I certainly don't wake up every morning with the intention on being a cynic. But sometimes people like NHL commissioner Gary Bettman come along and make it so damn hard not to be. It would be amazing if my mind could allow me to take the 2018 Vegas Golden Knights at face value: The "feel good" story of yet another tragedy-marred city rallying around its major sports franchise. The captain-less team of discarded talent. Cinderella making it to the Stanley Cup Final in under 250 days of existence. Sorry, I just can't go there. And it's a shame, too. There's not a bigger fan of goaltender  Marc-Andre Fleury . At present, there are 32 teams in the National Football League, 31 teams in the National Hockey League, and 30 in both Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. That's 123 if you lost count. With that, there have officially been 71 modern-era "expansion teams" into the four major North American sports leagues (MLB, NFL, N...

The struggle for most small-college  athletic departments comes from an  unsatisfied need for facilities to call their own.  Even my alma mater, Division-I (and FBS) Kent State University, has had to deal with the chaos of disjointed athletic facilities over the years.  Our "new" (1999) softball field was placed two miles east of the baseball field (1966); which, in its own right, is a mile south of the school's main gymnasium — headquarters for the entire athletic department. Nothing was convenient. Winter baseball practices, held in the football/track teams' fieldhouse, were nearly a town away from the classrooms and dorms.  I am told the weight room could also found there somewhere.  Anyway,  the reason for this sprawl is all too common across collegiate sports — not just for the D-I mid-majors and below. Timing is everything. An institution typically builds when it can, where it can.  Naturally, stadiums have different shelf lives and somet...