University of British Columbia- NCAA Member?

While looking (without success) for more info on All-Access, I stumbled upon this piece by Elliot Olshansky (Dartmouth '04 & the guy who called Cornell's home fans the best in the country last year): [www.cstv.com]

It's about the potential bid by the University of British Columbia to join the NCAA and play D-I hockey. In the unlikley event this became reality, it could shake up the Cornell-Western Canada pipeline a bit.

It might actually help. UBC or an Ivy, hmmm, lemme think. But the schools without the status label could be hurt.

Still, NCAA has a long way to go to get the really best talent out of western Canada. The WHL has a chokehold, and NCAA hockey is regarded as a joke, in part because CIAU hockey is, and in part because the WHL really is much better.

Pretty interesting. Not that it has anything to do with hockey, but I have collaborated on my research quite a bit with a group from there that does a great job. Without that connection, I would have never heard of them before.

Here's a fun UBC hockey story I remember from 2003...

[www.universitysport.ca]

cth95
Pretty interesting. Not that it has anything to do with hockey, but I have collaborated on my research quite a bit with a group from there that does a great job. Without that connection, I would have never heard of them before.

Cornell has actually played UBC. The Thunderbirds (IIRC?) hosted a tournament in 1985 and Cornell swept Seibu (Japan), them, and Yale to win the title.

I doubt it will happen, but I think this would be a fantastic development for NCAA hockey. As Trotsky said, NCAA hockey is still not held in great regard among most Canadians, and most of the top tier talent still chooses to go the CHL route. A competetive UBC (and this would take years) would expose the biggest talent pool in the world to College Hockey and do much to raise it's status north of the border. Your never going to displace the CHL, but a competetive Canadian school just might cause a few more Canucks take notice.

evilnaturedrobot
I doubt it will happen, but I think this would be a fantastic development for NCAA hockey. As Trotsky said, NCAA hockey is still not held in great regard among most Canadians, and most of the top tier talent still chooses to go the CHL route. A competetive UBC (and this would take years) would expose the biggest talent pool in the world to College Hockey and do much to raise it's status north of the border. Your never going to displace the CHL, but a competetive Canadian school just might cause a few more Canucks take notice.

... and conversely isn't Canada held in low regard by the NCAA, along with any area other than the 50 United States? The NCAA's unwritten motto seems to be, "Sporting opportunities for athlete-students 18-22 of U.S. citizenship, particularly in the revenue-generating sports." Remember how the NCAA made Dick Bertrand sit out the NCAAs because he was 29 years old when he was team captain his senior year? They want to equalize opportunities for "normal" athlete-students and feared some guy who was a Canadian and who'd spend a couple years walking a beat as a Toronto cop before college was unfairly advantaged. So far they haven't cracked down on Brigham Young Mormons who spend two years selling religion in out of the way places.

Did anyone catch Tracy Austin's rant on the tennis telecast first week of the U.S. Open when she bitched about non-Americans playing on the UCLA tennis team? She had some factoid about how it might surprise California taxpayers to know that only 2% of UCLA students are out of state ... yet virtually the entire tennis team is. Maybe only 2% of UCLA [undergraduate?] students are out of state, but that's not the case on sports teams ever since John Wooden brought Lew Alcindor cross-country to play basketball. And I bet more than 2% of UCLA students are not U.S. citizens.

billhoward
... and conversely isn't Canada held in low regard by the NCAA, along with any area other than the 50 United States? The NCAA's unwritten motto seems to be, "Sporting opportunities for athlete-students 18-22 of U.S. citizenship, particularly in the revenue-generating sports." Remember how the NCAA made Dick Bertrand sit out the NCAAs because he was 29 years old when he was team captain his senior year?

Do you think the NCAA's treatment of Dick Bertrand is an accurate barometer of how the NCAA feels about foreign student-athletes today?

ugarte

billhoward
... and conversely isn't Canada held in low regard by the NCAA, along with any area other than the 50 United States? The NCAA's unwritten motto seems to be, "Sporting opportunities for athlete-students 18-22 of U.S. citizenship, particularly in the revenue-generating sports." Remember how the NCAA made Dick Bertrand sit out the NCAAs because he was 29 years old when he was team captain his senior year?

Do you think the NCAA's treatment of Dick Bertrand is an accurate barometer of how the NCAA feels about foreign student-athletes today?

Good point. One instance from a generation ago doesn't prove or disprove anything about today's NCAA. My personal belief is the NCAA doesn't represent the spirit of college and amateur sports as well as it supports major, quasi-professional sports and the NCAA bureaucracy. As for today, see Rick Reilly's column in Sports Illustrated about how the current NCAA screws over a minor sport athlete from a minor college (Carnegie Mellon) in a minor division (DIII). [www.doubleazone.com] Nick End had one of the best 10,000-meter times in DIII last spring but his coach clicked one wrong box in the online entry form for the NCAA track and field championships, recognized the mistake quickly, well before the entry deadline, and the NCAA wouldn't let End run, and still wouldn't even when it turned out the field wasn't going to be full.


As Reilly said:

Apparently not so simple for the cold, gray, immovable elephant the NCAA has become. It can't seem to keep track of nationally celebrated players such as USC's Reggie Bush, whose parents allegedly got a sweetheart deal on their rent, or Chris Webber, who got thousands of dollars illegally at Michigan. Kelvin Sampson cheats at Oklahoma, and the NCAA lets him skate happily to Indiana with a slap on the wrist. But a nonscholarship engineering student in a nonrevenue sport gets more screwed than plywood.

[Also]

Nick and his parents and his coach and his AD tried to contact everybody up to and including NCAA president Myles Brand and got bupkes. The only person who would return my calls was Payne, who kept repeating, "I can only refer you to our press statement on the matter."

It reads, "The NCAA is much too big and important to care about one tiny, sniveling athlete. Hell, this schmo isn't even on TV!"

Actually, I made that up. The real statement reads, "The committee must follow the procedures and protocol and remain consistent in how it handles these situations so NCAA championships can remain as fair and equitable as possible."

Fair and equitable?

Well, "equity" is one of the NC$$'s favorite buzzwords.

billhoward
So far they haven't cracked down on Brigham Young Mormons who spend two years selling religion in out of the way places.

I can't quote chapter and verse, but the NCAA rules do address this situation. Normally an athlete has five years from his/her date of matriculation to use up four years of athletic eligibility. However, the NCAA grants an exemption of (up to?) two years for an athlete for something like the Mormon missions -- giving them seven years from date of matriculation instead of the usual five. There is also a similar exemption for military service.

fenwick

billhoward
So far they haven't cracked down on Brigham Young Mormons who spend two years selling religion in out of the way places.

I can't quote chapter and verse, but the NCAA rules do address this situation. Normally an athlete has five years from his/her date of matriculation to use up four years of athletic eligibility. However, the NCAA grants an exemption of (up to?) two years for an athlete for something like the Mormon missions -- giving them seven years from date of matriculation instead of the usual five. There is also a similar exemption for military service.

Those are reasonable so long as they apply equally to everyone - matriculate at 30 or 18, service in the Israeli army or U.S. military. But where do you stop: military exemption so why not an exemption for being a police officer (true, not that many people are cops for 24 months, then leave to go back to college) and if a police officer why not the Peace Corps?

It is a two-year exemption (or extension) that Mormons and other missionaries get, and it got some WAC opponents upset when Brigham Young started doing so well in football, with lots of griping about how 26-year-old hulks were beating up on 18-year-old true freshman. (As if a fifth-year redshirt against the 18-year-old would be a lot different.) There's a nice 2005 article about "The Myth of the BYU Missionary Advantage" [story.scout.com] and notes that not everyone who takes two years off to spread the Word does it in a place where he can lift weights ... and also when someone gets injured and would be a candidate for a medical redshirt, in rare cases the player can't use all his eligibility because of the seven-year maximum eligibility period from when he or she first set foot on campus.