Xcel, Wisconsin bidding Milwaukee or Green Bay, and several other options would more than likely be taken over REA. I think that there are more schools interested in bidding for the West than the Midwest. At least you get to host once in a while if you bid Scheels.

No guarantee that you could get an extra 5,000 fans to a regional 300 miles from Grand Forks. UND/REA doesn't get the benefit of additional money even if they sell extra tickets. Definitely not enough benefit to take the event out of state. And REA matters in the equation because they work directly with UND on the bidding.

If you want to be able to have more fans you put it in a baseball or football stadium. They can fit 30,000 or more in a stadium. A state institution (UND is owned by the state of North Dakota) giving an economic benefit to another state rather than keeping it within the state of North Dakota is guaranteed PR problems. Plus, hosting 300 miles away from home is more problems than hosting 75 miles away. Hosting in Sioux Falls just isn't going to happen.

Exactly.

What would UND and REA get out of putting a regional in Sioux Falls? The NCAA gets the bulk of the ticket revenue. UND/REA might get a little bit of extra ticket money and some extra concessions money, but it probably wouldn't be significant. They would be taking money away from a North Dakota city and giving it to a South Dakota city (hotels, restaurants, stores, taxes, facility rental, etc.). It would be bad PR to bid the event in Sioux Falls if Fargo is available. I don't see it happening as long as there is a viable option in North Dakota.

Money, or more accurately, lack of money.

Conferences aren't normally built on the basis of performance on a field or a court (especially over a 2 or 3 year period). UND would be considered a high end Big Sky school based on the strength of the overall school and the strength of the athletic department (budget, long term success of programs, strength of staff, fundraising, etc.). There is a reason that Idaho put Montana, Montana State and UND on their list of schools that had to be in the Big Sky or else they had an out clause in their current agreement with the conference. UND as a school and as a business partner (basically what conferences are) is one of the stronger schools in the conference. Also, you might want to check your standings. The UND men's basketball team was 12-8 in Big Sky Conference play each of their first 2 years in the conference. They do have a losing record this year in the conference. The women had a losing conference record their first year, but were 15-5 last year and 8-5 so far this year.

My guess is that you wouldn't attract a lot of more qualified officials. You either have to compete with the professional leagues, or try to develop officials like tSic suggested. Otherwise you are competing for the same group of part time officials. And most of them need to work within their own regional area as much as possible because of travel time and dealing with their regular jobs. As far as whether the league could afford it, they could probably afford the $1,000 per game by making some other budget changes but it would probably be difficult to compete with the professional leagues.

College officials are part time, they also have full time jobs. I believe that the official Vegas is talking about works in the NHL. They are full time officials and don't have another full time job. He would work the 82 game season plus any playoff games he would be assigned. He makes more than $350/game, he makes $110-115,000 per year. The salaries of $150-250,000 are probably average to high average of what NHL officials make per year. The $350-500 per game number would be what college officials make. They probably work 30-50 games per year depending on schedules. 40 games at $350 per game is $14,000, a little bit less than the $150,000 for a full time linesman in the NHL.

And maybe it will provide a convenient excuse for the Legislature to not fund the program this session. Because of the low oil prices they are looking for programs to cut. Have you ever heard of anyone using enhanced academics in the same sentence as athletic department?

Does this sound like it was intended for supporting athletic scholarships?

The section in the Century Code is entitled "The Advancement of Academics", not the advancement of athletics. UND got all of the money it was eligible for and put the money into academics. That is what the program was set up for, to put money into academics. It appears that NDSU and the other 2 schools were having trouble raising enough matching funds for academics, so they got the last of their grants by filling athletic scholarships. UND followed the intent and the letter of the law. NDSU and the other 2 schools may or may not have followed the letter of the law, but they clearly didn't follow the intent of the law.