Potential for a D1 NCC

[WYOBISONMAN]

As usual Siousxrock shows such intelligence once again. Geez......he is as high schoolish here as on the Bison board.

[JBB]

Star2City has a good vision of the future. I like the new conference approach. It leaves room for several other teams to join. Sports Talk with Sid&Dave was very interesting yesterday. There was a lot of talk about the DII/DIII hockey schools playing DI "out of Division". Sid doesnt like it. He feels it is an advantage for those schools because they have a lower scholarship cost.

They have fewer scholarship obligations, if any, in other sports. Tuition is often cheaper at the DII schools as well. Overall he feels this is an advantage and he is making a big point out of it. He likes to talk about the WCHA and the Big 10 Hockey league. He calls the Big 10 games League play. I wouldnt be suprised if the Big 10 starts it's own league soon. That would open up a couple of spots in the WCHA.

[The Sicatoka]

Sid's had that "vision" for years. (I think Sid has a lot of "visions." ) And that's almost a weekly rant for him in February/March.

To form Big 10 hockey, six member schools have to play hockey AND they have to agree to play a conference schedule together (and agree to abandon existing leagues). Only five of the eleven in the Big 10 play hockey (Mich, Mich State, Ohio State, Minn, Wisc) and none of the others have made noise about adding it. (Title IX says you have to add mens and womens hockey. It's not the best economy to be looking to do that in right now.) Based on past reports, the schools with hockey aren't really in favor of leaving existing conferences. (Why would they? Would they rather battle for one auto-bid or two?)

A new, western (or how about more central US) IAA conference makes some sense. (Didn't some of us here say that, by NDSU making their move, that was what they were hoping to spur?)