If Howard, with his credentials and contacts, were "looking out for number 1" he would be working at a business where he could be making millions. If he were looking out for number 1 and not interested in the school or its students, he would not make difficult decisions that subject himself to such criticism. Frankly, whenever a college president decides to cut sports teams, that president knows he is going to take a lot of heat, more so than with just about any other decision. To say the finances are "so bad" is a mischaracterization. I have no inside information, but I do not believe that RMU is in bad financial shape. As previously mentioned, this is a challenging time for many colleges and universities due to a shrinking number of people turning college age, resulting in shrinking enrollments. It was a much easier time for college administrators prior to ten years ago when college enrollments were increasing. Here is western Pa. California, Clarion and Edinboro are being merged together to cut costs as a result of shrinking enrollments. RMU's enrollment has dropped, but is still holding its own. Regardless, RMU's budgets needed to be adjusted with shifts in revenue, and when enrollment drops, revenue drops. When revenue drops, expenses need to be reduced. Apparently, hockey cost the University a million dollars a year even without consideration of any future facility improvements. RMU spends more on sports than probably most any other school of its size. Basketball, hockey and football are expensive sports, very few schools in the Country have all three. Although RMU does not generate a lot of revenue from basketball and football, those teams can generate a lot more than hockey. There are only about 60 men's and 40 women's D-1 hockey teams in the Country, that's it, very few schools offer the sport, Pitt, Duquesne, WVU do not offer the sport. It is an expensive sport, with low revenue and low attendance. Rather than cutting expenses from the athletic budget or any other parts of the University, RMU could just keep increasing tuition to try to increase revenue. Certainly, a large percentage of students would say that's unfair, in addition, it probably would be counter productive since higher tuition would result in lower enrollment. Considering the costs, and considering that so few schools have hockey teams, the question should not be, why is RMU cutting hockey, but why has RMU carried the costs of having hockey teams for so many years. With regard to fundraising, RMU does a great job of trying shake as many money trees as possible, the truth is, there are only so many dollars out there to raise. It sounds as though the Pens were interested in doing some facility sharing arrangement in Cranberry, a locations that is at least a half hour away from campus and likely would not result in much decrease of the million dollar operating deficit of the teams. A guy who is in the business of buying smaller hockey facilities says he would like to buy Island Sports Center, but how does that save the teams? I doubt he is willing to pay millions above fair market value. He is just interested in buying and operating the facility, that is the business he is in. I guess he would provide some favorable rent to RMU, but RMU still would have the bulk of the costs of operating the teams each year. I wish RMU could keep the hockey teams. I am not here to defend Chris Howard, I feel bad for the players, coaches and everyone passionate about the programs. This topic is very emotional for a lot of people. I do believe this was a very difficult and thought out decision for Howard, it is one he surely would have preferred not to have had to make. The press release, no doubt, could have been better, possibly the timing could have been better, possibly advanced notice to those involved could have been better, however, I am just trying to point out that, to me, there are obvious rational reasons why the decision to end the hockey programs was made.