The idea that college hockey should break away from the NCAA has floated around the sport for some time. College hockey is a very unique sport within the NCAA due to the structure of development, the draft and other factors. It came up recently when John Buccigross, ESPN’s primary college hockey analyst, mentioned it on Spittin’ Chiclets, and it’s been generating discussion since. According to the Grand Forks Herald’s Brad Elliott Schlossman, CCHA commissioner Don Lucia even brought up the idea at the coaches conference in Florida, and it’s something that various high-up folks in the sport have discussed before. 

Let’s break it down. 

The pros of college hockey breaking away from the NCAA are that it would not have to deal with the NCAA’s nonsense anymore. No more rule changes that don’t consider the sport, no more restrictions on things, etc. The new league would be able to operate similarly to the CHL, not have to deal with NIL or roster caps, play as many games as they’d like to in a season and set up postseason tournaments the way they want. Essentially, autonomy from a governing body that never takes it into consideration when drafting rules and frequently screws it over because of it. It would be more hockey-centric, which would benefit the players. Hockey people in charge of a hockey league is a great idea. 

Everything else. 

For one thing, there’s no way to divorce the programs from the NCAA without also divorcing them from the schools. NCAA rules mandate that schools must participate in NCAA competition if they have a varsity team in that sport and the NCAA sponsors the sport. To get out of this, the NCAA would have to….stop sponsoring college hockey? Or allow the schools to not compete in their competitions in hockey only? It’s unclear because nobody has ever thought about doing it before because it’s kind of ridiculous. For another thing, hockey is tied into the NCAA’s media rights deal with ESPN through 2032, which would be tricky to get out of. 

But my biggest question is: where are you getting the funding from? Almost every single college hockey program operates at a loss. And since we haven’t sorted out if the schools would still be part of the equation or not, teams might need to make up their entire budget of millions of dollars on donations alone. The biggest schools would probably be able to do this — the Hughes brothers alone could probably power Michigan — but it would kill the smaller schools. Buccigross seems unconcerned with this because those teams are likely never going to win a national title, but that’s not the point of college sports. The point of college sports is to beat your rivals and also to bring pride to your school. Maryville moving up to D1 means something to them and they’ve spent a lot of time and money to do it and I don’t think we should throw them in the garbage just because you think winning championships is the only point of sports. If that was true, the Buffalo Sabres would’ve been folded by the NHL a decade ago. It also isn’t necessarily true — St. Thomas only recently moved up and they’ve been very competitive. Maybe not quite a national championship contender, but they would’ve made the NCAA tournament in 2025 had they been eligible for it. That’s worth something, too. 

Ultimately, there’s a massive gap between what is feasibly possible and what would be best for the sport. It would genuinely be easier to just start an entirely new league rather than try and divorce these teams from the NCAA. It would be more productive for people to focus on advocating for the NCAA to modify the five-in-five rule than pushing hard for this.