By Jared Shafran, News Staff

In the past few days, the world of college hockey has been turned upside down.

In a small group of only 58 Division I teams, even something happening in the Midwest, far away from Northeastern and Hockey East, can have an impact on our program.

While 16 teams are preparing to make a run at the National Championship held in St. Paul, Minn. next weekend, the Big Ten announced on Monday it will start competing in men’s ice hockey beginning with the 2013-14 season.

Penn State, which announced they will field a Division I team starting in 2012, will join current programs Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State and Wisconsin to make up the new conference. These programs are already some of the biggest names in terms of exposure for college hockey and when they leave their current conferences, the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) and Western collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), will be far behind with lots of ground to make up.

Wednesday, just two days after this conference was announced, Michigan State introduced its new head coach. To everyone’s surprise, the school hired CCHA commissioner Tom Anastos. While Anastos is an MSU alumnus and former assistant coach, he had been in his current position as commissioner for 13 years and was not expected to be a candidate for a head coaching position.

The hiring represents just how much is changing in the college hockey landscape. It also shows us that the chances of the CCHA remaining relevant and successful aren’t very good. It’s not very often you see a commissioner resign to take a head coaching job at one of his conferences’ own schools. Clearly, Anastos didn’t think he could outlast the Big Ten, so he jumped on the bandwagon.

So how does this all affect Northeastern, the school competing with the Boston Colleges and Boston Universities of the country?

The Big Ten conference represents a shift in power to the big-time national powerhouse schools. College hockey has traditionally been a sport for the little guy, as well as the big schools. If you watch the National Tournament this weekend (on the ESPN family of networks), you will see schools like Western Michigan, Merrimack and Union competing at the same level as Michigan, BC and Notre Dame. That kind of competition has always been unique to college hockey.

The six Big Ten schools are going to compete for the best recruits and will take a lot of exposure away from Hockey East, which has recently taken over, winning the last three national titles.

With all due respect, Northeastern is one of the little guys. We have enough trouble competing for recruits with BC and BU in our own conference – the cost of remaining relevant on a national level is getting steeper.

It should be every program’s goal to win a national championship. In collegiate football and basketball, that’s not a realistic goal unless your team is among the elite. But college hockey has seen Bemidji State and Rochester Institute of Technology in the Frozen Four in the last two seasons, schools like Rensselaer have won titles, and Lake Superior State once was a powerhouse. Unfortunately those years seem to be long gone as the big names are poised to take over.

There doesn’t seem to be any immediate changes on the horizon here at Northeastern or within the Hockey East, but recruiting for the future of our team and other smaller-market programs will only get tougher as other schools devote more resources to collegiate hockey.