Time for U.S. College Hockey to leave the NCAA?

[Takuto Maruki]

Seems about as likely as the occassional howl for a Canada-centric pro hockey alternative to the NHL or any other outlaw league remotely having a chance at unseating MLB, NBA, or NFL you sometimes hear every now and then.

Again, it says a lot that this sort of 'should college hockey separate from the NCAA' comes from a place of ignorance about the sport writ large, both within the D1 hockey landscape, and the symbiotic relationship between it, major junior hockey (especially now with the NCAA/CHL agreement) and subsequent junior A leagues - and admittedly, the somewhat throwaway and flippant line from Matt's article fits that ignorance, but considering his main beat is college football and basketball to a lesser extent - though not at all ignorant to learning new things (as I've given him a crash course on the CHL structure to the best of my ability through DM's which he appreciated) I'll cut him some slack.

I don't blame people for positing these questions though, especially considering where the sport as a whole is at, and if things go certain ways with legislation in red states WRT international student athletes supposedly taking away spots from locals being picked up by observant Republicans in the federal government, there's ultimately going to have to be a reckoning by the NHL to pick a side in order to protect the entire development pipeline, and they're likely going to side with the one that they subsidize almost wholly.

The NCAA does nothing to market hockey, and the frozen four is currently buried on ESPN+ and ESPNU for pretty much all tournament games except for the frozen four.

Realistically though - a vast, *vast* majority of sports outside of CFB and CBB are buried on ESPN+ and ESPNU as cheap filler content. Even within those two sports, the vast majority of conferences outside of the Power 4 and the Big East (and in the case of CFB, the entirety of the MAC essentially sacrificed any sort of national footprint for the cheap hit of TV revenue) are stuck on specialty channels. The entirety of this chicken and egg scenario can be birthed back to NCAA v. Oklahoma Board of Regents - and by this point it's too late to put the genie back into the bottle. By this point, leagues like the NHL, MLS, and MLB might as well do as much as they can to protect one of their main pipelines, because the NCAA, and the sports at large, are going to take the easy payday 10 times out of 10.

With a focus on marketing the game of HOCKEY, and if any effort at all was put into getting more games on linear TV in Canada, it wouldn't be that difficult to improve the current TV situation.

More people are cord cutting then ever before and going strictly to streaming services. Why would linear TV help anything when it's just rearranging the chairs on the Titanic and most sports leagues are trying to figure out what to do next now that RSN's are going the way of the dodo?

 

[CTHabsfan]

The NCAA does nothing to market hockey, and the frozen four is currently buried on ESPN+ and ESPNU for pretty much all tournament games except for the frozen four. The timing of the NCAA tournament could also get pushed back a little bit so that the final four is less off a conflict, and/or college hockey could also work with a new sports network that doesn't have such a crowded TV schedule at that time of the year. Hockey schools don't currently get a payout from TV anyway, and ESPN does nothing to market college hockey, either during the year or during the post season as it is. With a focus on marketing the game of HOCKEY, and if any effort at all was put into getting more games on linear TV in Canada, it wouldn't be that difficult to improve the current TV situation.

The NCAA doesn't even provide anything to support College Hockey Inc. They can go _ themselves.

I've seen commercials for NCAA hockey, I have not seen commercials for NCAA baseball. While not at all close to getting the amount of promotion football and basketball receive (with good reason), my personal experience is hockey receives a good amount of attention from the NCAA versus most sports.