NCAA

Hockey is unique in college sports. Freshmen aren’t always freshmen, at least in the truest form of the word. Many first-year college players are already 21 years old after playing as many as four years of junior hockey while working their way into higher leagues, including the NCAA. The Big Ten, one of the top conferences within the NCAA in all sports, recently proposed that freshmen must be 20 or younger. Why? The conference believes there’s a big age difference problem. Big-time programs like Michigan often recruit top talent, the true freshman with the ability to play right away at the age of 18, while smaller programs like Niagara scour junior leagues for less-hyped talent that has had a chance to mature. College teams against the proposal argue that it will make it an unfair playing field because the Big Ten schools will more easily be able to recruit the younger players. Schools even suggest that hockey players being more mature mentally as well as physically makes them better students. According to College Hockey News, 49 of 60 college hockey coaches voted against it, but that doesn’t count for anything. -Nick Wojton, Niagara-Gazette, Read More