Article on schools applying for ECAC membership

[Tom Pasniewski 98]

Are you saying 14 teams with Mercyhurst-Niagara or Canisius as traveling partners and Brown and say Quinnipiac as travel partners plus Harvard-Dartmouth?  I don't see it.  I can't see asking both Dartmouth and Mercyhurst to both make an extremely long weekend trek each year.

For Niagara, a Harvard-Brown roadtrip would be 956 miles in a weekend.
For Mercyhurst, a Harvard-Brown roadtrip would be 1,132 miles in a weekend although that might involve flying.
For Dartmouth, a Niagara-Mercyhurst roadtrip would be 1,002 miles in a weekend.

Geographically, I think it's risky to consider taking on Mercyhurst or Niagara.

Part of Hockey East's success is the huge fan support teams have on the road made easier when BU, BC, Northeastern, UMass-Lowell, Providence, UMass, UNH and Merrimack are all within a two-hour drive of each other and five (BU, BC, Northeastern, Merrimack and Lowell) within an hour of each other.  Adding Vermont does seem to go against that.

I know Cornell fans like to roadtrip but clearly fans of other schools don't make even somewhat short trips so adding teams far away would seem to worsen the issue.  

Anybody see any possibility that the ECAC might consider a DIII school if they were interested in playing up?  Not far from UVM, we have Norwich which has been successful in recent years at the ECAC DIII level and on the DIII national level.

[KeithK]

[q]Anybody see any possibility that the ECAC might consider a DIII school if they were interested in playing up? Not far from UVM, we have Norwich which has been successful in recent years at the ECAC DIII level and on the DIII national level.[/q]Isn't there a moratorium on new schools playing up?  Regardless, any school that plays up is going to be at a disadvantage without scholarships (no grandfathering for them) and will likely struggle ala Union.

[billhoward]

You've laid out a bunch of interesting possibilities. No matter how you play it, these real problems remain:

Cornell is now the westernmost outpost of the ECAC for D1 hockey. It has a nifty and logical travel partner in Colgate.

The team that bailed, Vermont, was equally close to its erstwhile travel partner, Dartmouth.

Mercyhurst, a team that really wants in, is another 200-250 miles farther away. Erie, Pa, is really a northeastern extension of Ohio. (CCHA country.) The one possible, possibly logical travel partner, would be Niagara.

So if Mercyhurst comes in by itself it's back to an even number of teams.

If a Quinnipiac or Holy Cross comes in, it's possible to find a travel partner for Dartmouth but you're really overfilling the schedule as far as the Ivies (29 game limit) are concerned.

[billhoward]

[Q]Tom Pasniewski 98 Wrote:

 Anybody see any possibility that the ECAC might consider a DIII school if they were interested in playing up?  Not far from UVM, we have Norwich which has been successful in recent years at the ECAC DIII level and on the DIII national level.[/q]

Another possibility: One wonders if Union may get tired of getting kicked around in Division 1 and back down a notch? Perhaps there's a limit to how long Union can coast on the magic that Ned Harkess brought many long years ago.

Union's current president, I believe, was not a big supporter of continuation of the exemption for dinky colleges playing D1 hockey.

That said, I love that little schools -- Hopkins in lacrosse most of all, RPI / SLU / Clarkson / Colorado College in hockey, Hartwick in soccer -- tweak the big schools regularly. If big time NCAA sports doesn't like this David Beats Goliath atmosphere, that's reason enough for me to like it.

[RichH]

[Q]Tom Pasniewski 98 Wrote:

I don't see it.  I can't see asking both Dartmouth and Mercyhurst to both make an extremely long weekend trek each year.

For Niagara, a Harvard-Brown roadtrip would be 956 miles in a weekend.
For Mercyhurst, a Harvard-Brown roadtrip would be 1,132 miles in a weekend although that might involve flying.
For Dartmouth, a Niagara-Mercyhurst roadtrip would be 1,002 miles in a weekend.

Geographically, I think it's risky to consider taking on Mercyhurst or Niagara.
[/q]
I see it differently.  I see the geographical distances as being the least concerning issue.  Large and small schools in both the CCHA and WCHA routinely make weekend trips that are over 1000 miles.  One way.  7 of the 9 WCHA trips for Denver and CC are over 1000 miles one way.   The distances you talk about aren't really outrageous.  500 miles?  Horrors.  There are exciting, modern methods of transportation that allow teams and fans to travel great distances, you know.  ;-)

With Cornell making OOC ties with the CCHA, we've been traveling a long distance in recent years. If it's fans you're worried about, Clarkson, RPI, and Cornell are pretty much the only ECAC schools that have proven to travel everywhere well.  Heck, Harvard fans can't be bothered to even cross the Charles much of the time.

Basically, which would you rather have...a provincial conference crammed into a saturated market with direct competition with Hockey East, or a league with broad appeal becoming entrenched into new markets and fan-bases?  I think the league can take some steps in improving it's image and level of play by going to places like Buffalo, Erie, perhaps Pittsburgh (Robert Morris is adding a D-1 team).  If it means 1 longer roadtrip/year for some teams or even some flights, so be it.  Should college hockey's appeal continue to expand, I'd rather our league be proactive and try to be at the forefront of the trend rather than standing on the sideline watching.

If a school applying for membership makes sense and can add long term value to the league in reputation, market size (thus fan base), competition, and committment to establishing a quality program, I'm all for it.  Be it in Worcester, Erie, Niagara Falls...the travel and scheduling details will work out themselves.  I think it would be a mistake to first decide what schedule you want and then see what schools "fit" that plan.  

And (I'm dreaming big here) if teams in Syracuse or State College ever start thinking about making the jump say in 10-15 years, I want the ECAC to be *THE* conference they would absolutely lust about joining.   How the league manages this expansion can be the first step to achieving that status.

[Tom Pasniewski 98]

[Q]

Basically, which would you rather have...a provincial conference crammed into a saturated market with direct competition with Hockey East, or a league with broad appeal becoming entrenched into new markets and fan-bases?  I think the league can take some steps in improving it's image and level of play by going to places like Buffalo, Erie, perhaps Pittsburgh (Robert Morris is adding a D-1 team).  If it means 1 longer roadtrip/year for some teams or even some flights, so be it.  Should college hockey's appeal continue to expand, I'd rather our league be proactive and try to be at the forefront of the trend rather than standing on the sideline watching.

[/Q]

Taking the ECAC as a whole, New England and particularly eastern Massachusetts is already saturated, with 29 of the 43 ECAC schools in New England and at least 12 in Boston or its suburbs.  That's mainly because DIII schools have no other option - they can't just join the NESCAC.

But I think your point is a good one.  At the DI level, we do have three conferences who have shown an ability to accept schools no matter how far east, west or south they are located.  I think the ECAC is already an attractive alternative for schools who may not want to be subjected to being beaten up by Michigan, Michigan State, North Dakota and Minnesota in their first few years but AD's may have aspirations of bringing glory to their campus by getting to play and eventually beat those programs on a regular basis.  

Another interesting option could be Navy if they come around - a reach south by the ECAC in addition to a westward march to Buffalo and Erie.  Navy is of course not at the point where any other team mentioned for inclusion is at.  

I think we should evaluate any additions to the ECAC on the two criteria most likely to affect Cornell - are any of the 7 OOC games in jeopardy and if they are, what is the quality of the replacement games - i.e. the new additions to the ECAC.

[billhoward]

[Q][I see it differently.  I see the geographical distances as being the least concerning issue.  Large and small schools in both the CCHA and WCHA routinely make weekend trips that are over 1000 miles.  ....   Basically, which would you rather have...a provincial conference crammed into a saturated market with direct competition with Hockey East, or a league with broad appeal becoming entrenched into new markets and fan-bases?  I think the league can take some steps in improving it's image and level of play by going to places like Buffalo, Erie, perhaps Pittsburgh (Robert Morris is adding a D-1 team).  If it means 1 longer roadtrip/year for some teams or even some flights, so be it.  Should college hockey's appeal continue to expand, I'd rather our league be proactive and try to be at the forefront of the trend rather than standing on the sideline watching. [/q]

You've made really good arguments for considering expansion. Accepting Buffalo / western Pennsylvania schools would move Cornell out of the geographic fringe of the ECAC. If college hockey gets even bigger, the league is helping the expansion. And it really would be great if a Syracuse and Penn State had real D1 hockey programs. Those teams would add luster to the ECAC.

Still:

- While western teams fly to games, it's because they have to, not want to. It adds cost and complexity.
- Cornell playing one weekend in Michigan and one weekend in Florida (over break) is not the same as flying every second weekend.
- The teams looking to get into ECAC are building their programs. This is not a BC or Miami (in football) looking for better competition in a different league. None of them immediately help the perception of the ECAC as a softer league.
- Nothing stops them from looking elsewhere if and when they get good. (Although that can be said of any league.)
- If Mercyhurst comes in by itself, you've got a geographic loose end. No other ECAC school is 250 miles from its next closest league team.
- If the Ivy presidents lock it at 29 pre-tournament games, the Ivies have little flexibility.

Well, heck, let's see what happens. No matter what, the winner of the ECACs goes on to the NCAAs.

[mgl11]

Or maybe an ECAC expansion will lead to the Ivies breaking off into a seperate league. If they can still get an automatic bid w/ 6 teams, that makes playing only 29 pre-NCAA games a lot easier on the out-of-conference schedule.

[billhoward]

[Q]mgl11 Wrote:

 Or maybe an ECAC expansion will lead to the Ivies breaking off into a seperate league. If they can still get an automatic bid w/ 6 teams, that makes playing only 29 pre-NCAA games a lot easier on the out-of-conference schedule.[/q]

Even better if we convinced Penn to pick up hockey again. Columbia is a lost cause, although given the Rangers' record, the Lions could well be the best hockey team in New York if they took up the sport.

The NCAA has used automatic qualifier status as a carrot to fuel growth of the sport. When Cornell doesn't make the NCAAs in hockey or lacrosse, we can point to one or two teams (at least) that auto-qualified that Cornell could hang out to dry. Better to think of it as affirmative action that harms no one since the NCAAs expanded from four up to 16 teams and in the bubble seasons, Cornell wouldn't have been one of the four or eight.

[Scersk '97]

Perhaps not surprisingly, like Rich I prefer to look at this as a big pond/little pond issue.  The current ECAC is a little pond with more minnows than big or mid-size fish.  (The big fish are we, Hah-vahd, and Clarkson; the mid-size fish are RPI and the Larries; and the rest are minnows.  I see only Colgate as a growing fish with staying power in this scheme.)  The question is whether we want to be in a little pond full of minnows or a big pond chock full o' minnows with potential for growth.  While it is next to impossible for the ECAC to get TV and media exposure--which hurts our recruiting more than the minnows'--as a little pond, if the league moves into the Buffalo and New England markets we start to reach many more people.  (Remember how the Buffalo/Rochester media adopted Cornell as their own for the Final Four.)  All of a sudden, the ECAC becomes the small school conference with huge geographic breadth that is exciting to watch.  So, let's view expansion, whatever hardships it may bring, as a good thing.

To whit, I suggest a radical expansion for the league:

IVY      WEST      EAST
--------------------------------------------
Harvard      Clarkson   Holy Cross
Cornell      St. Lawrence   Quinnipiac
Princeton   Colgate      Sacred Heart
Dartmouth   Mercyhurst   Army
Brown      Niagara      Union
Yale       Canisius   RPI

Yep, back to the old super-big ECAC.  Cherry pick all the best squads (Army is included for nostalgia) from the MAAC and Niagara, arrange them in divisions, and go at it.  Home and homes against divisional teams, and one shots against other divisions for a total of 22 games (sounds familiar, eh?).  I say seed the teams for the playoffs in bands by divisional finish and then seed the bands by overall conference record--promotes parity, which is what the ECAC has always been about.  Drop two teams--who needs em anyway--and start with a sweet 16, or just start with 8.  (That would make overall play *very* important for those last two teams).  I still say we'd be big fish, but in a much bigger pond.  If someone could rook the NCAA into giving us two auto-quals for being such a huge conference, all the better.

[ninian '72]

All good points.  Actually, the CCHA and WCHA travel issues look even more daunting when you factor in the Alaska trips.  I don't remember all the details, but IIRC the WCHA lightens the travel burden by not scheduling home and away series between geographically dispersed teams every year.  The ECAC could probably figure out how to do this, if necessary.  An interesting by-product is that a net reduction in ECAC games, even if the league expanded by three or more teams, would allow scheduling more OOC games.  This would be a nice way to compensate for ECAC teams having to play new, weaker teams inside the conference after expansion.

[jeh25]

Matt-

Very interesting idea. However, the only way I could see having 2 AQs under NCAA rules is to have 2 conferences: Ivy and ECAC.  Thus, you make Ivy a separate Conference on paper with an interlocking schedule in practice.  

Don't have time to figure out how this affects your playoff structure. Maybe someone else can?

[Greg]

I don't think the NCAA would allow de jure separate conferences to share a playoff, unless they only awarded one AQ to the champion (in which case you would lose the benefit of declaring as two separate conferences).

[billhoward]

If not three conferences (Ivy, ECAC East, ECAC West) coming out of the ECAC, perhaps two conferences:

ECAC Ivy League and almost-Ivy (Colgate, RPI, Union if it sticks D1)

ECAC Safe Schools & parochial schools (St. Lawrence, Niagara, Holy Cross, Mercyhurst)

... 'course, you might need different official wording to make it palatable.

[mgl11]

The only thing to worry about there -- making sure that Cornell - Harvard play home and home every year.