OT - Pitt hockey...
- Thread starter MajorMajors
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I understand it's not going to happen but I would LOVE to make that a D1 program. I would definitely buy a season ticket package.
Club teams are definitely on the uptick the last several years.
Back-to-back national championships in 2012 & 2013 for Pitt Ultimate (which is a perennial national power at the highest collegiate level that sport is played at).
Women's lax won the national championship at the D1 Club level in 2014.
I can't remember a club team ever winning on a national level prior to these recent years.
These teams have to fundraise for most of their expenses (those that aren't covered by student activity fees distributed by the Student Government Board). Many have ways to contribute on their websites and some have event been using Engage Pitt for fundraising.
Back-to-back national championships in 2012 & 2013 for Pitt Ultimate (which is a perennial national power at the highest collegiate level that sport is played at).
Women's lax won the national championship at the D1 Club level in 2014.
I can't remember a club team ever winning on a national level prior to these recent years.
These teams have to fundraise for most of their expenses (those that aren't covered by student activity fees distributed by the Student Government Board). Many have ways to contribute on their websites and some have event been using Engage Pitt for fundraising.
The team has sweet threads.
Those uniforms are the most awesome cut of awesomeness.
Club roller hockey was pretty good a few years ago as well,and probably more competitive than the ice hockey team. I think they lost in the national championship game 2 or 3 years ago? They were also really good in the early 2000s. At least two players that I know of had NHL family members.
Oh and Walter Gretzky (Wayne's father) was the coach for one season.
Oh and Walter Gretzky (Wayne's father) was the coach for one season.
I'm wondering how much more it would cost to support D1 hockey. We'd need ice, scholarships (which really only cost the university the variable costs like books, room and board), coaches and support staff. The rest of the stuff is already in the budget as they are a club sport. I truly believe that the program could support itself at some point in the future. It is hard to believe that RMU has D1 hockey and Pitt doesn't, especially with the popularity of hockey in Pittsburgh.
Ice hockey is very expensive for the university to take on as a D1 sport.. It is a financially losing proposition for Pitt... RMU can do it by offsetting money lost with increase exposure for the university. Pitt already has a high profile and adding hockey really wouldnt add to that.. It would take a huge donation from a booster to make it happen. see PSU..
Pitt needs to add a women's program for something before the men get another sport.......#TitleIX
Actually, the total was $102 million. There was an initial $88 million donation that was later added to.
Do they play at the BJ Center? Attendance is probably much better, it's after all more of a "pure" sport
No, they built a new arena - the Pegula Ice Arena, a 6,000 seat arena that replaced the 1,500 seat arena the Icers played on. That's what the initial $88 million gift was for. It was due to a donation from Terry Pegula, a PSU alum who currently owns the Buffalo Sabres and the Bills. He has BIG TIME cash.
We don't have anyone like that in our pipeline, as it were. If we once did, Pederson long ago ran them off.
We don't have anyone like that in our pipeline, as it were. If we once did, Pederson long ago ran them off.
There would be some cost involved at least initially. To have an NCAA D-I Ice Hockey Program, the school must have either its own ice rink on campus or own one within a very short distance of school property (i.e. RMU's Island Sports Complex). The rink itself, must have a seating capacity of at least 1,500 people as well. There are other factors involved for NCAA D-I participation, but that is the main one.
An arena that seats at least 1,500 could be built for roughly $2.5 - 3 million dollars. Obviously, the nicer the inside (suites, etc...) of the arena, the more expensive. There is a very nice flat piece of property that an ice rink could be built on right next to the Petersen Events Center. I am sure that a good Architect could come up with several different ways to connect the "new rink" to the "Pete" and create much needed AD office space and classrooms for Pitt's athletes.
In regards to Title IX, they could add a Women's Ice Hockey Team as well to the sports department.
I guarantee you, if Pitt were do this, the Ice Hockey Program itself would generate positive income for the AD.
Nothing of that size is going to be built on the green space next to the Pete. It essentially serves as the upper campus quad. It is largely off limits.
If you think you could build a Div 1 ice arena for $3 million you are even more out of your mind than the people that think you can build a P5 quality 50K football stadium in Oakland for $200m.
I more than guarantee you if Pitt added men's and women's ice hockey (and they'd have to add women's because of title IX) with a 1.5K arena it would do nothing but bleed money. There are very few scenarios where Pitt would break even on such an endeavor even with a larger arena. Pitt would almost need a standing invite into Hockey East to even consider it.
Pitt's best chance at a team was probably when UPMC was considering building its practice arena for the Pens next to the Consol. If that scenario played out, I could have imagined a hypothetical that where there could have been a shared facility like for football SPC on the South Side. That site was scrapped for the current one because of politics, but UPMC had full plans drawn up for it at that location. But Pitt has never been in any sort of position to add hockey (or any sport). It has been a lot closer to cutting them. If it adds any sport in the future, it is likely going first going to be one that is women only...like rowing...because of Title IX issues, and anything seriously considered will undoubtedly be ACC sponsored sports.
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I beg to differ with you Crazy Paco. Depending upon the amenities you desire inside the arena, a basic ice rink with seating for 400-500 could cost as low as a couple of million dollars. This is an area that I do have some experience in and feel quite comfortable with what I am saying. In regards to the area next to the "Pete" being a green space, that is something beyond my area of expertise. That being said, I am quite sure that if someone came up with a valid reason to put a building there, that area would no longer be viewed "green" in color. As much as I would like to see Pitt have an NCAA D-I Ice Hockey Program, I wouldn't recommend that they build anything without the guarantee from one of the major NCAA D-I hockey leagues in the northeast area, either the Atlantic Hockey Association or Hockey East. For me personally, I'd prefer Atlantic Hockey East due to the location of the schools in the league already.
A ice arena, ran properly, would definitely generate a positive source of income for the school.
You are freakin' insane. You aren't building any sort of building in Oakland the size of a rink let alone with seating and necessary accoutrements like locker rooms for $3 million. Pitt couldn't even build a barebones baseball field with 900 seats and no locker rooms for that. Heck, they just budgeted $6.4m for a inflatable bubble and a pair of new turf fields for Trees Field, but your expertise tells you that you can build a D1 ice arena, in Oakland, for less than half of that? You probably couldn't commission the architectural renderings, do the necessary impact studies, and prep the site for less than $1m. Even if we were based in the middle of nowhere, your tin shack community ice rink wouldn't get anything but chuckles from any major D1 conference.
Unfortunately Pitt is not adding varsity hockey so the discussion was moot in the first place.
Unfortunately Pitt is not adding varsity hockey so the discussion was moot in the first place.
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If you want to see what a D-I hockey arena could be on a minimal basis, go to Mercyhurst College in Erie.
The rink there looks very much like a larger version of Bladerunners around here.
You are absolutely clueless if you think a hockey program playing in a 1500 seat arena would make money. Penn State barely makes money on men's hockey with selling out a 6000 seat arena that was completely paid for and a $23 million endowment for scholarships.
There no doubt Pitt could sponsor a team. They could do it cheaply and hope to compete with the Robert Morris and Mercyhursts of college hockey. Maybe even every couple of decades make a magical run and play in the tourney. This would cost Pitt a few million a year.
If they want to compete at the top level it going to take a large financial commitment. The start would be a on campus arena in the 3-4,000 seat range. Then hosg big games or tournament in console to help the bottom line. It will take a commitment to fully fund the program.
The cost that I was stating was simply the actual building of the rink itself. Obviously there would be costs associated with the planning and other amenities. By the way, I am not "freakin insane" as you say. I have been directly involved in the planning and building of a rink in the Pittsburgh area that has two ice pads and was completed for just over $4.0 million dollars. The one thing I do agree with you on, is that Pitt has no interest in adding any other sports at this time.
I have been in that arena several times and it while it is nothing fancy, it does get meet the NCAA requirements, so it does get the job done for Mercyhurst University.
Not clueless at all my friend. The positive cash flow that would come from a new arena would be generated from not just ice hockey but from other uses of the facility as well. It would not generate millions of dollars in profit, but I'm willing to bet that if it is ran properly, it could make thousands of dollars each year for the Pitt AD.
Hard to say for certain but since we have an NHL team right down the road from Pitt and they draw quite well, I would not be surprised if a Men's Hockey Team at Pitt would draw at least 1,000 per game.
That still not going to come close to funding a team. You also have to factor in as a university facility much of that Ice time is not going to be able to he sold. The athletic department is not going to be able to charge university groups what they can charge at a private rink.
See there's the disconnect. You implied above was that a D1 ready ice arena could be completed at that location for $2-3m. You can't build just a rink for a D1 team. You'd need 3-4 locker rooms, training rooms, equipment rooms, and coaches and rink operations offices...at a minimum... because there is no existing space for them anywhere else on campus. And I'm not talking about optional but fairly standard other things like meeting rooms, weight room, concessions, video board, media facilities, ticket operations, etc...and forget about the connection to the Pete that you mentioned. The upper campus athletic facilities are already over crowded. For instance, you aren't going to throw two new teams with 50 to 60 total new athletes into the Field House weight room without major complications.
To give you a sense of scale, Mercyhurst's ice rink which is very bare bones is something like 35K square feet. It's not apples to apples, but Pitt built a no frills 26K sq ft public safety building in Oakland for a "mere" $6 million and that was 10 years ago. If you were building a single bare bones rink for intramural use...maybe you could hit your mark if you could get it past the city planning commission and the local Oakland boards. Oakland is a difficult beast to build in. It isn't like out in the suburbs. It would be hard to put up an empty cinder block, tin roof warehouse of that size for $3 million. But it would almost certainly go behind the Cost Center. The only thing I've ever heard them consider for the Pete Lawn is a complex for the tennis team and I'm not sure that is likely...and that would be probably cost 4X (at least) what you are suggesting for an ice arena.
And even if Pitt did decide varsity hockey was both feasible and desirable, you don't want them half assing it like that with bare minimums. That is how the athletic department treated olympic sports for the last 50 years and look at what a disaster they've largely been. What would even be the point of taking such a route? My guess, in a world with such a hypothetical, is that it would likely be, realistically, a $20 to $40 million dollar facility project on the low end. But Pitt is more likely to play at the ice they're putting in the Hunt Armory in Shadyside than they ever are on-campus
And there is no way in hell Pitt breaks even in hockey drawing only 1K per game (which would be slightly more than RMU's average and they don't make money). See you are insane...but really, you are just completely overestimating the market for college athletics in Pittsburgh, hockey or no hockey.
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