100% agree. However, I fear there’s a ceiling that he/we may bump into. If it’s down to us or Nodak and they’re offering $50k, then we’ll lose more of those than we’ll win. Time will tell but I’d rather be where we are today than where we were 3 years ago. I’m not nearly as close to the athletics machine as you are, any word on how much of that $8 mil NIL that’s been bandied about is heading to Noreen?
And before someone chimes in that Ferschweiler and Carle aren’t paying players, remember that each has been very careful to say no NIL payments, conveniently leaving out other forms of legal compensation. Don’t kid yourselves, Denver and Western are forking over some cash, they’re just doing it in a way that let’s them act all altruistic.
Yep, name recognition and those schools’ deeper pockets will always be an issue, which is why I think it’s great that Noreen focuses on the physical development angle. If he can sell that to high-end kids (and I’m guessing he already is) that could help him win recruiting battles.
I don’t know what kind of split hockey has on NIL, but Noreen has been excellent at generating revenue from alums and other boosters (Miami is supposedly chartering to most of their opponents this season).
Bergeron was virtually 100% backed by Miami hockey alums, and long time ticket holders.
I think that, like some we know in business,He couldn’t transfer to “ Covid” operation.HE’s now coaching (associate head coach) Lake Erie Monsters under Trent Vogelhuber ( Miami hockey alum).
They’re currently 35-25-6-2 ( wins-losses-OT losses-2 ( shootout losses) as of 4/11/26
I am in no way a Bergeron apologist, but he did not have access to the resources that Noreen has. Team revenue was zero during COVID (no fans were allowed for Miami’s seven home games, so season ticket revenue was punted to 2021-22), and they took a chainsaw to his budget.
Miami even got rid of SID Chad Twaro that season and went without one. They also lost Jude Killy, who was a huge asset to the program in terms of operations and revenue generation.
When things normalized, the recruiting travel budget was less and the team bussed almost everywhere on the cheap (remember when the bus broke down on the way to Big Rapids?), including Duluth and St. Cloud.
This upcoming season, Miami will charter to almost every road series and Noreen’s staff practically has carte blanche for recruiting travel, as it should.
The team actually complained in 2024-25 because Noreen never rode/flew back with them after road series because he was always flying somewhere to recruit.
Miami also has Brad Okel now, who does every bit as good of a job as Jude did.
None of that excuses the years of utter suck we went through post-COVID, because I don’t think that coaching staff could’ve turned the program around even with the resources Miami has now.
And Noreen and Co. still deserve full credit for making the best use of said resources and in part gaining access to them by selling the current vision for this program.
And now with CBJs news this morning of their assistant coaches not returning there’s talk of Trent being promoted. The monsters begin their playoff push tonight after a first round bye
Brayden Morrison and Johnny Waldron are in the portal looking for 5th years (along with Dukovac). It’s interesting because I know across multiple sports (especially basketball) players without eligibility remaining are entering just in case they are allowed under the pending new rules but I don’t see why someone like Waldron would want to go back to college when he did 10x better after going pro. Also on the tracker I’m looking at it says Brayden already has a year of eligibility left and he’s a designated student athlete and it also marks him as a grad transfer when Waldron is not marked as a grad transfer and has 0 years left. This is such a confusing offseason
Schlossman published an article about NCHC TV and reviews how the current agreement with Sidearm is up after this next season. He also included revenue per school (each school gets a cut of the subscription fees when a subscriber picks their favorite) from the current deal. Here’s the list:
In 2025, UND made, by far, the most from NCHC TV at $704,705.50.
UND was followed by Minnesota Duluth ($95,727.51), Denver ($88,261.35), St. Cloud State ($69,689.30), Omaha ($59,580.64), Western Michigan ($54,824), Arizona State ($50,486.60), Colorado College ($46,562.08) and Miami ($22,673.10).
Wow, UND is just on another level in terms of fanbase for college hockey.
I wouldn’t say those numbers are a threat to stability though. NoDak generates several million a year in ticket sales alone per year and I doubt Miami has ever made one million at the gate.
Helps them, yes, but that’s just a small portion of the overall pot.
The cost for a yearly subscription to NCHC TV is $129 which means roughly 5,500 UND fans signed up. Continuing the math, roughly 175 Miami fans signed up.
How many more fans would Miami have if they were really good every year? Certainly nowhere near UND or even over 1,000 but guessing enough to make a minor impact.
In a perfect world, we’d have an all-encompassing college hockey subscription so we wouldn’t have to pay $30 for a weekend series vs. Random CCHA/AHA/EZAC Opponent.
But to answer your question, I think 1,000 is a fair goal when this team proves it can hang in the NCHC annually.
I’d say half that at best; personally I’d max us out somewhere between 350-400. Western wins the natty and has roughly 425 sign ups according to the math. Denver only has roughly 750 sign ups. But I do like your optimism!
As far as the math, I just divided Schlossman’s numbers by $129 which we all know isn’t 100% accurate. There are other costs that need to be covered out of the subscription fees but these figures are probably in the ballpark (hence the overuse of the word “roughly”).
Miami used track usage back when there 1,200 season tickets and a waiting list, but they said they’d do it just to reward those that always used theirs, like giving access to the pregame tunnel, Zamboni rides, etc.
The problem when New Goggin opened was that out-of-town alums bought up a lot of the tickets, treating it like a program contribution, then didn’t show up.
For a plethora of reasons that hasn’t been much of a problem in recent years.