1987alum wrote:hammb wrote:Hockey will always be the boat anchor of the BG athletic department. It has some very die hard fans here though that will make it very tough for the university to ever think about dropping it.
Note to self: Don't stand near hammb when Falcon Fanatic or BGFan are within shooting range.
I don't think she'd shoot me...I thought we were good friends
I actually like hockey, obviously not nearly as much as Rick & Marta or many others, but I do like it.
I also think I used an incorrect article in my previous post. It's not "the" boat anchor, it's "A" boat anchor. Most of our sports probably fall into that category.
We've had this discussion before, and I know that my opinion is in the vast minority. I like hockey, and I love the fact that it's a sport we have such a great tradition in. I just don't think that our athletic department's revenues can sustain Division I hockey while at the same time competing in IA football. The result is that our hockey program has fallen far below it's historical roots, and has struggled to compete in the CCHA for a long time now. Looking at the CCHA we cannot commit the resources to the sport that most of our competitors can...whether they be huge athletic departments (UM, OSU, MSU, ND) or the only DI sport they play (AF, UNO, NMU, LSSU). The only teams in the CCHA that we can really hope to compete with are Miami & WMU...the rest of the schools just have resources that we cannot compete with.
Personally I'm the type that would much rather commit the maximum to less sports than do multiple sports half assed. My personal preference is football & basketball, as such I'd be inclined to drop hockey and put us more on par with most of our MAC brethren. What amazes me is when we see that our athletic budget is one of the smaller ones in the MAC and at the same time we're sustaining a DI hockey program...that makes it pretty tough to compete on the field/court/ice.
I suppose you could make just as good of a case to drop all DI sports except hockey, but my preference as a fan by far would be to go forward without a hockey program. I realize that it will likely never happen unless we have no other solutions, there's just too much history there. I don't want to get rid of hockey, but I do think that it would help us compete in the other major sports.
Now flame away hockey fans...sorry Falcon Fanatic & BGFan, I know how much you disagree...hope we can still be friends
