D-1 Hockey at Illinois?

[Joel Goodson]

my take on all this is the UI is moving slow for obvious reasons of money. The physical structures needed to do this correctly are VERY EXPENSIVE and unless someone or some group comes up with a huge gift towards it, it will stay a back burner item until the football stadium is addressed.


you add a mens hockey team, you need to add a womens hockey or LAX team as well. Funding all those schollies and the team personnel costs have to be quite a bit of an annual expense.


PennSt was able to do it because Terry & Kim Pegula family came up with $88 million and then added another $14 million to make it $102 million.


If someone came to Whitman with that, the ceremony with 5 people with the chrome shovels and wearing o&b hard hats would be set up pretty quickly.

Exactly. Adding D1 hockey will cost more than $100M. As soon as the funding is secured, Whitman will move forward.

 

[Deleted member 3875]

Exactly. Adding D1 hockey will cost more than $100M. As soon as the funding is secured, Whitman will move forward.

Can you say Jimmy John's?

 

[BananaShampoo]

Can you say Jimmy John's?

Maybe if we were trying to field a hunting team.

 

[Dan]

I asked #illini AD Josh Whitman about hockey. He said no big updates but that they're continuing to work on it and he's as bullish as ever that it "will get across the finish line."
https://twitter.com/JWerner247/status/961734036728279040