Guiding Light

At this point last year we here at MSU were making the transition from our old website to our new website.  And at the same time we were making a transition in our publications, having made a decision that while we would still produce media guides, the documents would be available, primarily, to the public electronically.

Probably not that big a deal to most of you, but to our coaches and to some members of the media, this was a lightning bolt (yeah, I know, everything's relative).  Although the industry had been headed this way for some time, the tipping point for us was a budgetary one.  We needed funding to build a new departmental website and the cost of producing publications was continuing to rise.  There was that and then there's fact that the information-gathering habits of recruited student-athletes (and the public, in general) had changed.  Unquestionably, kids nowadays are more apt to take a look at msumavericks.com then at a publication.  And the information on the website is similar to the information available in a media guide.  It's just packaged and accessed differently.

The other thing that came along during this time was the development of high speed color copiers which can print with a resolution such that the layman would have a tough time differentiating between publications done in this fashion compared to ones done on a traditional printing press. And the beauty of the technology - called print on demand - is that there isn't a minimum number.  You can print one or one hundred.  It meant that our coaches, student-athletes, parents, alumni, etc., can still get our publications, but without the cost borne by us.  As Scott Nelsen told Shane Frederick of the Free Press last year (I'm paraphrasing a bit here), in response to his question about us discontinuing the media guides..."Not much has changed really.  We're still doing the media guides.  The difference is how we're distributing them."

So we pulled the trigger on everything - the new website launched last October, we discontinued printing media guides in mass quantities and went ahead with print on demand.  In the event you want to look at the media guides that are available for this year (with more to come), be sure to check out the page located here.

It's great to be a Maverick!

Just a Few Things

After the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference decided to table St. Cloud State's request regarding having football in order to stay in the league, the Huskies have unveiled additional options to address their budget shortfall and a story outlining possibilities appears here.  Tennis, golf, nordic skiing and swimming and diving are now implicated and SCSU coaches are disappointed.

Tim Jackman 

Now back to our originally planned programming...former Minnesota State forward Tim Jackman made an impression on his new coach in Calgary when Jackman was toiling with the New York Islanders and the Calgary Sun has the story here.





And, 'twould appear that former Maverick forward and 2010 Olympic silver medalist David Backes, who had two assists in a 5-1 St. Louis preseason win at Minnesota last night (Sept. 21), might be seeing a lot of action on right wing for the Blues this season.  At least according to this story.

It's great to be a Maverick!

Ruminations - Big Ten Hockey

News broke a couple of weeks ago regarding the possibility of Penn State elevating its men's club hockey program to varsity status.

There has been on-going speculation relative to Penn State making this type of move for some time. Given the fact that varsity programs at Kent State (1994), Iona (2003), Fairfield (2003), Findlay (2004), and Wayne State (2008) have been mothballed in the last six years and that there are only 58 schools who compete at the NCAA Division I level, any time that this type of news occurs, it's going to draw alot of attention. But, not unlike years of similar rumors about schools such as Iowa State transforming club teams into varsity sports, this time the PSU story has legs.

There's a Penn State alum named Terry Pegula who is apparently a fan of college hockey. He recently sold land to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion in profit and he wants to take some of that money and give it to Penn State for the purpose of building an 8,000-seat (approx.) arena on campus in State College.  Assuming the Pegula connection is true, now the story has credibility and reports have the Nittany Lions prepared to make an official announcement this Friday.

So, connecting the dots, once Penn State has its program established, the next step is to determine what conference does it join.  The CCHA would seem to be a natural because of the vicinity of Ohio State and Notre Dame.  However, Penn State is a member of the Big Ten in its other sports and in these parts, any time one mentions the Big Ten and hockey in the same sentence, more salivation starts collecting then you would see from a bunch of dogs attending a Pavlov Convention.

Links regarding this development are located here, here, here and here.

It's great to be a Maverick!