Tyler Roeder contributed to this post.
The tumult of realignment has turned college football inside out in recent seasons and is the most talked about subject in the sport this side of NIL.
As this summer’s round of conference poaching wrapped up, the idea of what this sort of practice might look like in NCAA hockey sprang to mind. Conference realignment isn’t foreign to college hockey either, as the formation of the B1G Conference created a domino effect when plans for the conference were first announced in 2011. The ripple effect of the B1G creation is still being felt after the CCHA’s recent reformation and the subsequent folding of the WCHA. Unlike the TV-money fueled change in football, much of the reshuffling in hockey has been driven by the need for a more manageable geographic region of conference play. Even still, several programs have had to shut down over the last five years due to budgetary constraints, something not felt by revenue sports like football. Interestingly, that hasn’t prevented schools from adding DI hockey programs. In fact, despite the struggles faced by the likes of Alabama-Huntsville, Alaska-Anchorage and Robert Morris, there continue to be reports of schools conducting studies to add the sport to their offerings.
With that in mind and in addition to the recent college football realignment in mind, we put our heads together to come up with ideas for not only conference realignment, but further expansion of college hockey’s footprint. What follows is a combination of the ideas floated on the most recent episode of The Instigator Podcast. It is a blue sky concept for reshaping or creating various conferences, adding schools which we feel would be strong supporters of hockey and creating an ecosystem where every program can thrive in their own right.
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