College Hockey Expansion, Again
if you will it, dude, it is no dream
A few days ago the NHL held a press conference with the Illinois AD. If your reaction to this is "WTF", yup. Illinois fans seem equally confused given their struggles in the two major sports over the past decade:
Hockey faces the same long term problem as football, drives a fraction of the revenue, and costs a boatload. There's your feasibility study.
— Steve (@IlliniToffee) June 22, 2017
And yet. What gives? This is an odd side effect of the most recent NHL CBA negotiations:
Last Friday, the NHL held a press conference hours before the start of the NHL Draft announcing that the league would be providing money for five schools to conduct “feasibility studies” into starting Division I NCAA men’s and women’s hockey programs, and named the University of Illinois as the first school to receive that funding(the other four schools have not been chosen yet).
The NHL’s contribution will come out of their “industry growth fund,” an initiative proposed by the NHLPA in the 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations as a revenue-sharing program that, in the PA’s own words, was “designed to make long-term improvements in the revenue-generating potential of low-grossing clubs”.
Though NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners were somewhat reluctantly dragged into the idea in CBA negotiations, and the end result was about $60 million per year to the fund.
The idea behind these studies is that more college hockey fans—and more folks who play hockey in their youth at college hockey rinks—will become NHL fans. FWIW, the bottom ten clubs in revenue are Edmonton, Nashville, Buffalo, Colorado, the Islanders, Winnipeg, Arizona, Florida, Columbus, and Carolina. College hockey can't help the two Canadian teams or the Islanders much. Canadian teams are in Canada; the only two D-I schools on Long Island are Hofstra and Stony Brook, neither of which has money to throw around on hockey. Meanwhile the rest of the teams are either way out of range for college hockey's current landscape or already sporting local college outfits. As a way to grow NHL revenue, this is… optimistic.
But it exists. If this fund is really sixty million a year and college hockey has access to even 30% of that (about 30% of NHL players are NCAA alums) to help start up new programs that's a Pegula donation every five years. If they're getting the bulk because every town in Canada with a stoplight already has a junior team, that's a lot of money. Q: what has this fund been supporting since 2013, when it was created? A: It certainly hasn't been propping up college hockey teams. This could be a lot of talk without any action behind it, as college hockey expansion usually is.
But it's June. Let's go.
So who are the other four schools? A potential hockey program needs some combination of the following things:
- A rink. It should seat between four and eight thousand, probably. Maybe it could go up to ten. It should definitely not be 18k. If you have this, hooray. If you don't, you need a huge upfront investment to get your program off the ground. A lot of midsized cities already have rinks in a reasonable college hockey range, FWIW.
- A conference. This is easier in the west after the Big Ten's entry. The east currently has one spot for a team.
- A fanbase. Penn State has a huge fanbase that likes sports. It also has a crappy basketball team. Result: constant sellouts. A new program should either be at a PSU-type school with a huge fanbase or in a larger city without much, if any, extant hockey.
- Money. Men's hockey in the right place can be a break-even endeavor or even reasonably profitable. The women's team that comes along with it will be a boat anchor. This is one of the worst aspects of Title IX: there are many potentially self-sustaining hockey programs that could exist but don't because of the mandatory accompanying women's team.
Given these constraints, two seem obvious. Most programs have a rink issue, or a money issue, or a fanbase issue. Nebraska and Iowa don't.
Nebraska has a 4200 seat USHL rink across the street from campus and its recently-built basketball stadium has ice-making capabilities and a 13k capacity for hockey; Iowa City neighbor Coralville is installing a 73 million dollar multipurpose arena and ice rink that will seat 6200 less than a mile from Carver-Hawkeye. Both of those schools just got a 15 million dollar bump in conference distributions and probably need to gesture towards using some of that money on scholarships. Both have club teams that draw in the four digits already. Both are in the heart of USHL country and will probably find recruiting easier than you might expect.
Both of these schools have been obvious D-I hockey additions for long enough that athletic directors have issued denials. Nebraska's status of 2013:
On his monthly appearance on the Husker Sports Network, Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst threw cold water on the idea of the athletic department starting up a division 1 ice hockey program. The only sport Nebraska has any intention of starting is the new sand volleyball program.
Wooooof. Iowa's Gary Barta:
“I grew up in Minnesota,” Barta said. “I played hockey, I love hockey. I really do. We had a terrific year, things are getting better. But until all of our sports are at a level where I want them, it would dilute if we added sports. If we add men’s hockey, we’re going to add women’s hockey, so really you’re talking about adding two sports, so there’s a lot involved.
“So, at this point, we’re not talking about adding any sports.”
Barta might get fired in a minute here after Iowa lost multiple discrimination lawsuits due to his actions, but it's unlikely he's replaced with a big-ideas kind of gent. Is there a spare Ferentz kid out there?
The other two are anyone's guess. If we're looking at this from the NHL's perspective, big fanbases—or potentially big ones—are of the most interest, especially if there's an NHL team somewhat nearby that might pick up the pro affiliation of new hockey fans. One man's list of potentially interesting schools:
- Tennessee: huge fanbase and the Preds just became a major thing so maybe you could scrounge up 6k people who wanted to go to Vol hockey games? SEC finances help here; SEC tendency to run a minimal number of sports and funnel it all into football does not help. Extant seven-thousand seat Knoxville Civic Coliseum is just a mile from campus.
- Cincinnati: Not a "big" school in football terms; is in a big city. Hockey converts there might latch on to the Blue Jackets or Blackhawks. Recent huge success of USL soccer outfit FC Cincinnati, which has better attendance than some MLS teams, could indicate an underserved fandom. Xavier is another potential contender. Unfortunately, the Cinci hockey rink is ludicrously large at 18k and 4 miles from both campuses.
- Syracuse: has been rumored as a potential D-I hockey school for ages. Is in the midst of a ton of extant hockey schools, and the departure of Notre Dame to the Big Ten leaves Hockey East at 11 schools. They're a bus league that really really wants to have an even number of teams so they'll accept a new member in the near future. That could be an upstart or an ECAC team, in which case the ECAC would want to expand. Has a local arena of the appropriate size their women's program already uses.
- Iowa State: Any Big 12 school is unlikely to embark on a major project in the near future since their league is almost certain to implode as soon as their TV contract expires. Iowa State is in the most tenuous position of all these teams. So they're deeply unlikely to add costs. They have a very very serious club program that draws and could hypothetically play at Hilton.
- Pitt: Unlikely for the same reason they're not in the Big Ten: the Penguins don't need help and they don't extend any footprints. Geographical sense doesn't always make sense. Also Pittsburgh is the kind of city with a 20k arena, not a 7k arena.
- Northwestern: adjacent to Chicago, so they've got that going for them. Big Ten, so they've got even more money coming out their ears. Steady football and basketball situations; basketball arena about to be completely renovated, so hockey could be their next major project. The kind of school that has folks that can drop a Pegula donation. Blackhawks don't need the help, though.
- Illinois: Northwestern, except run by people who make bad decision after bad decision. So… maybe they'd go for it? No rink, minimal football revenue, Big Ten money cannon, close to St. Louis. Just told CHN it would take a hundred-million dollar donation two months ago!
- Colorado: shares a state with three extant programs and doesn't do so hot in basketball. Finances iffy. Not sure Boulder and environs are going to bring in big crowds.
- Utah: see Colorado, except their basketball program is pretty good. No other hockey in the state and a lot of snow might be a good match?
- Arizona: natural rivals with ASU and might not have rink issues since there's a 6700 seat arena in town that is currently home to an AHL team and the club team. They're kind of a big deal in basketball, is the thing.
- Stanford: good god they've got a lot of money?
Four of the eight Big Ten schools without hockey have been mentioned. The four remaining are Maryland, Rutgers, Purdue, and Indiana. The former two only joined the league to stave off financial disaster, still aren't getting full shares, and will be playing catchup for a decade or more before they even think about adding a new team. The latter two are basketball-mad and have football teams that don't exactly throw off scads of bonus cash. All are extremely unlikely even if the Indiana club team has some fire emoji uniforms:
I'd love it. IU's club hockey sweaters are the best look for the brand pic.twitter.com/X80Z4uRWXY
— jim (@JeSuisBornReady) June 23, 2017
This may be splitting hairs. All of of these additions are unlikely unless it starts raining Pegulas, halleluja.
I don't know what 'feasibility studies' will show that everybody doesn't already know - hockey is very expensive and you need a rink
The listed schools are generally the same schools we always talk about and they all still have giant asteriks next to their names that read the numerous reasons they won't do it
I'd bet on Iowa signing up sooner or later because of that new arena. Syracuse also makes a ton of sense, but if they didn't before, why will they now? Everyone else gets a shrug
Question on Title IX though - why add women's hockey? Everyone knows it's a very expensive anchor. Why not add men's hockey and sand volleyball? or rowing? or literally any other women's sport? Seems like that could be a more viable path than adding both varsity hockey teams
I'd be interested to see what the actual expense is for women's hockey. I think the main reason it's an anchor is because of all the scholarships and non-sport expenses. There are some unusual equipment and travel costs, of course, but I don't think those in themselves are what makes it an anchor; simply having an extra sport with high scholarship totals (and the attendant needs for academic support, medical, and other things that every other sport would need as well) may be what drives the expense train. Nothing that, say, women's lacross wouldn't incur as well.
The major expense with hockey is the rink; the reason people suggest the addition of a women's program with a men's program is that the major infrastructure investment is already made.
But then I'm no expert here, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
The North Dakota womens' program ran at a near $1.5 million deficit (ticket revenues of $20,000 in 2014-15, I believe), despite their access to Ralph Engelstad Arena's two ice sheets. The UND president (former MN Congressman Mark Kennedy) said it was a "boutique" sport that would require a $60 million endowment to be fully-funded at the school.
Shuttering the program solved their budget "crisis" in March. My daughter played at the Ralph in May and almost every artifact of womens' hockey has already been removed from the Arena.
was one I was just going to make. Hockey is an extremely expensive program to fund, just because you add Men's Hockey, does not mean you have to add womens hockey. You can add another womens, varsity, sport and satisify Title IX requirements, like you pointed out there are many you could add which have very little cost and accomplishes what is needed.
I think many of the schools mentioned are feasible and I have heard for years that Illinois has a very strong club team and could probably make the jump to varisty fairly easily. Would be nice to add more of the B1G schools if possible.
Living in Colorado I can tell you I don't see CU every adding Mens hockey. They do have a club team, but can't imagine them ever adding varisty hockey. Being in the Pac-12 it's kind of a black eye they don't have Baseball and Softball which are huge in that conference. I would expect those additions long before something like hockey.
I think it has everything to do with the fact that men's hockey expenses are large that you need a similarly expensive women's program to balance things out. It's been a while since I looked at Title IX implications, so please don't take this as gospel, but I believe NCAA schools have to reach Title IX targets in two areas, scholarship numbers, and financial support for teams. And I understand that there are different ways to be Title IX compliant, for instance you can have your scholarships/funding be proportional to the gender divide of your student body, you can also fail to meet that goal (as many D1 football schools do) and still be compliant if you have shown past progress towards reaching that level.
The obvious problem occurrs when you add a sport like Men's Hockey which is both high in scholarship numbers and in expenses. You have to add similar scholarships and expenses otherwise you are not progressing towards gender equality in your scholarships/spending. Women's hockey becomes the natural compliment to men's hockey, because as others have pointed out, you're adding similar numbers of scholarships and similar operating costs (or allowing some operating costs that the men's team would have had alone to be split between the teams) while not adding much in the way of initial capital costs. There would be an extra locker room and not much else.
Yes, but Title IX does not care how much the facilities cost to build or to maintain.
It cares about number of participants, it cares about how you support those participants, but it doesn't care that one participant needs a rink for ice hockey with the year-round expense of maintaining ice, and the other one just needs a flat piece of grass for field hockey (for example).
Financial support has to do with the support facilities, the quality of accommodation when travelling, the quality of the equipment and facilities provided, and things like that. Schools can separate out the operating costs.
I agree that there's no capital cost requirement to be title IX compliant, but I'm not sure this would extend to all costs of the general operation of practice and competition facilities. Besides, when you look at facts that are readily available, Hockey is an expensive sport by title IX standards. Looking at the U.S. D.O.E. (who officially enforce title IX) data on Michigan athletics spending, hockey's game-day expenses, which are everything but coaching salaries, student aid, recruting expenses, and non-allocated expenses (which I assume are general AD expenses, probably also bond payments judging by the size of Michigan's line item there), hockey is still the third most expensive sport overall, and second most expensive sport by participant at nearly double the ratio of the nearest women's sport.
Hockey is expensive to operate, whether it is due to factoring in the cost of ice-rink operation or not. If you add it for the men, you're going to need a way to add similar spending for women. Going with a women's hockey team is obviously the easiest answer to get that done because there is no added capital cost.
Those IU sweaters are amazing.
As someone who spent some time at UT: I think a college Hockey program would work here, oddly enough. While that ice rink you mentioned is a bit 1950s, it would work. I actually think they would draw crowds, too, between the Preds (who are actually going to start getting involved in youth hockey in Knoxville) and having a ton of pretty active students.
Only issues: 1) The school and athletic department have been run by morons for a long time, and they have a lot of debt to deal with. Their new AD does offer some hope here, as he seems mostly competent. 2) a major divide between the men's and women's programs that may sink any chance that a major program is added.
I'm skeptical that much will come of this, but then again, if you told me that ASU would be adding a team I would have told you that you were crazy, and here we are. (By the way, they still can't find a conference, I'm getting worried about that program's viability).
Part of the problem is that I believe we're riding a college sports bubble, and perhaps a larger sports bubble as well. When things come tumbling down major college sports will continue to be played, of course, but revenues from tv have a good chance of crashing and/or various changes in the regulatory environment could have unforseen, relatively drastic effects on all sports.
Arguments of "nah, that will never happen" are arguments I was more likely to listen to before, say, the housing crisis in 2008 or a certain recent political event that nobody thought could occur.
Anyway, in an environment where college sports begin to face stiff headwinds, a high-cost, low-upside sport like hockey is less likely to start and/or avoid cuts.
I would like to be wrong. I'd love a couple of more teams at big schools, particularly B1G schools. An Iowa hockey program would be awesome. I'm just not convinced that it will ever happen.
Would Colorado State want to play in a rink in Loveland? That's 15 miles south of Fort Collins but in a fairly geographical favorable spot literally right off of I-25. The rink is 7200 seats and currently hosts an ECHL team.
If they're willing, a theoretical facility already exists for CSU.
The whole Colorado Front Range is exploding - that part of the Front Range even more so.
Question about TItle IX: If a program wanted to add men's hockey, do they have to add women's hockey or could they add a different sport that might be much cheaper?
Women's hockey is not required, just logical given alignment in scholarships and facilities. Different sports have different NCAA-mandated scholarship limits, so adding a different sport that had half the scholarships would presumably (I don't know how this is actually adjudicated) require the addition of a second sport to make up the difference.
The logical move is to add a women's sport where the infrastructure already exists, to reduce expenses. Adding a women's softball team would require a new field/stadium, etc. A new field hockey team the same. With hockey, the facility is already being built, and the scholarship totals are (I believe) identical, so many of the tricky issues are irrelevant.
Those Indiana jerseys are pretty dang nice.
Small quibble with Tennessee. Knoxville is three hours from Nashville and kind of in the middle of nowhere. There really wouldn't be much overflow with the Preds and so you wouldn't gain that much in marketing while adding a weird geographical fit. Also, that shade of Orange on the ice? Woof.
Syracuse makes a lot of sense, the school may be basketball mad but it's in a hockey area and god knows the Sabres need help.
More referring to the very bad for a decade bit that you spoke about and so could use an avenue for cross-promotion, but you're right in that it's an area with high interest in hockey, so my throwaway comment was a bit off-base.
Tennessee? Nashville is kind of like Tennessee's Austin. Knoxville is NASCAR country. I don't see this. At all.
So Texas needs a D1 team? GOOO LonGHORNS
Yeah same. Made a comment below but how in the world do you suggest UT and not Vanderbilt? Vandy would pull more hockey fans than football and actually have a local recruiting base.
Nebraska has a 4200 seat USHL rink across the street from campus and its recently-built basketball stadium has ice-making capabilities
Big deal; so do I.
/ yeah, I know, I know
I find it pretty hard to believe that there are a bunch of schools that could have a mens hockey program that would run a profit that they aren't funding because of a womens hockey team. Most schools aren't turning a profit on anything outside of football or basketball and are running out anywwhere between 15-20 sports that are doing nothing but losing money, if there was a third sport to turn a profit in they'd be doing it, and its not like Title IX forces you to have a womens hockey team, its an even number of womens scholarships, so a school could add a less expensive womens sport, sort of like what Michigan does.
Given that Yost already exists, is the women's field hockey team actually cheaper than a women's ice hockey team would be? Especially considering they need their own facility?
The advantage field hockey has at Michigan is that it already has its own fanbase other than "the most diehard fans of the men's version of the sport", which an ice hockey team might not, once the novelty wears off.
but part of the problem with women's hockey could be the number of schools that have it as a sport. If you're constantly having to purchase airfare for the women's hockey team on away games that is going to add up pretty quick. Outside of the northeastern portion of the US amost no one has a women's hockey program: http://www.uscho.com/team/
See the comment to my question above.
I'm still annoyed at the Big Ten for blowing up the college hockey landscape to create a tiny bastardized "Big Ten." If they added more actual Big Ten teams (e.g. Illinois, Iowa, or Northwestern, and I'll mostly count Nebraska) it would go a ways toward making the whole exercise seem more worthwhile IMO.
college hockey is less fun now
Amen (Michigan's recent struggles probably do not help, but it certainly seems less fun these days).
No clue what 60 million per year (for the past four years) have gone to. Or if four feasibility studies cost $60 Million dollars. But I love that the NHL is doing something. The NHL actually views college as an asset to their game. A place where their draft picks are developed. They really do nothing to hurt the game of college Hockey.
OTOH, the NBAs one and done rule hurts the college game more than the 0 or 3 year they used to operate under. The NFL tries to pretend like College Football doesn't exist unless they need to pile on about how beneath them the game is (Jim Harbaugh WOULD NEVER go back to college) or how bad college football is for their game (no one develops pro style quarterbacks, wahhh).
Fwiw, I believe Vandy is way more likely than UT to field a hockey team. Nashville prep schools actually have strong hockey programs and would naturally feed kids to Vandy. Vandy also pulls way more of the student body from northern states than a school like UT. It's also more relevant to the Preds recent success. Knoxville is so far from Nashville that it would be like saying Western Michigan should field a ___________ because Chicago has a _________. It's, like, 3 hours away.
Vanderbilt just seems like a much more natural fit with B1G schools than a UT. I'm surprised to see some schools on there and Vanderbilt not mentioned. Would be curious as to why. They have space, rink access, feeder schools, and money.
There's a ton of youth hockey, the money's there in terms of locality dollars / donors / potential fan base by volume, and there are a lot of rinks that could fit the bill. Northwestern is exactly the kind of school that could field a college hockey team and be successful, and fund it off of sugar daddies and B1G television revenue. Right now they even have 8 men's and 11 women's teams, so Title IX concerns might not be as big an issue (they have women's fencing as a varsity sport... they could add women's gymnastics or women's crew and probably offset the Men's hockey adds). Otherwise Nebraska and Iowa are probably the best bets (unless you really believe that Illinois can capitalize on the Chicago AND St Louis connections).
FWIW- The Cincy arena Brian must be referencing is US Bank Arena on the riverfront. It's a 18k person arena true, but you can tarp off the upper deck to reduce capacity and the place still "feels" small after attending a number of concerts there. Cincinnati also used to have the old Cincinnati Gardens which was north of the UC campus by about 5 miles and 3 miles away from Xavier. The Gardens would've been perfect for a college program (used to host the multiple Cincy AHL / minor league teams), but it really deteriorated the last couple years and is now up for demolition. Univ of Dayton and Wright State Univ were looking into D-I jumps a couple years ago using the Nutter Center on Wright St's campus or adding some seating to the Kettering Ice Arena about halfway between the two campuses, but they couldn't get the state to kick in funding.
Sounds like you know the Cincinnati situation. To expand on what you said: US Bank Arena exists - but it's also a dump owned by an absentee landlord from Colorado who charges high rent and has no real interest in either improving the arena or helping the city.
Things are so bad that while their own on-campus arena is being renovated, UC basketball will be playing in a completely different state (!!!) in 2017-18. Playing at Northern Kentucky University.
I do wish The Gardens was kept up. That was a great hockey barn.
I'd love to see a program in or near Chicago, mostly for purely selfish reasons, since I live here. I was at the last game at the UIC Pavilion in 1996, when Michigan beat UIC something like 12 to 1. (Then they dropped hockey to hire a basketball coach, but they've been terrible ever since.)
Northwestern could probably pull it off. Chicago is, of course, an original six town, and the Blackhawks are popular now. There's no college hockey here, though Notre Dame and Wisconsin are each within a two hour drive, and it's a bus ride from every other B1G hockey school. What team wouldn't want a road trip to Chicago?
On the other hand, the Frozen Four was just here, and if I wasn't already following college hockey, I don't think I would have known about it. And that game at Soldier Field a few years ago wasn't a great event either. But those were just bad implementations.
but IME you're spot-on that Purdue is extremely unlikely to add men's hockey, in part because the men's club team plays its home games in Fishers, a northeast suburb of Indianapolis.
It's not clear yet how different Bobinski will be from Burke (and King and all his predecessors), but even if there is going to be an increase in fundraising, that money seems earmarked for football-related stuff, mostly, and even at that Ross-Ade still seems to be destined for a split between new, nice seats around a crappy 1930s core, kind of like how Mackey has some nice things around a 1960s core. Diverting a significant amount into a new arena that could be used for hockey (and, say, volleyball, women's basketball, and wrestling - Holloway is too small and badly needs AC, while Mackey is cavernous despite WBB drawing top-25 crowds pretty much every season) seems like it would require a nine-figure gift from someone, since a good chunk of it would go to the two main venues.
And that assumes Bobinski wants to build a Big Ten-caliber athletic program and can help build the interest to maintain it. It sounds like the former may be his intent, but we'll have to see.
In terms of NHL interest, Indy has a long pro hockey history (Gretzky and Messier, right?), but also couldn't sustain even an IHL/CHL team. West Lafayette has its share of Blackhawks fans, even before the recent Cups, but why put that money all the way down I-65 when you could invest it in Evanston?
I've seen the club Illinois hockey team play. The Ice Arena on campus was built in 1931, holds around 1200 and is surrounded by academic buildings with zero available parking. Not really a viable candidate for construction upwards or outwards. The basketball arena just got renovated and although an ice sheet could be installed I don't see how practices could be integrated into existing schedules. A varsity B1G team would get lots of support, the club team has a winning tradition, a great fan section (The Harassing Illini) and as you might expect people here yearn to have some team, any team to cheer for (volleyball is really vocally supported.) If AD Josh Whitman could finagle some long dollars out of the NHL he might be onto something. A plan to renovate Memorial Stadium just got shelved, too.
I also happen to be a native Syracusan (with an MA from SU) and spent my formative years cheering for the EHL Syracuse Blazers at the Onondaga County War Memorial. Where some background scenes were also filmed for "Slapshot," by the by. The arena is less than a mile from campus, close to the highway and the AHL Syracuse Crunch (what a lousy name) play there now.
Cincinnati hockey fans are already busy drinking $1 beers at CIncinnati Cyclones games.
There is a surprisingly large high school hockey scene in the Queen City and the too large arena you mentioned is always desperate for tenants/ some level of relevancy.
It's an artist's rendering.
I'm not a big hockey guy but I love to see sports expand at the Division 1 level. Hockey has a lot of appeal but it still faces a lot of barriers. I like the idea of schools with traditionally bad basketball programs going hard at hockey.
If the NCAA really wants to give kids the opportunities to play sports they need to move away from the rigid current system and should implement a hybrid varsity-club system. They should especially do this for sports that are traditionally heavily regional, like hockey, lacrosse, volleyball, wrestling, even water polo, etc.
They can do this by allowing NCAA teams to schedule strong club teams that do not have the full financial backing of their university. They can even expand the NCAA tournaments to include one or two of these teams each year as well. In addition to giving more kids the opportunity to play at a high level, it would also make scheduling easier and could mean less travel for coaches and players (and more focus on academics which we all know the NCAA cares so much about). This should encourage other programs to get involved as well.
Let's take Iowa for example. In a hybrid system, they could play local traditional rivals and nearby varsity teams like Minnesota, Wisconsin, UNO and North Dakota but they could also play club outfits from Nebraska, Iowa State and Northern Iowa, all of which could make hosting a program so much easier. Under the current system, they could play their traditional Big Ten rivals but also would probably have to take multiple trips to play northeast/New England schools.
I'm a veteran of the lacrosse program's club days and I love watching the sport expand at the D-1 level, but the process is so slow and painstaking. I really think there is more the NCAA can do to expand the opportunities for these athletes who want to play these sports.
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