Yote 53

All these teams complain about having to travel to Alaska, they only have to make the trip one or two times a season. The Alaska teams make the trip to the continental USA multiple times each season, yet I never hear them complain about the travel. Just saying.

Honestly, that's what the Summit members need to do. We need to make the hard choices and align our sports offerings. It's a shame that we have to entertain Augie because neither UND or USD offers baseball. So we have to bring in little Augustana, who somehow has the resources to offer a program that somehow neither UND or USD is able to offer. It should be a no-brainer, and a mandate from the league office, that both the Coyotes and F-Hawks add a baseball program. For that matter, accepting UMKC back should have been conditional that they also offer baseball. But at least the Roos offer men's soccer, so there is that.

What if it meant the dissolution of the conference and ALL sports (except hockey and football) being negatively effected? Let me spin this another way, every FEMALE sport would be greatly harmed if the Summit League lost it's autobid. How would that play with a certain segment of the population? Being in a conference without access to NCAA championships and NCAA payouts is going to cost more than the cost of adding one sport in order to stabilize the conference.

The simple solution is for South Dakota and/or North Dakota to restart their baseball programs. They should both be making plans to do so right now. It's the easiest, simplest path. Nobody says the programs have to be any good either. It can just be accepted that they would run bare bones, minimal programs to start with.

It's the big shift in mindset today and it starts at USA Hockey. It used to be that you needed to take care of yourself on the ice, don't put yourself in a vulnerable position, especially close to the boards, and keep your head up. Now the onus is all on the defensive (checking) player, that they are responsible for the other player and that they are supposed to lay off. The big hit is penalized and you are only supposed to use body contact to separate the player from the puck in order to gain possession. Frankly, taking that personal responsibility out of the game, where players need to not put themselves in bad positions, is the wrong thing. Nowadays you have guys who think it is perfectly acceptable to expose his back to the checker while along the boards to "protect the puck" all the while putting themselves in a dangerous position to go head first into the boards.

Big hit, the checking player was gliding and not moving his feet, and he didn't leave his feet prior to making contact launching himself. I would not call that charging. Looking at the proximity to the boards, and how the puck carrier was just a few feet off the boards, and the hit violently threw the player into the boards, the checking player leaves himself open to a boarding call. My call, clean hit. Kid, get your head up. You know how it is today, anytime a hit makes a big noise it must be a penalty, especially as you move down levels of hockey. An NCAA game is going to be called tighter than the Stanley Cup Finals.

THIS.WAS.AWESOME. Anybody who thinks this was a charge needs to go watch basketball because you don't know an f-ing thing about hockey.

Why would the NSIC be okay with being a pass through conference for UST? What other options do they have for a D2 conference? Literally zero. All it would take is for the NSIC to say "no thanks", for the Summit to offer them, and then things could be worked out with the NCAA.

Just answered you there. Albeit, wild speculation.

I realize I am venturing into SiouxVolley territory here, but I just read some internet speculation that UST might petition he NCAA to transition directly to D1 given the involuntary nature of them getting kicked out of their conference and lack of options available to them, i.e. if they decide to go D1 the NSIC isn't going to be too open to them parking in that conference for a couple years just to pass through. Could the Summit actually be involved as an intermediary in helping UST go straight to D1 and join the conference?

I am excited for the Tommies. They need to leave that B.S. D3 conference behind and move up to the D2 NSIC or even go all the way to D1 and join the Summit. The hockey program needs to go D1 as well and join the WCHA. We need more D1 programs in hockey, St. Thomas would be a great addition given their location and resources ($429 million endowment). They could pull off a full move to D1, and should.

And because I believe in "links or it didn't happen" LINK

My wife is a Tommy grad and just got the email announcement, they just got kicked out.

Ok, this is anecdotal evidence and I am not even sure if it is true, but here goes. I was in Michigan this year and spoke with a guy who's kid was drafted into the OHL. We talk about the college hockey route and if he goes to the OHL that will shut that door. He tells me his kid was offered $100,000 to sign with this team and if Major Junior doesn't get him to the pros then his college is already paid for, so it's worth giving up college eligibility. I didn't really press it if the 6 figures he was being offered was the monetary equivalent of the Major Junior education package or if it was a $100k cash contract. Either way, that's a lot of money and security to pass up for a teenager. I think the system is just fine as is and any changes would only favor Major Junior and lead to the collapse in quality of the USHL and College Hockey. I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes at some Major Junior programs but my guess is there is cash being exchanged beyond the compensation models we know of. I think College Hockey would end up suffering as every player who has professional aspirations (and what player doesn't) would choose the Major Junior route first and College Hockey would end up being the choice for those who can't make Major Junior or those who wash out of Major Junior, either way the NCAA is getting leftovers.

Actually, it's the opposite. The talent pool is extremely deep. Currently, there are not enough D1 spots for the depth of talent that is out there. Legit D1 players are getting shuffled down into D3 and even ACHA D1. I agree with the other poster that there could be 10-15 programs added and it wouldn't negatively impact the quality of play.

I agree, but UST has received the message they are not wanted. Who wants to be in a relationship where they are not wanted? No matter the vote I expect UST will do an evaluation of their athletics program and will seek greener pastures whether that be another D3 conference or a move up to D2 or possibly even D1.

The best option for the Summit is to look west for members or to form some sort of new conference (yes, the Montana strategy, the Great North Conference). The reason is that once you get out west the mentality about travel changes, we're used to driving long distances. Pretty much everybody on this board knows somebody or personally has to drive multiple hours round trip just to make a trip to the grocery store, or Home Depot, Menards, even Walmart, we're used to living in this spread out country west of the Mississippi. Schools in the east, there are so many of them and the travel is so condensed, they won't stay in a western based conference if they have a choice.

I drove to Detroit recently, 12 hours from Vermillion, SD to Detroit. While there it dawned on me that Pittsburgh was only a little more than 4 hours away, and New York City was only a little over 9 hours away. Point is, I always thought of Penn State as being out of the Big Ten footprint. The reality is that Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers are closer to the eastern Big Ten schools (OSU, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State) than the Big Ten East schools are to the Big Ten West schools like Iowa, Minnesota, and obviously Nebraska, yet we think of those schools as "Midwestern" Big Ten type schools. I mean, it's only a 12 hour drive from Chicago to New York City. It also crystalized in my mind why schools like Fort Wayne, Indiana State, and Youngstown don't really want to have anything to do with the Dakota schools. Once you get west of the Mississippi River the country starts to get really, really big. Bottom line is that Rutgers and Maryland really aren't out of the Big Ten footprint and are easily accessible by the Big Ten East schools, even if we think it's crazy it really isn't.

Yet people think Augustana to the Summit is a sure thing, or even a good thing. The same arguments against these schools can be used against Augustana.

Tournament is not legit. No Carey's in Vermillion. I think the USD Barstool account is pro Char-Bar (Charcoal Lounge) though. Either way, it's tough to beat the lineup of Carey's, Char-Bar, Leo's, OLC (Old Lumber Company), The Pub (Main Street Pub), and The Varsity that make downtown Vermillion the prime place to get blackout drunk. That's without heading out to the far end of Main Street for a few Bombers at Bunyan's. When you guys start the MVFC schedule you'll have to come down to Verm every other year.

Somebody needs to approach St. Thomas about moving up and joining the Summit. The WCHA would be all over their hockey program too. This school has the cash to make it happen if they wanted to.

Problem with the PAC 12 schools is that they are falling far behind the other P5 conferences in funding. If not for geographical isolationism the conference would have been picked apart by now. The PAC 12 Network has been a failure so far and they have now resorted to selling off part of the network for immediate funding in a bid to keep up with other conferences. None of this hints of any sort of extra cash lying around to start hockey programs. Of course, the PAC 12 has always treated its non-revenue and Olympic sports much differently than, say, the SEC schools who offer minimal sports offerings and pump all their money into football. The PAC 12 would be a conference more open to another sport offering, given their history in supporting the Olympic sports. Hockey could be revenue neutral to revenue positive for them as well, along with providing more content for programming. The Big Ten is the obvious candidate for a conference to add programs. The BTHC needs more programs, BTN needs content, the conference is swimming in money, the conference is located in hockey friendly states in the Midwest and Northeast. It's almost morally wrong that every school in the conference doesn't have a program.

I came here specifically to quote this. It's just proof that there is tremendous depth in the player pool and D1 college hockey needs expansion badly. There needs to be more programs.

Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines is another option that is available right now. Ice is in all winter for the Iowa Wild.

I don't think so, not if the franchise is serious about being successful and wants to last long term. Sure, there would be some GF players on the team, but the best players in GF are better than MJ material , they are USHL and NAHL material. If the franchise wants to survive long term they would take the best players they could recruit from their recruiting area of ND, SD, MN, etc.