The Miami at Denver, time to snap this losing streak thread (with a TV option!)

Sure hope so, but we have heard that improvement is around the corner before after last coaching change, and and we haven’t come even close to being a competitive team in this league for last 7-8 years.

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It’s not just the conference. We can’t compete against any bottom feeders in D1, just look at our “easy” non conference. What the hell happened to the hockey program and the pride there???

The first year both Martin and Steele came in, a lot of people said the same thing. “Fire,fire,fire.” And I don’t criticize them for their feelings, just stating the facts, officer. It’s a 3 year rebuild so any wins we get this year are icing on the cake. Sucks, but it’s true, and it will be worth the wait. To me, improvement has been we can play a solid third of a game against better teams. We then play a mediocre third, and then a terrible third. Sometimes not in that order.

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I’m not advocating fire Noreen, I’m just pointing to the fact that it’s been a terrible decade plus and that other programs can rebuild quicker and Miami can’t seem to find a thread to build upon in that same time

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That’s been the coping mechanism going back to Rico’s last years and all throughout the Berg debacle. At some point, it has to be considered that this is something systemic to the program and that it goes beyond any one coach or group of players.

OBVIOUS the current players can’t compete at all with anyone. Miami hockey is a joke now BUT if Noreen can hold on to his recruits that will change.

How the current players keep their heads in the game after being blown out every weekend?

Totally understand, was speaking more broadly than just your post as it’s been a narrative across all rebuilding sports. Prolly at every school!

Maybe let’s let the guy who isn’t an old CCHA hand from the same coaching tree have more than half a season to right the ship. He says the right things, makes no excuses, and has already produced promising results in terms of rebuilding a pipeline, and he also seems like he will be well positioned to take advantage of the new reality of college sports recruiting.

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I think we all could agree on that.

But we went uncompetitive at the end of Rico’s reign, got progressively worse under Berg (who had success elsewhere), and now it’s up to Noreen for one last shot to get us “off the mat”. Hope he does, but the cynical side of me still wonders if the NCHC is really where we belong.

I wonder how much we are “losing” on the hockey program each year.

Hockey (2.6m in total expenditures) is similar to men’s basketball (2.4m). Football is over 9m in expenditures for comparison.

As far as what they bring in, for hockey:
400k in ticket sales and 23k in NCHC revenue sharing

Basketball:
100k in ticket sales, 85k in buy games (where we are paid to play OOC), and 200k in NCAA distributions (tourney rev share).

Miami is required to publish all this:

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No sports program at Miami makes money. The justification for having each sport is one or more of:

Student engagement

Alumni/community engagement

Publicity for Miami

Meeting Title IX/NCAA requirements

I think the potential for 1 & 2 for hockey are pretty clear. Hockey always having the highest percentage of expenses covered by ticket sales of any sport (even when terrible) is a good proxy for that.

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Miami also draws heavily from New England, so #3 helps there more than other Miami sports. Given the recruiting classes coming in, I’m inclined to think we’re on the right path. Berge couldn’t adapt to a post-covid world. He never struck me as someone who could navigate NIL and the transfer portal.

Basketball is prolly our best shot at a revenue sport. IMO.

It would certainly be nice to see our basketball ticket revenues go up w better attendance if this season continues its upward progression.

I am guessing the hockey revenues noted by Jive are based on season ticket sales…if not they may go down vs estimates as walk up crowds presumably continue to diminish.

Agreed. I don’t like to count chickens before they hatch, but he does seem to be getting a lot of quality commits.

I also checked since it seems a lot of the first year/transfer players have been contributing a lot and by my math, they have 55 of the 112 points (49%) across the roster. I think Nassen (7 points) is the only Bergeron recruit with points.

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If you mean the ones from Hoosierhawk, those are the numbers reported by Miami to the NCAA, not estimates. They have gone down over the years as the team has been bad. In 2015, it was 580k which with inflation would be about 770k this year instead of 400k.

Quinn committed in December of ‘23

Dahlmeir technically has an assist too and he also committed around then

A new arena and increased attendance could help a lot there, but it seems like a big ask to find ~2 million in additional revenue to make it turn a profit IMO.

Ah, I think the list I was looking at was just who signed after Bergeron was fired then.