University of British-Columbia Coming to NCAA?
Posted by: ron
Adam tossed this one in front of us a week or two ago and we all kind of shrugged, but several weeks later and still no word on the University of British-Columbia’s pending application to join the NCAA. CSTV’s Rink Rat, Elliot Olshansky breaks it down a bit further, taking a look at some of the conference and recruiting scenarios UBC and other teams might face should their application get approved.
From a business standpoint this should be a no-brainer for the NCAA, whom many lurking in the forums lovingly refer to as the NC$$. When you’ve run out of revenue opportunities in your own country, it only makes sense to expand to other countries, just like many professional leagues in the US have with varying degrees of success. While this seems like a huge opportunity to expand college hockey, there’s also a lot of opportunities for other sports such as Football, Baseball and Basketball (come on, the MVP is Canadian!)
Still many questions remain: Would NCAA Hockey be the same with Canadian Schools? How would this change the recruiting landscape and the game itself in the US? My guess is that we would see a weaker all around game right off the bat. Expansion does this to every sport, yet at the same time in ten years if well played could we be the equivalent of juniors? Definitely a possibility.
A more pressing matter remains though: Who do we run up the score on in exhibition games if all of the CIS teams join the NCAA? The excitement of D-I v. D-III could be back!
