At first glance, the CCHA’s decision to keep Alabama-Huntsville waiting outside the velvet rope like a wannabe cast member of “The Hills” at Nobu looks bad. No one wants to see the program disappear. Before you burn the CCHA at the stake, however, consider the following:

• The WCHA put the CCHA in a really bad spot when it poached Nebraska-Omaha in June. Reeling in the Mavericks allowed the WCHA to add Bemidji State, the feel-good story of the 2009 season, to its docket and create a 12-team league for 2010-11-imagine the furor had the Dub given the Beavers the Heisman because it didn’t want to go to 11 teams. Instead, the WCHA washes its hands of the what-to-do-with-BSU dilemma by spiriting UNO out of the CCHA on a Mayflower moving truck in the dead of night.

  Now the onus is on the CCHA, looking at a future as an 11-team circuit, and, hey, there’s Alabama-Huntsville without a home. The expansion process hits warp speed. The CCHA has less than two months to do its due diligence on the Charger program, assess the pros and cons of bringing UAH into the fold, and present the findings to its members. That’s a tough prospect under any circumstances, let alone under conditions resembling a shotgun wedding.

• How can the CCHA think about adding a 12th team when the future of one if its current members, Bowling Green, remains in doubt? Though the school recently announced it’s secured $4 million to renovate its outdated ice arena, all that really does is move the Falcons from the emergency room to intensive care. Until the BGSU program exhibits more signs of stability, the CCHA is wise to hold off on expansion.
• As INCH’s Joe Gladziszewski pointed out in a conversation earlier this week, the CCHA’s primary obligation is not acting in the best interest of college hockey, but in best interest of its members schools and student-athletes. Unless you were part of the meeting in suburban Detroit earlier this week, you don’t know the factors that led the CCHA to hold off on adding Alabama-Huntsville-economics, we can assume, was a primary concern. One can be assured, however, that the decision was based on what suits its current members.

Would it be disappointing if the Alabama-Huntsville program went belly up? Sure it would, just like it was sad to see Fairfield, Findlay, Iona, and Wayne State depart. But college hockey survived those losses, as it would if UAH folded.

That said, my hunch is that Alabama-Huntsville ends up in the CCHA-once Bowling Green has proved it’s on stable footing and lingering questions undoubtedly raised by the league’s current members are sufficiently answered.