And for a third straight March, a town not pertaining to be in the middle nor west of Pennsylvania, let alone America, will be home to NCAA Hockey's Midwest Regional after the 2020 and 2021 regionals were announced earlier this month.
In a way, it's fitting. College hockey contains many misnomers. Providence didn't host the Providence regional. (Sorry Minnesota State.) There's a school called American International.
Directions don't mean much in a sport where Western Michigan is not in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. Northern Michigan, a team in the Eastern Time Zone playing in the WCHA, shares a home with Alabama-Huntsville and is far south of conference mates Alaska and Alaska-Anchorage. The WCHA has a larger national footprint than the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.
Even the Big Ten doesn't come close to having ten teams.
Somewhere in that misnomer, the issue does not lay with having the Midwest represented by a Billy Joel song. (Obviously, that's more of a Springsteen thing.) From all accounts, Penn State and the staff at PPL Center do a fantastic job behind the scenes in Allentown putting on the weekend. It's exactly what teams and NCAA should want - a new, modern facility which is appropriately sized for an NCAA Tournament regional.
No, the issue runs deeper.
Honestly, college hockey needs more towns like Allentown across the country to step up and host. If that was the case, it would be easier to call Allentown what it should be: The East Regional.
Little separates Allentown by longitude from 2020 East Regional host Albany, NY. 2021 East Regional host Bridgeport, CT, sitting 65 miles northeast of New York City, is not much further away. The Lehigh Valley fits in well with both those areas.
Instead, midwestern Minnesota Duluth, as the second overall seed this year, ends up being placed in a Midwest Regional 1200 miles away from Amsoil Arena; closer to Duluth, GA than Duluth, MN. Allentown going all Midwest ends up being a benefit to 29 eastern schools within driving distance of a third regional and detriment to 23 Big Ten/NCHC/WCHA schools needing a flight to all four in 2020.
In a better college hockey world, those eastern cities would be battling one another. Unfortunately, it's becoming increasingly apparent in recent years the number of cities wanting to bid - especially outside the Northeast - continues to dwindle.
In theory, it should be easy to come up with two Western regionals near schools and fanbases. There should be three or four different areas in college hockey country to bid for two regions: Michigan/Ohio/Indiana, the Upper Midwest (Minnesota/Wisconsin/North Dakota), Colorado and possibly Nebraska/Iowa.
Instead, the opposite has been occurring. Most of those areas stopped bidding. The Midwest Regional, in recent years, set shop in Cincinnati and Allentown by default. The West Regional went on a never-ending loop between St. Paul, Fargo and Sioux Falls.
West of Allentown, the problem continues to get worse than from where it was in 2013. The state of Michigan once again did not bid this cycle. Colorado went over a decade. Even top matchups showed Xcel Energy Center being too big for the regional region. Taking out St. Paul (as seems to be the case for future bids following upsets and light crowds over the past two tournaments) leaves the Upper Midwest's bids on the area's fringes.
Thankfully, Denver broke the Colorado streak to bid on the 2020 and 2021 West Regionals in nearby Loveland. But it's a start if that.
These days the college hockey world we live in sees it far easier to name Midwest cities that stopped bidding for NCAA Tournament regionals than potential hosts. Madison. Green Bay. Fort Wayne. Toledo. Grand Rapids. Cincinnati. St. Louis. St. Paul.
The issue which needs to be discussed for NCAA Tournament regionals is what needs to be done to get more western schools to bid. What works in the East does not seem to be working out West.
Sadly, there's not an easy answer. Each of the western areas has its own reasons to not bid given the specifications. The spread out nature of the Midwest and western United States makes even the shortest trip a multiple hour affair.
Few cities hit the sweet spot where midsize arenas and banking on multiple fanbases overlap. Even fewer do with neutral site arenas.
In the Upper Midwest, college hockey's success comes at a price. Minnesota has no USHL or AHL teams. The midsized buildings host college hockey. Neutral hockey rinks in the state larger than the minimum 5,000 seats to host NCAA Tournaments boil down to 18,000 seat Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul or similarly sized Target Center in Minneapolis.
That's it.
Going outside the Land of 10,000 Lakes with no neutral 10,000 seat arena, North Dakota has Fargo and Sioux Falls (a city that did a great job hosting in 2018 yet is about an Allentown away from any college hockey program). Wisconsin has Milwaukee and Green Bay. Des Moines has been brought up as an option, but no school has thought to bid on a 15K seat arena 2-3 hours from the nearest school. Same with Omaha.
Rather than using these sites for 2020, on-campus bids by North Dakota and Wisconsin were reportedly rejected for a true Midwest neutral site.
As easy as it can be to dunk on the Midwest's already loose definition needing a belt to hold up Allentown, the only neutral options for 2020 and 2021 being eastern North Dakota and Pennsylvania should be an impetus for a conversation. Questions need to be answered.
What will it take to get a Michigan school to once again bid? Is there a common reason why western sites stopped bidding? Does money and $150K guarantee play a role? Does attendance? Why would Wisconsin rather bid on-campus than a neutral site? What can be done about Minnesota schools not having an appropriate sized building in the state to use for a bid?
It will be helpful if the NCAA, coaches and the powers that be can answer those, finding how the success of Allentown's hosting job and getting Loveland to bid can translate to other successful western sites. With this week being the annual AHCA convention taking place, it's a good one to start.
Whether that's being more forgiving to on-campus bids in one area and aiming for a neutral site in others, or figuring the standards and specifications which will provide more schools the option of bidding, or changing the format to create better options, one thing is clear. Something needs to change. Because the other option remains to do nothing and continuing putting Midwest Regionals in a city full of Wawas, one that is the control city for I-78 steps outside the Holland Tunnel.
Directions might not mean as much in college hockey as they probably should. That should not be an excuse, however, for the sport's growing footprint shrinking drastically when it comes to finding neutral sites for regionals.
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