NCAA Hockey Expansion Thread

[JMCx4]

... How's Lindenwood doing in Division I?

Well, this season they've beaten Wisconsin & Miami-Ohio & UNO. No blowout losses. So I'd say: They're making progress in Season #2.

 

[VaCaps Fan]

You going to get the “wave” going at games?

 

[Nodak651]

SO following my comment that Simon Fraser's athletic focus has long been on its football program, and that there will be an impetus to restore that program before trying to get a high level hockey team off the ground, you pointed out that their athletic department is a mess (weird, I know, because as I said earlier, they have no AD).

Simon Fraser's football team was more than just a DII team. Around students and alumni, it was an institution. Prominent business types in the lower mainland have made an issue of it. It was a topic of discussion among BC legislators and was on the 6 o'clock news for days. If the school launched an initiative to start an NCAA hockey program after having killed its football program, it would be an enormous problem.

And...... Football at SFU is officially dead. Based on the new Athletics and Recreation Strategy, the door for hockey appears to remain open, imo.

"Highlights of the new strategy include a stronger commitment to recreation programs to benefit all SFU students and efforts to encourage the SFU community to experience varsity games as part of university life.

The plan is publicly accessible and can be downloaded as a PDF file, here.

As part of the strategy review, the university confirmed that the football program will not be returning. It was announced in 2023 that the program was ending, that decision has now been made final."

 

[S E P H]

I read out there that the University of Iowa is cutting a lot of athletic funding, so don't expect a hockey team any time soon even if they have a great arena to play in.

 

[JMCx4]

I read out there that the University of Iowa is cutting a lot of athletic funding, so don't expect a hockey team any time soon even if they have a great arena to play in.

"I read out there" is a lazy man's motto.

Start your learning phase by reading this below ...

University of Iowa ‘very interested’ in athletics paying back $50M loan ‘as quickly as possible’

Pandemic loan must be repaid in 15 years to main campus

Vanessa Miller
Dec. 1, 2024 5:30 am

IOWA CITY — Hawkeye Athletics hasn’t made much of a dent in paying back the $50 million it borrowed from the main University of Iowa campus during the height of the pandemic, leaving $47.6 million outstanding on the 2021 loan — even as contributions from the Big Ten Athletics Conference to its budget continue to climb.

Although UI Athletics paid $3 million back to the main campus in 2022, $1.5 million in 2023 and $1.5 million this year, the loan’s 2.5 percent interest rate has swallowed up most of those payments — shaving just $2.3 million off the principal to date ...

When the main campus agreed to loan UI Athletics $50 million from its cash reserves in early 2021, the department was projecting a $75 million deficit for the budget year from expected pandemic-related losses — which also caused it to cut three men’s sports: tennis, gymnastics, and swimming and diving.

Later that summer, UI Athletics — which calls itself a “self-sustaining auxiliary enterprise” that “receives no general university support” — ended the budget year with a less-severe deficit of $45 million. And the following year in fiscal 2022, the department topped its projected revenue rebound by nearly $10 million — setting a new income record of $126.8 million.

The department has set revenue records every year since thanks, in part, to higher football, wrestling and women’s basketball ticket sales and boosts in conference support — although some of the income increases have been due to “reserve fund transfers” to pay court settlements, legal fees and “staff transition costs.”

UI Athletics’ current fiscal 2025 budget projects another revenue record, reaching $150.5 million thanks to conference contributions topping $75.2 million — a 22 percent increase over last year; 37 percent increase over 2019; and 140 percent increase over the $31.3 million it got from the Big Ten a decade ago in 2015. ...


Read even more at: UI ‘very interested’ in athletics paying back $50M loan ‘as quickly as possible’ | The Gazette