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Big Ten: 'It's A Win-Win'
Opening Arms to Notre Dame Born From Necessity
http://www.collegehockeynews.com/news/2016/03/24_big_ten_its_a_win-win.php
Some good stuff there.
CHN: So this wasn't about leading to football, it was just about helping hockey?
Traviolia: Yes, it's been a hockey-specific conversation the entire time.
CHN: Notre Dame probably would've done this three years ago. Was it just not the right timing then for the Big Ten?
Traviolia: I think a lot of things have to evolve naturally. We got to six schools with Penn State, we wanted to compete, we started it. At the time, we hadn't done the affiliate membership yet. So (forming a hockey conference) was really, "Let's get it started, let's learn from experience, and see how it goes."
CHN: Back to Notre Dame, the trickiness of it — I have to imagine the television aspect of it had to at least be a tricky aspect. How hard was it to work out?
Traviolia: To be honest, it was a non-issue. We feel we have a great television arrangement with BTN. Notre Dame has their own TV deal (with NBC Sports). Easy because we already had a road map with how we work with Hopkins.
CHN: But Hopkins doesn't have a huge deal with NBC like Notre Dame has.
Traviolia: Correct. But they do have a nice television relationship with ESPN for their home lacrosse matches. And it was important to them. And we're not adding affiliate members because we feel we need more TV or more exposure.
So it was really, "You have your TV deal, you keep that, you control the rights to your home games, and the Big Ten has the rights to all the games on the other campuses, and the conference owns the rights to the tournament." So there really wasn't a lot of talk about that, because the principle was pretty basic.
CHN: The natural next question is about Arizona State. They're hanging out there, and bringing them in would give you an even eight teams. Does this open the door for them?
Traviolia: We don't talk about hypotheticals. We're very happy with Notre Dame. This was an ideal and there was a need competitively to increase our numbers, but we're not about just growing to get bigger, it has to be the right fit. The best example of how important it is, we were at 11 full-time members for 20 years. Yes it's a little funky on the scheduling side, but you figure it out.
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