There is nothing like some major frequent-flier miles for a taste of life in the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
This week, that's exactly what the University of British Columbia men's hockey team will get as it heads to Alaska for two games against Division I teams in Anchorage and Fairbanks. While UBC has played exhibition games in the north before, this time senior members of the athletics department will be on hand to get a close look at how the U.S. schools' programs work.
UBC is in the final stages of deciding whether to apply for NCAA membership at the Division II level, something Canadian schools are eligible to pursue thanks to a 10-year pilot project introduced by the NCAA last year. As part of the process, staff have been in regular contact with their U.S. neighbours, who as early as the fall of 2009 could be their competition.
“I don't know if we're dating yet, but we're trying to get to know each other,” said Steve Cobb, director of athletics for the University of Alaska Anchorage.
The Alaska schools make good bedfellows for UBC for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that both UAA and the University of Alaska Fairbanks are Division II schools that compete in hockey at the Division I level. They are also part of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, which UBC would likely join as part of a bid for NCAA membership.
Cobb said more and more NCAA schools have warmed to the idea of either UBC or Simon Fraser University, which has also expressed interest, joining at the Division II level.
“I would say, when it first came up as a possibility, probably about 80 per cent of athletic directors were skeptical or against it,” Cobb said. “Now that people have a bit of education and started looking at how this is really going to work and what's going to happen, I think we're somewhere where more than 50 or 60 per cent are leaning toward being for it.
“There's a term we use for being a good fit, and I think some conferences have realized that these schools would be a pretty good fit for what we're doing.”
Theresa Hanson, UBC's associate director of athletics, agrees.
“Athletics has been looking at [NCAA membership] for several years, and we do feel it is in the best interest of our program overall and our student athletes,” Hanson said. “We're looking at is as [a way] to keep our top kids in Canada. This is the right move for us at this time.”
Cobb at UAA calls UBC's potential membership bid a “very interesting” issue with “interesting problems,” many of them relating to how vastly different the NCAA and Canadian Interuniversity Sport approach athletics from a financial perspective. Even in Division II, scholarships in the NCAA can be considerably larger than CIS's limit of tuition alone.
Even so, Hanson said the school's athletic department could make the move to the NCAA without the benefit of “any additional money from the university at all.”
“We do not feel at this point that Division II as a whole, including the sport we would play up in Division I, would cost us more than what we have right now in our budget,” Hanson said.
By way of comparison, Cobb said UAA competing in Division I hockey in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association costs between $1-million and $1.5-million a year. The budget for UBC's athletics department, which currently plays in 15 sports, is currently about $4-million.
Travel costs are also a major issue for the remote northern schools, however, as the UAA's athletic department spends $1.7-million getting to and from various locales. The average athlete at the school “travels and flies over 25,000 miles a year,” Cobb said.
UBC's travel budget wouldn't be anywhere near as prohibitive, especially within the GNAC, but in a sport such as hockey, where teams are spread out from Colorado to Michigan, the bill could get pricey.
“It's a very expensive proposition,” Cobb said.
UBC's potential NCAA membership bid is being debated on campus as part of a public consultation, which will wrap up on Oct. 22. A recommendation will then be made to UBC president Stephen Toope, Hanson said, with a decision coming in mid-November.
The deadline to apply for NCAA membership for next season is June 1, 2009.
