College hockey must pursue Autonomy Five’s time balance policy

This week, ESPN ran an interesting first-person story by Matt Imhof, a Philadelphia Phillies pitching prospect who sustained a gruesome eye injury that cost him his professional baseball career. Refusing to “be defined by my worst day,” Imhof is currently serving as an undergraduate assistant pitching coach while he finishes his degree.

In the sports world, your playing days are inherently numbered. While in college, it is always important to establish a backup plan for the days when you can no longer play the game or when something unexpected, like Imhof’s injury, occurs.

Some major college athletic conference commissioners are already taking steps to account for circumstances like those. On Friday, Jan. 20, representatives of the Autonomy Five conferences (the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC) met to discuss new regulations for student-athletes. Most notable among these changes is a regulation that allows students to spend more time away from their sport to pursue extracurricular, academic and professional opportunities.

At first glance, these regulations only seem to apply to major conference sports, such as basketball and football. However, when USCHO relayed the report, it noted that all Big Ten schools, plus Arizona State, Boston College, Notre Dame and Syracuse’s hockey programs stand to gain from these changes, if those programs so please.

What about the rest of college hockey? There are several reasons why the six Division I commissioners should consider implementing these Autonomy Five rules equally across their sport.

As currently constituted, these reforms would benefit Syracuse, BC and the four Big Ten affiliates currently playing under the WCHA banner in women’s hockey. That would mean as many as six out of the 35 Division I women’s programs would see these benefits implemented, while the other 29 would not.

While 17 percent of women’s hockey may seem trivial, consider the fact that Wisconsin, Minnesota and BC perennially occupy spots in the top 10 in women’s hockey. Would these rules give these schools a distinct competitive edge?

With cost of attendance being a significant issue in the minds of most high school students, these schools could gain an unfair recruiting advantage in the form of higher-quality players attending schools with more benefits.

In women’s hockey, the gap between the great teams and the average ones is far larger than on the men’s side. It stands to reason that the disparity in talent could be even more concentrated at the top rather than distributed evenly across all of women’s hockey.

But the disproportionate benefits for top programs also apply to men’s hockey, where nine out of 60 existing Division I schools have Autonomy Five ties. BC and the Big Ten programs already provide the incentive that players who go there have the chance to win the national championship, but these rules would only increase their incentive to go there.

These rules allow players to take additional time to pursue academics, work, internships and additional rest and recovery. They also provide increased protection for concussions. If you were a skilled player and had a free choice, why wouldn’t you go to a school that seeks to improve the lives of its student-athletes?

As individual hockey commissioners take realignment into account in the coming years, they should also consider that these rules or a variation of these rules somehow factors into their considerations.

Time balance is a priority for college students already, and it should be for their college athletes as well.