Years ago, Coach Hedric told me that Millett was a “damn opera house.”
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I don’t think we should give up, just personally don’t think it’s realistic to assume all three will be great at the same time. And if a white knight resource emerges to change the trajectory of all teams, even better.
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Goggin is a great facility. Yager is good enough. Millet looks like it could be great from the outside, and then you open up the door and step in.
Back to hockey, I was referring to the decision to join NCHC vs trying to keep the CCHA together
I understand that not all Miami fans are fans of hockey and that’s fine. But it’s incredibly tiring to see essentially hatred for the hockey program from some members of the fanbase. Hockey isn’t responsible for the failings of football or basketball. The thought of dropping it as a sport is ridiculous.
The reality is that hockey averages 5x the ticket sales per game of basketball, 2.5x the donations and much higher student attendance. I’m not sure how you look at that and come away with the conclusion that dropping hockey is the right move when it has much higher support from students and the fanbase.
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Here’s my take. When we were good we found diamonds in the rough and held on to them. That hasn’t been the case for some time. We haven’t had a superstar in a while. I think Rico had some
Misses with high talent players who left and gave us some holes. That wasn’t filled with the rough diamond crowd. Also recruiting didn’t really take the next step you would have expected when we went to the nchc. Combine that with the fact that the fans don’t seem to care as much about playing Denver as they did Michigan and msu and you have a program . That is hurting.
Verge has t done much to fix it yet and that’s disappointing and a little
Unexpected.
I agree with most of your comment. To be absolutely clear, I loved the fact that we competed with ND, Mich/Mich State, OSU, even when we weren’t good. And student support was very good. I loved the idea that hockey gave us a realistic shot at a NC (we came so damn close I still see that puck fluttering into the net that cost us a championship). But sometimes the lifeboat will carry only so many passengers. The rest drown.
It’s just not as simple as “hockey hate”. So, as mentioned, many schools have had to make very difficult and unsettling decisions. Many face this prospect today. Some schools may literally fail to survive in the present higher education environment. But fball IS Miami athletics. Bball has had success and produced some great teams and players for decades. I would cut out the hockey rankings from the papers when we were #1 and post it in my office. I watched the Hobey Baker award show and jumped up as soon as I heard “Andy.” And the Brotherhood is a terrific group representing Miami and bringing tremendous support to the program. But I remember a very sad and tragic lesson when a US soldier in Vietnam told the story of a mother swimming in a river, trying to board a boat with her baby in one arm and a pig in the other. She could not get aboard unless she let one go into the current to it’s death. The soldier was horrified when she let the baby drown. Her explanation: she could have another baby, but she might never get a pig again to sustain life.
As I said, sometimes a decision is painful but necessary.
I was at Miami when the first Goggin was built and we started our hockey program. I don’t even know what conference we were in but we fielded winning teams with the likes of Gary DeLong and other almost immediately. I loved to go there the games and that little 2200 seat area was packed much of the time.
So no, I am not anxious to see us give up on hockey, but we need to find a way to be respectable and win some games to get that student and alumni enthusiasm back…if we have to drop down to CCHA to do so, I have no qualms but I know others here close to the program feel that’s a bad idea. But
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This is exactly the crux of it, and I do not share your certainty.
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Those numbers I gave were from 2016-2020, not during the old CCHA. Even recently with hockey being terrible it has been much more successful than basketball.
Obviously football is number one. Additionally obviously basketball will never be cut from any school and I’m not arguing for that either. I’d love for basketball to get better and win and I hope the AD can get the funds together for a new facility.
However Miami athletics is football and hockey (or even just hockey) to many recent grads or current students. Thinking that cutting a program with plenty of fan/student support is a good idea is incredibly out of touch in my eyes.
I think it has to do with the first thing you mentioned. Southwestern Ohio - and Ohio in general - doesn’t have much of a hockey culture or tradition. Bowling Green did win a national championship once but Kent had a major program once and dropped it. Over the past 10 years, hockey has been Miami’s most popular sport with students - and arguably it’s most successful. It also has the best varsity sports facility on campus. The proper course of action is to rebuild its competitiveness.
I think Miami is ultimately going to be forced into this choice. It’ll ultimately come down to the potential for each program….fball and bball win….
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Sad but true. I hope not. Believe me. But students payments toward athletics is going to become an issue to deal with one of these days. Maybe 2 yrs. Maybe more. But to pay that much and have no/very limited interest, is not sustainable.
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This is just insane conversation. Miami isn’t cutting hockey. Just get better.
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Fine. Understood. I dispute your characterization of my comment as “incredibly out of touch”. I’ve been around since the '69 football season. Friend of the bball program coaches and players for years. Had the team to my home several times when they did an EMU & WMU tour. So if a choice has to be made, and football and hockey survive, then bball is the only alternative. Not a great loss of existing facilities.
This is, of course, a scenario, a simulation, if you will–not a plan–or a desire. If you fail to recognize the possibility of this choice having to be made when considering what is happening in Div 1 athletics, is not a pleasure we may have.
In business, I think they call it strategic planning.Sometimes there’s expansion. Other times call for consolidation. But I’m no bus major.
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Now one of the worst College Hockey programs . ZERO reason to drop 2 at home against another awful team.
Sad
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I don’t follow this much anymore…but I am confused as to why we suck so much…any main reason…was it the switch to the current conference, that we were not prepared to compete in that led to our demise (i.e., negative recruiting)?
Some interesting commentary. And I thought I was over the edge. Wow.
Looking at some stats I see that Alaska Fairbanks, a program that didn’t exist last year who recruited an entirely brand new roster for this season sits at #40 in the pairwise while we’re at #45. They have one more win than we do. “But Lurker, we’re in the NCHC and our schedule is like running a gauntlet of the best teams in this arm of the galaxy so our strength-of-schedule is somewhere between Neptune and the Oort Cloud!” OK, let’s check the scoreboard. Alaska Fairbanks SOS is 21. Miami’s is 37. Western Michigan clocks in at 7, Colorado College at 26. Ferris State 27, Mercyhurst 52.
I’ll leave it to the reader to interpret the data and draw conclusions. Back to lurking.
C’mon, Lurker…put it out there and give us your analysis/conclusions.
I tend to be in the camp that consistently winning is what creates excitement and fans in seats…we need a way back to that even if it means a move to a different conference.
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OK, fine.
- Alaska Fairbanks not only dealt with Covid last year like we did, they didn’t even have a coaching staff let alone a roster. They started from scratch in a pandemic and put together a program and a season that’s comparable to ours with all the built in advantages we have. Using Covid to cover up the performance of this coaching staff isn’t being honest.
- This one is concerning to me. We’ve had the SOS covered through our league membership. But year one of the bussing-instead-of-flying experiment now has us searching for OOC opponents in the nCCHA and AHA which are lower SOS teams. While one data point is not enough to draw a conclusion, at first glance the bussing approach may negate the league SOS advantages. If we start seeing ND, scUM, MSU, OSU on the schedule in the following years I’ll feel better. But if we do the majority of our bussing to Big Rapids, Erie, and Rochester (I had to look up where Ferris and Mercyhurst were) then we got some issues.
- How does our new OOC travel strategy play when Barry and Eric sit down with a recruit?
- 5* Recruit: Mel Pearson says they play all their OOC games at Yost.
- Barry/Eric: Well, at Miami, we like to keep things local too so we look at 7-8 hour bus rides to play teams you’ve never heard of as a bonding experience.
- 5* Recruit: Um… (see what I did there?)
Aside from having an opinion of our coaching staff that runs counter to the majority of folks here, I’m becoming concerned about our ability to fund our place in the NCHC. I want to stay in the NCHC, but you don’t cost cut your way to a national championship in this league.
That oughta do it, back to lurking.
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We played MSU this season.
My recollection is that OSU didn’t want to play us. Maybe that’s different with Rico gone?