{"id":87222,"date":"2018-06-08T13:07:56","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T18:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/?p=87222"},"modified":"2018-06-08T13:07:56","modified_gmt":"2018-06-08T18:07:56","slug":"illinois-hopes-to-green-light-a-new-champaign-based-mens-d-i-hockey-program-by-the-end-of-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/2018\/06\/08\/illinois-hopes-to-green-light-a-new-champaign-based-mens-d-i-hockey-program-by-the-end-of-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois ‘hopes to green-light’ a new Champaign-based men’s D-I hockey program by the end of 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
According to 247sports.com<\/a>, Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman “hopes to green-light” a Division I men’s hockey program “by the end of the calendar year.”<\/p>\n In the report, Whitman said that adding a hockey program is “an ambitious project” and that the school must raise “many, many more millions” of dollars to fund a 5,000-6,000-seat hockey arena.<\/p>\n Whitman noted that he has received several seven-figure commitments for a downtown Champaign arena project that could cost $50-60 million, and that a funding model “includes private donations, corporate dollars, retail dollars, concession dollars and developer dollars.”<\/p>\n “I\u2019m increasingly confident in what this could [look] like and our chances of making this a reality,” said Whitman. “There does seem to be growing interest.”<\/p>\n He added that a program “would likely take two to three years to start after greenlighting, but hockey would give Illinois another potential revenue-generating program.”<\/p>\n That said, 247sports.com said that Illinois would need to add another women\u2019s program to comply with Title IX requirements<\/a>.<\/p>\n