Open Letter(s) to WCHA Athletic Directors

I've written and emailed the following letter to the Athletic Directors at each WCHA institution (UW's Barry Alvarez has no email address ... in their case I directed the letter to Justin Doherty -- Assistant Athletic Director for External Relations) . An issue that concerns me deeply is the ongoing subsidy that UAA supplies to WCHA teams traveling to Anchorage. Currently, UAA provides 12 airline tickets for each visiting conference member per series. It's not unfair to characterize that as about $6,000 per home series for UAA.

As I've mentioned many times over the summer with regard to conference realignment ideas, the NCAA created the "Alaska/Hawaii Exemption" to incentivize schools from outside to compete in Alaska. Each school has the ability to schedule additional home games as a result of this rule. In some cases, the potential amount of money the school could make is substantial. In other cases, not so much. Regardless, UAA is providing a subsidy that I believe it should not be providing. This letter is my first step in attempting to address this unfairness. There will be an ongoing effort on my part to see this subsidy eliminated. Future steps in this theme are "in development".

Dear (insert name here),

I’m writing today in the hope that I may enlist your support and share that with the readers of the UAA Hockey Fan Blog (http://uaafan.blogspot.com) regarding an issue of basic fairness. No doubt you are familiar with the NCAA’s Alaska/Hawaii exemption.

Some 25 years or so ago, the NCAA recognized that schools in Alaska and Hawaii faced significant geographic challenges that hindered the fairest possible competition with schools in the contiguous 48 states. They introduced a measure granting game exemptions for any/all schools scheduling an away contest against an Alaska or Hawaii school.

The measure’s stated intention was to provide a financial recompense for schools like yours to recover the costs associated with travel to the 49th and 50th state. This rule has helped keep athletic programs afloat at NCAA institutions in these two states. Without such a rule, competing on home turf/court/ice outside of conference mandates would be virtually impossible for these distantly located schools.

My concern today is, that in addition to the potential revenue gains for your school (I conservatively estimate that amount at $xx,xxx per year for Xxxxxx), the University of Alaska Anchorage currently subsidizes 12 airline tickets for each WCHA member traveling to Anchorage to play hockey.

I hope that you can see this amount (roughly $6,000 per) can be defined as nothing other than largesse from UAA to your school. Since a mechanism already exists to more than adequately recover your travel costs then I call on you today to completely renounce this practice. In doing so you will be contributing to the NCAA’s stated goal of “fair play”.

With your permission I will post your reply to this plea in my blog. Best of luck with the 09/10 athletic season.
Most Sincerely,

Donald M. Dunlop
UAA Hockey Fan Blog

The email addresses for each are below should you have any thoughts regarding this issue that you'd like to share. I'll add here that my "potential revenue" numbers are derived by multiplying sold-out attendance by $15 per ticket for ONE additonal home game per year. The subsidy cost to UAA is also an estimate based on 12 commercial airline tickets at $500 per. It is somewhat relevant to note that a school like Michigan Tech has no where near the potential revenue enhancement as do the larger schools. But I do propose that in ALL cases (see how that word is bolded?) the amount of actual revenue more than repays the additional costs associated with being forced to travel to Alaska.

I honestly believe that this practice goes against basic fairness in any sense or definition of that word you can imagine. Fairness was rightly applied when the NCAA implemented the "Alaska/Hawaii Exemption" but requiring UAA (not to mention UAF in the CCHA) to provide additional recompense over and above is in many ways an affront to it.

Colorado College -- Ken Ralph -- ken.ralph@coloradocollege.edu
University of Denver -- Peg Bradley-Doppes -- lbridge2@du.edu
Michigan Tech -- Suzanne Sanregret -- srsanreg@mtu.edu
Minnesota -- Joel Maturi -- icaadmin@umn.edu
Mankato -- Kevin Buisman -- kevin.buisman@mnsu.edu
UMD -- Bob Nielson -- rnielson@d.umn.edu
UND -- Brian Faison -- brainfaison@mail.und.edu
SCSU -- Morris Kurtz -- mkurtz@stcloudstate.edu
UW -- Justin Doherty -- jmd@athletics.wisc.edu

Unless otherwise requested, I will share any responses from this esteemed group of Athletic Directors in this comment section of this post as they arrive in my email. I look forward to all their responses.