I've mentioned this before, but now it is official: the NCAA has voted to allow Canadian universities to join NCAA Division II athletic conferences, and the University of British Columbia is expected to be the first to apply. The University of Alberta is also said to be interested.
NCAA Div. II schools are permitted to move up to Division I in one sport, and it would seem obvious and logical that UBC (and U of A, should they also join) would choose that sport to be hockey. It's about the only sport in which they could have a reasonable expectation of having very competitive teams, and thus be a guaranteed moneymaker for the schools. There are probably not enough NCAA Div I - quality basketball or football players in Western Canada to be able to field competitive Div I teams in those sports without having to extensively recruit American athletes to come up north to their schools, which is a far tougher sell than convincing top Canadian hockey players to attend. (Although they could lure any dyslexic football players who confuse UBC with USC....)
Anyway, this is a big issue for the WHL.....for starters, WHL grads are going to lose the ability to play hockey at UBC/UofA if they choose to attend those schools with their WHL scholarship money. The scholarship still covers their tuition at those schools of course, but the players wouldn't be able to play on the hockey teams. I think that's probably going to be a big turn-off for a lot of players as far as attending those schools goes.....and maybe also affect the decisions by some players as to whether to play in the WHL in the first place. Secondly, losing two of the major schools is a big blow to the Canada West conference of the CIS; I believe that would drop them down to just six schools in the hockey competition in that conference. How many more can they lose before it isn't viable to even have a league anymore?
And the biggest issue for the WHL will be recruiting....no longer will Western Canadian kids who want to play NCAA Div I hockey be faced with having to move far from home, to Alaska or Colorado or Michigan or Minnesota. They can stay close to home and go to UBC or UofA, and that's going to make it that much harder for the WHL to lure the kids who are on the fence.
Supposedly UBC could be in the NCAA by next season.....I would suspect they'd have to play as an independent in Div I hockey for the first few years but even so, this means every single current ex-WHLer on this year's UBC Thunderbirds is going to have to find a new school next year if they want to keep playing hockey. The current Thunderbirds who did not play WHL or other levels of pro can (I would think) play on the NCAA team next year, along with any scholarship players the school signs up before then.
The times they are a changin.....we'll have to see in a few years how this affects the WHL.
3 comments:
UBC currently has six players (on a roster of 26) who have not played any CHL hockey but two will have finished their eligibility under NCAA rules after this season. So if UBC makes the leap for next year, they will have four players from this year's team eligible to play: Graham Sheppard, Brandon Segal, Matt Allen, and Dalton Pajak.
U of A currently has four players eligible on a roster of 27, and all would have NCAA eligibility next season, should U of A decide to take the leap: Aaron Agnew, Adam Kinnaird, Cody Wasik, and Chevan Wilson.
It would be a scramble for players for next season for either school but it also presents a huge opportunity for a kid who is is sitting on the fence.
Yep....I would imagine they would sign up as many scholarship freshmen as they could, and the rest of the roster would have to come from non-scholarship walk-ons. I would think UBC would attract tremendous walk-on interest from the 20-22 year old guys who wanted to play NCAA but never earned a scholarship during their Jr A days.
I asked this in another post, but it was in the wrong spot: Is there any hope for the CHL to sue the NCAA for their non-competition-styled rule making? It's a combination of collusion and monopoly that they have going and really it's hurting the CHL (and ultimately the NHL as talented players don't get the same kind of development in the NCAA that they would in the CHL)
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