Mark Madden's Hot Take: Saving Robert Morris hockey worthy idea but unrealistic to sustain

Dropping hockey was a bad decision by Robert Morris, especially the timetable.

But now good effort is being wasted after that bad decision.

The attempt is being made to revive the RMU men’s and women’s hockey teams via fundraising. That’s going to have to be one heck of a bake sale. I don’t ever recall Herb Brooks hosting a telethon to bail out the University of Minnesota’s hockey program.

There’s a term that applies when a team is funded wholly outside a school: Club sports.

Enough money doubtless can be raised this year while the issue is a hot topic. But what about next year? What about in five or 10 years?

The unavoidable uncertainty and pointed lack of commitment from the school will make recruiting impossible.

The current teams are disintegrating. The men’s team has about 15 players left. More are reportedly on the brink of transferring. Three of the women’s team’s top players went to Ohio State. Their leading goal-scorer went to Boston College. Recruits are changing their minds.

Players can’t put their lives and careers on hold while they wait to see what the Pittsburgh College Hockey Foundation (whatever that is) accomplishes with its de facto GoFundMe.

The Penguins’ UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex is reportedly interested in hosting RMU games, perhaps adding a third sheet of ice.

But RMU games had meager attendance when the rink was 4.7 miles from campus at RMU Island Sports Center. How many students will show up when games are 19.8 miles away?

Will everyone who decried RMU dropping hockey attend games if the teams survive? (Not enough did.)

Will the virtue-signaling media members who wet their pants when RMU dropped hockey afford the teams coverage if they survive? (Most didn’t.)

Is a real bad team better than no team at all? That’s what RMU hockey is going to be if it survives: real bad.

RMU hockey isn’t truly big-time to start with. The men’s team plays in the Atlantic Hockey Association, not Hockey East or the Big Ten.

The drive to save RMU hockey is being done for a lot of reasons: to save the jersey of distraught alumni who played; to ennoble the self-appointed guardians of the programs, and of hockey; and to preserve jobs and scholarships.

But it’s not being done because the teams generated a lot of revenue or interest. They didn’t. The Junior A Pittsburgh Forge preceded RMU playing at the Island Sports Center and drew considerably bigger attendance over its two seasons.

Saving RMU hockey is a worthy idea. But it’s hard to justify given the cold reality of the situation, and the way it’s being approached is unlikely to work in the long term.

The teams are also sticking around where they’re not wanted. RMU doesn’t want Division I hockey. That fact isn’t going away.