Nobody Cares About Your Problems, Wisconsin

Brian - the argument is even more absurd when you consider Wisconsin has a backup arena all of 2 miles from campus - the Alliant energy Center, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliant_Energy_Center (fka the Dane County Coliseum).

In fact, Wisconsin hockey played here until the Kohl Center was built.  Even better, they can sell beer there, as it's off-campus.  Also, when conflicted out of the Kohl Center for the very reasons discussed above, Wisconsin has played 1st round WCHA playoff series at THE ALLIANT ENERGY CENTER as recently as the mid-2000s.

A neutral site makes sense when you're sharing a league with BGSU and want to avoid ending up having to run everything through the frozen drainage ditch they call an ice rink.  In an all B1G conference though every school is a school that has the ability to handle 80k+ crowd for college football.  These are cities whose hotel industry views the period between Dec and Aug as the dark period and will have the capacity to handle a bunch of bookings for a tournamet.  

I see no value to moving it to a neutral site.  All you do is starve some school's local hotel industry of some revenue and remove the natural source of the local students as people to sell tickets to.  

If Wisconsin loves XCel that much, they and Minnesota can go run their version of the GLI at it.  

That whole article reads like it was written by a guy who has never followed college hockey before and got the assignment forced upon him.

On Wisconsin.

/rimshot.

Seriously, though - who the hell does Barry Alvarez think Wisconsin is? I always enjoy a good fisking, especially about hockey, so good job, Brian.

That's literally the second worse neutral location in the participating states' footprint (outside of Philly, which being an East Coaster, I don't mind because it's only an hour on the Acela).

Having lived in Madison for a couple years, I will attest that this is good logic . . . for Baggot. Believe it or not, this is one of his better pieces of writing. I do not kow how he has managed to keep that job.

Unless I missed a spate of unprepared zamboni deaths, they've managed.

A spate of unprepared zamboni deaths is quite the funny phrase.

because I get sick of travelling to Ann Arbor. 

Wait, so does that format mean that there could hypothetically be a neutral site championship game on another school's campus? That seems like a good plan, but then upon inspection turns out to be stupid.

Let's say PSU wins the conference, UM places second, and whatever combination thereafter (doesn't matter). PSU loses their semifinal game, and UM wins. The championship game is going to be a 2-seed UM vs. whatever other school, at Penn State's arena?

Screw that. No one's going to want to travel to Pennsylvania to watch Minnesota vs. Michigan (for example). That's a very real possibility under this format. Winning the conference should definitely have an advantage for the top team, but if they end up losing their semifinal, they need no further advantage and shouldn't be given that championship game.

It might even border on humiliating to have teams like MSU vs. OSU in a final at freaking YOST. Imagine that? I would be furious, and I bet they would too. If the top team loses in the semis, it should be at the 2-seed's arena. The one problem is that this would be very short notice, so you'd have to have time in between semi and final, which usually is undesirable.

You assume that anything in D-1 college sports is supposed to make sense. That's a fatal flaw. Also, you cared about something Wisconsin said.

Here's the ECAC's solution to the same problem:

Atlantic City.  Three hours (or more) from all but one of the confrerence's members.  In a concert / beauty pageant venue with a giant can-can stage at one end. 

Seriously, a high school rink in Springfield would have been a better option.

Problem with Bradley, marquette and the admirals also play there, us cellular is the home to Marquette women and UW-Milwaukee mens team, The Colleseum is probably the only venue I've been in that I dislike more than the Metrodome. all three actually already host a ton of events. the planned solution is really really dumb though

The WIAA is more than likely going to end up using the Resch Center in Green Bay....currently used by USHL's Green Bay Gamblers (Alex Kile!!), the UWGB men's basketball team and various concerts and expo shows....it's the best optino and the Green Bay community is excited about the option.

I'm fine with neutral sites, but they need to make sense.  Traveling 5-plus hours by car or plane is okay for the Frozen Four, but I dunno about the conference tourney.  Ideally a site would be near as many fans as possible, and would rotate to be fair.

Campus sites are great, but they tend to be smaller.  At least Yost and Munn are.  And while either of those would be a sure sellout (which even Joe Louis struggles to get, even with both Michigan and FYS), it's hard to imagine that working out for a six-team tourney in the long run.  Yes, it's been done at both, I know, in the NCAA regionals, and mostly it was great for Michigan, but I think the Big Ten needs to think bigger; otherwise, what's the point of it?

There's still the Joe, of course, and that should definitely be in the rotation.  And Milwaukee, and the Twin Cities, and sure, even somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania would be fine.  The Discount Furniture Rink in that state down there is okay too, if you can stand it.

But what about Chicago?

Of course, I'm selfish: I want to be able to see some college hockey without leaving my own city.

But except for the slightly inconvenient fact that there are no college hockey teams in the whole state of Illinois, Chicago would seem a natural central location for a Big Ten hockey tourney.  And it's got to be better than St. Louis or Fort Wayne or Grand Rapids for a regional.  There are lots of alumni from B1G schools here, plenty of hotels, and I mean, come on, it's Chicago!

The only other negative I can think of is that the United Center is surrounded by nothing but parking lots. I was really impressed by the atmosphere at the Frozen Four in St. Paul: the Xcel Center is a fine rink, but it's in a great area, right downtown with lots of things to do.  So a tourney in Chicago wouldn't quite have that same feel right outside the rink, but there's still plenty going on not too far away.  The UIC Pavilion (former home of the UIC Flames hockey team) is a better location, but its capacity is only about 7000.  (Although the regionals have been in smaller places.)  There's talk of some games at Soldier Field, which could be fun, but Michigan is apparently not involved.

This all makes me miss the CCHA, with its wonderfully easy road trips.  When I was living in Ann Arbor, even when I was poor, I could easily make over half of Michigan's road games.  Tickets were cheap, most of the road trips were within a couple of hours, and there was a great group of Dekers to hang out with.  The Hockeymobile made it a lot of fun too.  And of course, the hockey team was regularly kicking butt, even on the road, in the heady days of the 90s.  There were some great trips to places like Bowling Green, Kalamazoo, and Big Rapids, as well as the Soo, Oxford, and South Bend.  There will still be trips to Munn for FYS, and the den of ultimate evil is only a few hours south, but I can't imagine too many people hopping in the car on a Friday afternoon to head from A2 to Madison or State College, let alone Minneapolis.

Anyway, come to Chi-Town.  You can all stay with me.  ;^)

this probably deserves a board post, but this is a pretty nice read.

Hagelin is tearing up now with the Rangers and making people notice.