NCAA Hockey Tournament: Host teams draw crowd

There's no question Wisconsin officials breathed a collective sigh of relief Sunday when the Badgers, who are hosting the Midwest Regional at the 15,237-seat Kohl Center, received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Four years ago, Colorado College watched as four teams, including rival Denver, participated in the NCAA West Regional at World Arena.

"It was painful," CC coach Scott Owens said.

Last season, Denver coach George Gwozdecky experienced the same angst when his team missed out on the West Regional at Pepsi Center.

In each case, the schools and co-hosting sports commissions used backup plans to avoid a similar blow to their wallets.

Host institutions or sponsoring agencies are required to guarantee a minimum of 75 percent of the net revenue from ticket sales.

The Pioneers' placement at the 2004 West Regional helped the CC athletic department and co-host Colorado Springs Sports Corp. avoid a complete wash. Neither CC or the Sports Corp. lost money in 2004, but the pressure was on to sell tickets to satisfy the NCAA guarantee.

In the case of last year's West Regional at Pepsi Center, the Metro Denver Sports Commission took an unprecedented step to ensure ticket sales by packaging regional tickets with those to this year's Frozen Four, an event that sells out at least a year in advance.

"We did what a lot of universities do by combining football and basketball season ticket sales - if you want one, you have to buy both," said Jon Schmieder, executive director of the Metro Denver Sports Commission.

If fans wanted to get guaranteed tickets to Denver's Frozen Four, they had to buy three regional tickets for a single Frozen Four ticket, making the cheapest ticket package $900, Schmieder said. But after dangling the offer to Denver, CC, and Air Force season ticket holders and other prioritized parties in 2006, the commission had already almost matched its guarantee.

Still, it was the commission's "worst nightmare" when CC and Denver didn't make the field, Schmieder said.
Air Force's presence helped.

"We thought we'd have a gluttony of tickets on the street corner, but people went to the box office and bought," he said.

In the end, even without Colorado's more visible hockey schools at the regional, it set an NCAA all-session hockey regional attendance record of 33,549.

According to the NCAA Web site, the committee chooses sites that will "provide maximum attendance and visibility for the tournament," using the following criteria: quality of the facility and accommodations for attendees, revenue potential, geographical location, and attendance history.

In the future, there is the possibility that, despite its past success as a host, Colorado College and World Arena could struggle to win NCAA bids.

For one, the committee prefers to award bids to neutral sites, such as NHL arenas like Pepsi Center. Also, the Olympic-sized sheet at World Arena could be a hindrance to securing future regionals, even though World Arena's 7,343-seat capacity is well over the desired basic capacity of 4,000.

Coach Scott Owens estimates 20-25 percent of Division I teams play on Olympic-sized rinks.

"If I'm a team that has played 32 games on the NHL sheet and I've got to go to both altitude and to an Olympic sheet, that's a concern," he said. "But until we get more sites, especially ones that are noninstitutional sites, that's all we can do. There just aren't enough. I think it will be a discussion point for the next 10 years....I think there's going to be discussions about institutional sites. We may lose our first game in the regional, but we're 18-2 here."