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Terry Pegula donated $88 million to Penn State University, allowing them to create a new Division 1 hockey program. In the aftermath of the ongoing sex abuse scandal, Pegula spoke out about how it's impacting his gift to the school.
The addition of Penn State to the Division 1 NCAA hockey ranks in 2012-13 will dramatically alter the landscape of the sport at the collegiate level. On Monday, we learned that it'll be much more than just the addition of PSU that will change the game.
According to a press release from the Big Ten, the athletic directors at the six conference schools that sponsor ice hockey programs have made the recommendation to establish men's hockey as an official Big Ten sport in 2012-13. The NCAA requires that each conference must have at least six teams, so the addition of Penn State allows this action to take place.
The recommendation includes the establishment of a Big Ten Hockey Tournament, complete with auto-bid to the NCAA tournament, and a full 20-game conference schedule, with each team playing a home and road game against each of the other five schools.
The establishment of a Big Ten Hockey Conference will no doubt rock the entire collegiate hockey landscape, and the schools left in the CCHA and WCHA would certainly be impacted most. Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State would leave the CCHA an eight team league, while Minnesota and Wisconsin would leave the WCHA a 10-team league.
As American college hockey continues to grow into a legitimate alternative to the Canadian Major Junior ranks, the advent of a Big Ten conference will certainly help spread the message. Just think about the resources of the Big Ten, including the Big Ten Network, which according to them is available in 75 million households. It could dramatically raise the scope of collegiate hockey in the United States.
At the same time, it could also hurt some of the smaller schools left in the WCHA and CCHA. Sure, some of those schools will be able to assert themselves in place of those larger Big Ten schools, which could lead to a renaissance in some of the smaller programs.
But when you take out the largest schools in a conference -- as the five Big Ten schools currently are -- you leave schools like Western Michigan and Bowling Green without the big money those teams bring to the table.If you're weakening a ton of teams to form the Big Ten Hockey Conference, does it really result in a net gain for collegiate hockey on the whole?
We don't have the answer to that question just yet, but it looks as though we'll find out in just a few short years.
From Derek Zona at From The Rink:
Penn State is about to reshape the NCAA Division I landscape. Last week, the university announced that Terry Pegula, ex-President and CEO of East Resources Inc., a natural gas exploration and drilling company, donated $88 million for the purpose of building a 6,000 seat hockey arena. The arena will be home to men's and women's hockey and Penn State officials say the team will be ready to play for the 2012-2013 season. The announcement was not a surprise, as Penn State's program has been one of the largest sources of college hockey gossip over the last two seasons. The donation was leaked to the media over one month ago and the rumors of a new building have been making the same rounds.
With the announcement, the drama that's been limited to hockey fan boards and blogs will be on full display. The addition of Penn State means that six Big 10 schools now have Division I hockey. That is significant because by NCAA by-laws, six is the minimum number of teams allowed to form a conference. The creation of the much-discussed Big Ten Hockey Conference seems like a foregone conclusion.
On the heels of the news that Penn State will be adding Division I hockey in the near future, the Big Ten released a statement Friday saying that the news does not necessarily mean a Big Ten Hockey Conference is on the horizon. Not that they ruled it out, either.
For many years, we have had five institutions sponsoring Division I men’s ice hockey programs – Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. Big Ten rules allow for a championship whenever there are six institutions sponsoring a program in any given sport. This leads to the presumption that there will be a Big Ten Men’s Ice Hockey Championship at some point in the future. A decision of that nature, however, cannot be made without a significant amount of discussion both internally with conference chancellors, presidents, administrators and coaches, and externally with the hockey community as a whole. Whatever we do, we will communicate in a respectful and responsible way as we endeavor to balance all of the unique interests in play.
The rumors are true. Penn State University will ice men's and women's hockey programs at the Division I level beginning in the 2012-13 season. The University announced their plans on Friday morning.
The dreams of many in the PSU athletic community, who have wanted to make this jump for years now, have been fulfilled by a very generous private donor. Terry Pegula and his wife Kim, who have made their fortune in the natural gas industry, have donated $88 million to the school for the construction of a new, 6,000 to 8,000 seat hockey arena on the State College, PA campus.
The construction is expected to be completed by December 2013. Here's a quick glimpse at the proposed floorplan, courtesy of the University.
Click to enlarge.
Hockey is currently played at the club level, where the Penn State Icers have experienced moderate success in their history. As the team makes the jump to NCAA athletics, though, the question once again comes up: will the Big Ten create their own hockey conference?
Athletic Director Tim Curley admitted as much in a statement.
"We're very proud of the success that our ACHA club hockey program has achieved, and this gift will allow us to take the sport to a completely new level at Penn State," said Tim Curley, director of Penn State's Intercollegiate Athletics. "Thanks to the Pegulas, we will be able to enter NCAA competition in 2012-13. Penn State's launch of Division I hockey will lead to additional competition within the Big Ten, and that has the potential to transform college hockey in this country. Penn State also plans to launch a Division I women's ice hockey program."
For now, the Nittany Lions will first take the ice as an independent in 2012. It'll certainly be interesting to see where this goes from there.
For more, visit Western College Hockey Blog and Black Shoe Diaries.
The topic of NCAA Division I hockey expansion has been thrown back and forth in the college hockey community for quite some time, and generally, people agree that any expansion would be good for the future of the college game.
But some are against expansion and the potential realignment that it could cause, and the fear is that one or two big moves could have a ripple effect that could adversely impact off a collegiate hockey.
A giant move could be coming sooner rather than later. After many setbacks and years of speculation, it seems that Penn State University could be set to make the jump from club hockey to NCAA-sanctioned hockey, if not a jump all the way to Division 1 in one-fell swoop.
Rumors and speculation have existed for more than a decade, but it finally appears Penn State is on the verge of building a new ice hockey arena near the Bryce Jordan Center and adding Division I men's and women's hockey programs.
"We're close," a source close to the situation told the Mirror on Thursday. "It won't be long before we'll be able to potentially make some kind of announcement. But it's not a done deal yet."
The source spoke on the condition of anonymity, and when asked to define what "close" means said, "probably within the next two months" the wheels will be set in motion.
The first step is acquiring private funds to build a facility that would seat 6,000-8,000 people. The cost for that is expected to be between $60 million and $80 million.
Most, if not all, of that money would come from Penn State alum Terry Pegula.
As that article hints, the possibility of PSU adding a D1 hockey program is something that's been discussed for a very long time. Back in early 2009 a document surfaced that showed the school was looking into building such an arena, but as our own Western College Hockey Blog said at the time, that never came to fruition.
It's possible the economic collapse had something to do with that, and it's also possible that the report was referring to a study on the possibility of someday building that arena. Now, it seems, could be that day.
In an interview with SB Nation's From The Rink back in May, College Hockey Inc.'s Paul Kelly talked about the potential addition of Penn State to the collegiate hockey ranks and what kind of impact that move would have on the rest of the landscape.
They have been talking about the arena project and if you could ever get one other school from the Big Ten, you could create a Big Ten Hockey Conference. We'd have to shuffle the deck a bit, and reconfigure the WCHA and CCHA a bit. But again, this is a great sport that can be done effectively at some of these schools. The programs can make an immediate impact in those areas and they'd have an immediate fan following. We are a clearing house for colleges and universities that have an interest and want to talk to someone about what the process would involved, what the budget model would look like, who at the NCAA would be the right person to talk to, how do they get themselves aligned with a conference...we can be a good intermediary and have an impact. We have already begun those discussions with a number of colleges.
Five Big Ten schools already have D1 hockey programs -- Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ohio State. Minnesota and Wisconsin currently play in the WCHA while the other three play in the CCHA. There are a few problems with a potential Big Ten Hockey Conference:
- The WCHA, CCHA and the programs that call those conferences home would be on the losing end. If you take Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State out of the CCHA, you suddenly lose three of the league's most stable programs. Sure, Miami has become a force in the last several years and Notre Dame is on the rise, but can Northern Michigan and other small schools like it survive without the presence of the big-name schools?
- Rivalries will be broken up. Aside from smaller schools losing out financially with the loss of big-name programs, both large and small programs will suffer from the loss of rich rivalries. North Dakota will lose long-standing rivalries with Wisconsin and Minnesota, for example.
Western College Hockey Blog summed up these concerns back in February 2009, analyzing all the issues and concerns in a lengthy post on the subject. WCHB dismissed concerns of losing competitive balance, but came to the conclusion that the real problem lies within the small schools that would lose out with such a major shakeup.
The WCHA could survive with strong programs in North Dakota, Denver and Colorado College, but the CCHA would be a different story. WCHB believes that losing the Big Ten programs would be a death blow to the long-term success of the CCHA.
The Big Ten Hockey Conference might seem like a great idea to some, but I think right now, it probably would be a bad thing for college hockey. Maybe it will happen some day, but right now isn't the best time for it. The sport of hockey isn't really popular enough for mid-major teams to be viable and successful without being able to be part of a conference with other major programs, and with the current economic situation, money is going to be hard to come by for programs that aren't able to turn a profit.
Penn State wants D1 hockey, it appears, and they wouldn't be looking seriously at building a 6,000-plus seat arena if they weren't going to get D1 hockey. Whether they play in a newly formed Big Ten Hockey Conference is yet to be seen as well, but if and when the Icers make the jump to D1, the impact on the rest of the college hockey world could be cataclysmic.
For more on Penn State athletics, including the Icers club hockey program, visit Black Shoe Diaries.
Penn State Scandal: Terry Pegula Speaks Out About Impact On Fledgling Hockey Program
Terry Pegula is just like every other Penn State alum, confused and shocked by the revelations in the sex abuse case that circles the university. But Pegula isn't just the average concerned member of the PSU community.
He just gave the school $88 million to fund the construction of a Division 1 hockey arena, and thanks to that donation, Penn State will ice a Division 1 hockey team for the first time next fall. In a strong interview with TSN, Pegula said that he stands by that gift and by the university.
Head coach Guy Gadowsky, who left a successful career with the Princeton Tigers to help get the Penn State hockey program off the ground, certainly seems to have an uphill battle in putting together his team in the wake of these allegations. It's no leap to suggest that many players may not be interested in playing hockey at Penn State in the face of everything that has been revealed in the last two weeks.
Pegula is doing all he can to mitigate the impact of this scandal on the new hockey program, while still emphasizing that the "right things need to be done" and that "our concern and compassion should be for the children involved in these terrible allegations."
Pegula went on to say that the scandal shouldn't be blamed on the majority of the university community -- the students, the faculty, the alumni -- because they "can't be blamed for what happened." He asserted that taking away support for the hockey program would only punish a university community that "shouldn't put their head down."
For more on the ongoing Penn State scandal, check with this StoryStream. For more on the scandal, and everything in the world of Penn State athletics, check with Nittany Lions blog Black Shoe Diaries.
Nov 17 1:33p by Travis Hughes - 0 comments