I find it bewildering to sit here and not have Alabama-Huntsville joining the CCHA in 2010-11.

This was the missing piece of the puzzle, the final domino, the ladder that led beyond the chutes of dropped programs and defections that have doomed the CHA.

And now we’re facing the chance of college hockey losing its 58th Division I member.

That’s what’s surprising about the CCHA’s decision. It ignored the good of the whole by dismissing the weak.

This from the conference that was built upon the success of small schools. Northern Michigan, Bowling Green, Lake Superior State – these were the programs that defined the CCHA. The conference that is still derisively referred to as the “bus league” by its western colleagues; the conference of Ron Mason.

Now it’s turning its back on the little guy.

Has the CCHA lost its way, or forgotten its roots? Perhaps. Certainly most of college sports has, so you could hardly blame it.

Make no mistake, if this was Alabama applying for admission, not Alabama-Huntsville, the decision would have been easy. In fact, conferences would have been so eager to add the Crimson Tide that they’d probably be in the WCHA right now – even if they were the supposedly unmanageable 11th team.

But that wasn’t the decision here. Instead of standing tall, and from the SEC, the Division II Chargers were left holding the short straw. And now their truly difficult decisions begin.

Surely the CCHA doesn’t deserve to shoulder all the blame – there are plenty of reasons absorbing UAH doesn’t make sense. Elsewhere, the pain of disappointing moves at Wayne State, Findlay, Iona and other schools was revived again Tuesday. Perhaps even UAH could have done more, or planned better, to help avoid this fate.

Nothing is owed to us in sports, I understand that. But I’m still bewildered.

I can only imagine how Danton Cole and the Chargers feel.