Moving Day 2025

[crixus]

Tuesday, April 7th - The Big Mountain podcast about West Florida's move to the ASUN and UAC.

https://youtu.be/Bzhm_b6mg70?si=wPVakiBJHppBW1Nl

[laker]

Yea. Not exactly. A better way to word this would be states were hockey is more important than baseball, because the #3 sport in some of these states is neither. Nebraska for instance would be vball. Iowa would be either wrestling or women's bball. Ohio and Pennsylvania I would say wrestling is #3.

The authors intention was to say that college football is 1, college basketball is 2, and which would be 3- baseball or hockey. So it is a contest between college hockey and college baseball, not with other sports. I don't know how much interest there is in Idaho, Montana or Wyoming and that is why I questioned South Dakota.

[zimmy21]

Tell that to someone in New England... College hockey (specifically, Boston College, Boston University, Harvard and Northeastern; not to mention the "state" schools like UMass-Amherst, UMass-Lowell, UNH, Maine, etc.) are more impactful to sports fans in New England than BC football or basketball.

That's great for New England, but it's saturated with D1 hockey and the media attention and fan attendance goes to the big brands but should be going to their local schools like a Mercyhurst.

It's just like in Minnesota where 70% of "fans" are Gopher fans or North Dakota fans, the rest that actually pay attention are the other 5 D1 schools in the state mostly UMD and SCSU.

[Bballfan]

The authors intention was to say that college football is 1, college basketball is 2, and which would be 3- baseball or hockey. So it is a contest between college hockey and college baseball, not with other sports. I don't know how much interest there is in Idaho, Montana or Wyoming and that is why I questioned South Dakota.

Gotcha. I am not sure hockey means more than baseball in Ohio. I didn't even know Hockey was that big of a thing in Pennsylvania either.

[SW_Mustang]

If people care little about Mid-Major Basketball they care even less about College Hockey.

Mercyhurst had one of the worst average attendances in college hockey this year with 721.

Their basketball team averaged 555.

Oops.

[SW_Mustang]

I thought that this was an interesting map. The writer shows, in his opinion, states where hockey is the #3 college sport after football and basketball in red, and where baseball is the #3 sport in green. Seems somewhat accurate- not so sure about South Dakota. Argue away.

Hockey, and it's not even close.

The only time the media feels compelled to cover SDSU baseball is when they have deep runs in the Summit League tournament - and I say this as someone who lives within walking distance of the Irv.

I know attendance isn't everything - but here's the '25/'26 attendance numbers (average / total) for the top six non-football college teams in SD:

SDSU MBB: 2,808 / 36,507
SDSU WBB: 2,766 / 35,962
AU HKY: 2,747 / 57,685*
NSU MBB: 1,885 / 24,504
USD MBB: 1,470 / 24,991
USD WBB: 1,629 / 30,959

*To be fair, 57,685 is a bit skewed because of the CCHA tournament being held on campus, which is not applicable to SDSU/USD/NSU.

[zimmy21]

Mercyhurst had one of the worst average attendances in college hockey this year with 721.

Their basketball team averaged 555.

Oops.

And now Basketball can house 1276. That works out!

1100 seats at their Basketball arena vs 1500 in the hockey rink. Better Attendance / Seat ratio for hoops and only going to get better now!

[SW_Mustang]

And now Basketball can house 1276. That works out!

1100 seats at their Basketball arena vs 1500 in the hockey rink. Better Attendance / Seat ratio for hoops and only going to get better now!

I'm not in the mid-major world - is 1,276 max capacity like a flex or something? haha

Seems like a lot of wishful thinking here - I highly doubt a hockey crowd that feels scorned by their university will willingly fork over money to said university for a massive downgrade in their Friday night entertainment.

On the bright side, the fine folks of Erie, PA do have a watchable option in Gannon. Maybe they'll schedule Mercyhurst for a warm up game next season.

[zimmy21]

I'm not in the mid-major world - is 1,276 max capacity like a flex or something? haha

Seems like a lot of wishful thinking here - I highly doubt a hockey crowd that feels scorned by their university will willingly fork over money to said university for a massive downgrade in their Friday night entertainment.

On the bright side, the fine folks of Erie, PA do have a watchable option in Gannon. Maybe they'll schedule Mercyhurst for a warm up game next season.

I'm not going to argue taste with you, as there's no changing someone preferring one over the other. I prefer basketball but enjoy both.

The truth is D1 hockey is just a less populated version of basketball...there are the haves and the have nots. Unless you are the NCHC or the Big Ten and maybe some Hockey East you may as well forget about Championships. I'll grant Hockey is a bit more of a luck based sport than other sports so things may happen to advance lesser squads but typically like Basketball the best teams make the semi-finals and finals. In fact it is actually tougher to get into the D1 Basketball Tournaments than it is the Hockey Tournament. 68 spots for 361 Basketball schools vs 16 spots for 60 schools. Basketball would need to add on 28 spots just to match that postseason admittance.

Financially it just makes so much more sense to focus on hoops over hockey. Less games, less travel, less equipment, less scholarships, more TV money.

[laker]

Just saw this. Considering that Penn State is the national champion in wrestling year after year, the volleyball and gymnastics teams are outstanding and yet operate in a deficit- college sports can't keep operating like this.

[SW_Mustang]

I'm not going to argue taste with you, as there's no changing someone preferring one over the other. I prefer basketball but enjoy both.

The truth is D1 hockey is just a less populated version of basketball...there are the haves and the have nots. Unless you are the NCHC or the Big Ten and maybe some Hockey East you may as well forget about Championships. I'll grant Hockey is a bit more of a luck based sport than other sports so things may happen to advance lesser squads but typically like Basketball the best teams make the semi-finals and finals. In fact it is actually tougher to get into the D1 Basketball Tournaments than it is the Hockey Tournament. 68 spots for 361 Basketball schools vs 16 spots for 60 schools. Basketball would need to add on 28 spots just to match that postseason admittance.

Financially it just makes so much more sense to focus on hoops over hockey. Less games, less travel, less equipment, less scholarships, more TV money.

I was mostly being sarcastic and it came off as pretty dry - that's my bad. I'm not trying to convince you hockey is better either from an enjoyment perspective.

The one real point I was trying to make is I don't think cancelling hockey automatically increases basketball attendance to any significant degree - if MSU (hypothetically) cancelled basketball, would you go to more hockey games? Same applies here.

On your paragraph - we can agree that the physics of hockey do allow for more luck. Luck still isn't going to replace competitiveness across an entire competition. We can also agree that it's mathematically harder for any one team to reach the finals in basketball, though they are expanding the tournament to 76 teams next year. I might argue that SIU-Edwardsville and UCONN don't have the same odds to get to the title game based on a number of factors.

Actually what's crazy is that basketball has 31 conferences and only the ACC, Big East, SEC, Big 10, and Big 12 have won titles since 2010. In hockey, the ECAC, Hockey East, NCHC, and Ivy League have all won since 2010 (accounting for conference movement) - notice the Big10 isn't on this list, having not won since 2007. This means a champion in the last 16 years has come from 57% of hockey conferences, vs. 16% in basketball. Also - every basketball team that's won in that time is a major FBS school aside from UCONN and Villanova. In hockey, only Boston College applies. Hockey also has one DIII and one DII school that have won.

Anyway - I would also argue hockey is a physical sport and it's much harder to keep a roster healthy later in the season. NIL and the portal affect basketball to a much larger degree than hockey. I also genuinely believe that because basketball is a cheaper sport to run, that only roughly 50% of DI colleges actually intend to be competitive, the rest are just there to collect a paycheck and don't care how the team does.

In closing - if Mercyhurst wanted to do what was best financially, they would have moved to DIII where they belong. They could then cut salaries, scholarships, and travel, and charge every athlete full tuition. It has nothing to do with finances and everything to do with vanity. I gleefully await their failure.

[SW_Mustang]

Just saw this. Considering that Penn State is the national champion in wrestling year after year, the volleyball and gymnastics teams are outstanding and yet operate in a deficit- college sports can't keep operating like this.

Yup - it's nuts and the well is quickly drying up. One question I do have is what all is included in revenues - I assume ticket sales, sponsorships, tv deals, merch sales - but it's not uncommon for smaller teams to have big donors. Would like to know if that's included here or if it's just business operations.

Going to be curious to see what happens when the entire pyramid scheme falls apart.

[laker]

Yup - it's nuts and the well is quickly drying up. One question I do have is what all is included in revenues - I assume ticket sales, sponsorships, tv deals, merch sales - but it's not uncommon for smaller teams to have big donors. Would like to know if that's included here or if it's just business operations.

Going to be curious to see what happens when the entire pyramid scheme falls apart.

I'm wondering what non-program specific means. Seems like a good way to use a slush fund.

[SW_Mustang]

I'm wondering what non-program specific means. Seems like a good way to use a slush fund.

Probably athletic department operating expenses that aren't specific to any one team - like the salary of the athletic director. Though I would be curious to see a breakdown of what's all included. Seems like an easy area to make tweaks.

[TheBigCat2192]

I'm wondering what non-program specific means. Seems like a good way to use a slush fund.

This article from State College dot com says that some of those non-program specific revenue sources include certain Big Ten media rights distributions, concessions, NCAA payments for hosting championship events, post-season success payouts from the NCAA, and contributions from donors not specified to be directed to a sport. It's not clear if any of that "revenue" is from student fees.