FanPost

Why Isn't Maryland Men's Ice Hockey D1? Can We Get There?

I was watching part of a movie about the 1980 Miracle on Ice, and noticed one of the players wearing a Minnesota Gophers sweater.

I'm going to admit right from the start that I know next to nothing about the history of the men's University of Maryland hockey program or NCAA hockey in general. A quick Internet search revealed that we're fielding a division II team, though.

Now, a division II team may have made sense when we, as a university, were in the ACC, a southern conference that may well not have even had a presence as a conference in hockey, leaving what few schools had hockey teams to seek their own conference affiliations.

Beginning now, though, the university's division I sports are playing in the Big Ten, a northern conference with a hockey presence that looks like, at casual glance, it might have some tradition and heft to it. It also has its own TV network to televise games.

We've got a large student body. Increasingly, Maryland's cultural ties are northern. There was talk about the Capitals NHL team maybe hosting an outdoor game on the Washington Mall (Don't recall if that happened or not) and support for, and awareness of, hockey as a sport in general is growing in the Baltimore and Washington regions.

So, it seems to me that we have a golden opportunity. What's it going to take to elevate our men's hockey program to D1 and play in the Big Ten? Is this on the program's radar as a goal? How about the athletic department's radar? Is there anything we can do as fans to help make this happen?

Am I being unrealistic? If so, why? As I said, I don't know much about college, so educate me on the way things are in the comment section. History and prominence of Big Ten hockey (Top conference with frequent national champs or no?), Terps hockey, the historical situation with ACC schools and hockey, where our hockey program can grow to, etc..

Updated to add:

Minnesota, a Big Ten school, apparently played in last year's division I national championship game:

http://www.ncaa.com/interactive-bracket/icehockey-men/d1

So, it seems like an incredible potential opportunity to be able to slide our hockey program into a conference like that if we can get them even remotely up to division one caliber. It seems like with all of our division one programs in the Big Ten now, that we'd be able to leverage that to get them to take us for hockey, and it may even be a requirement that we request hockey membership in the Big Ten if we move to division one and/or that they admit us if we ask. Of course, we'd need to have division one caliber recruits and facilities and so on and so forth. You don't just plop a division II program into division one as-is. You build the program and develop a multi-year plan to gradually transition it.

Right now, there are only six teams playing Big Ten hockey. One would think they'd be open to have 8 or 10 teams if the teams were credible. As I said, I don't know much about college hockey, but I wouldn't think 6 teams would be the ideal number in any sport, unless you really couldn't get 8 without scraping the bottom of the barrel. So, it seems like something that's doable if we invest in our program, to me as someone who doesn't really know much about how this all works, anyway, and is basically just going off of guesses (I'm not sure I can even call them educated guesses ;) ).

Does the hockey team play at Comcast? Or do they have their own smaller facility? If they play at Comcast, I would think that that would qualify as a division I facility. If Comcast right now isn't used for hockey, could we make some modifications that would allow us to use it for hockey? Can Cole host hockey games? How about renting out the Verizon Center if Comcast and Cole aren't options (Not immediately, obviously, after building the program up as part of a long term plan to where enough people are showing up at games to justify it)? Beyond facilities, it seems like we'd need to do, what? Developing and publicizing a plan to transition to a higher level? Extending more scholarships? Publicizing the team and increasing attendance and exposure? Maybe some more money towards equipment, etc.? Better recruiting? Better coaching? The last part isn't a knock at the current coach, I don't even know the guy's name. I'm just trying to throw out some questions to gauge how feasible this would be from a logistics and cost perspective.

What do you all think?

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