# Build your next program

Open **Build a program** in the Campus Rink navigation, or visit `http://127.0.0.1:4173/#builder`.

Design a hypothetical men's or women's Division I hockey program at an existing U.S. college. Start with any eligible campus in the searchable catalog; Alabama, Oklahoma State, Georgia and Tennessee–Knoxville are featured examples.

## The workspace

- **Program:** name your blueprint, choose men's or women's hockey, set an inaugural-year target, wordmark, nickname, colors and vision.
- **Arena:** use the school’s sourced athletics logo at center ice, or choose monogram, wordmark or clean ice. The logo is embedded in exported arena SVGs and full blueprints. Choose a new arena, renovation or shared facility; edit capacity, site idea, seating color, center ice, scoreboard, amenities and notes. Download the live schematic as SVG.
- **Uniforms:** preview home, away and alternate sweaters with three stripe styles, editable colors, wordmark and number. Download SVG designs.
- **Roster:** build up to 40 planning spots with position, academic class, recruiting route, hypothetical player name and role notes. Counts update as the roster changes.
- **Staff:** design up to 25 coaching and support roles, proposed names and reporting relationships.
- **Launch plan:** set a conference to explore, capital and annual operating assumptions, ticketing, sponsorship and giving. See calculated revenue and funding gaps and track eight planning areas.

- **Season:** choose real D1 opponents for the program’s men’s or women’s competition, set dates and home/away/neutral sites, or fill a 12-, 24-, 34- or 40-game schedule. Simulate one game or the remaining season, follow W–L–T and goal totals, then save the completed season and advance.

Projects save in this browser under `college-ice-programs-v1`. The limit is 60 saved concepts. Duplicate a concept to compare alternatives. Under **Project actions**, **Back up project** downloads a JSON file; **Restore backup** imports it as a new copy, after checking the campus against the current catalog. **Export full blueprint**, also in Project actions, downloads a standalone HTML document containing every section and all three uniforms. Open that document and use **Print / Save as PDF** for a printable copy. Browser storage is local to the browser, device and site address; use backups when moving your app or clearing site data.

The builder is a creative planning tool. Names entered for players and staff are hypothetical, not verified commitments or hires. Design palettes are suggestions, not official university brand specifications. Arena diagrams are schematic. Financial defaults are fictional inputs, not real cost estimates. Checklist completion records the user's own progress, not regulatory approval or readiness.

## College catalog and eligibility

Checked **September 10, 2026**. The catalog contains **1,009 active U.S. NCAA member colleges**, including Division I, II and III campuses. It does not yet include NAIA-only or junior colleges. A college is selected by its NCAA organization ID; arbitrary campus names cannot be created or restored as eligible projects.

The rule applies to the whole campus: any campus with existing men's Division I or women's National Collegiate hockey is excluded, even if a user wants to explore the other gender. Women's programs at primarily Division II campuses are included in this exclusion. A lower-division or club hockey team does not itself disqualify a campus. The builder's availability does not establish eligibility to reclassify to Division I.

- [NCAA active member directory](https://web3.ncaa.org/directory/memberList?type=1) supplies college identity, state and primary NCAA division. The directory's public JSON endpoint is `https://web3.ncaa.org/directory/api/directory/memberList?type=1`.
- [College Hockey Inc. men's teams](https://www.collegehockeyinc.com/mens-teams-and-conferences/) and [women's teams](https://www.collegehockeyinc.com/womens-teams-and-conferences/) supply the hockey-program cross-check. Official names are matched to NCAA organization IDs, with explicit aliases for ambiguous campuses such as Minnesota, Miami, Augustana and Nebraska–Omaha.
- Maryville University of Saint Louis is held out because it has an [announced DI transition](https://www.collegehockeyinc.com/2026/03/maryville-university-adds-division-i-mens-hockey/), with full DI scheduled for 2027–28.
- Tennessee State is conservatively held out because it has an [announced hockey program](https://tsutigers.com/sports/2023/6/27/HockeyFAQ.aspx). Its launch status needs a fresh review before changing the catalog. This is distinct from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which is selectable.

`program-colleges.json` preserves the full selectable list, the 72 excluded campuses with reasons, the check date and source links. This is a dated snapshot; refresh and review source membership before adding new campuses or treating it as current in a later season. No live college-eligibility service is connected.

## Scenario calculations

Annual ticket revenue = arena seats × expected attendance percentage × home games × average ticket price.

Total annual revenue = ticket revenue + annual sponsorship + annual giving + other annual revenue.

Annual funding gap = annual operating budget − total annual revenue. A negative gap is displayed as an annual surplus.

Capital still to fund = max(0, arena capital budget − proposed capital commitments). Arena capital is kept separate from annual operations. The operating-budget input must include whichever ongoing costs the user wants to model; no financing costs or inflation are calculated automatically.


## Season model and saved results

The season planner is a fictional game, not a prediction or an official NCAA schedule. It uses the app’s saved 2025–26 team records as a fixed opponent baseline, including when you simulate later years. No future roster, recruiting, conference membership, or team strength is forecast. Opponent strength is `20 + 60 × (wins + ties/2 + 2) / (games + 4)`, rounded; missing records use 50. The added games pull small samples toward .500.

Set your offense, defense and goaltending from 15–95 (startup defaults: 45). Roster depth is the smallest of 1, forwards/12, defense/6 and goalies/2. This is a game-design target, not an NCAA roster rule. Names, budgets and proposed hires do not assign talent. Expected goals start at 2.7 and scale exponentially by the strength difference divided by 65, with a +0.10 log home advantage (−0.10 away) and up to a 0.30 depth penalty. Opponent scoring compares its strength to the average of your defense and goaltending. Independent Poisson draws produce regulation goals. On a tie, a simplified overtime resolves 60% of games, with the scoring ratio determining the winner; the rest remain ties. Scores are capped at 30 as an implementation bound. No shootouts, injuries, individual statistics, standings for other teams, or postseason qualification are modeled.

Every game has a saved identifier and results are deterministic for that identifier and season seed. Simulating the next game and then the rest preserves previously played games. “Reset results & try again” changes the seed and clears current results. Editing the schedule, strengths, season year, or roster position mix clears current results; completed history remains. Changing a roster name does not change results. Dates cannot collide and must fall within August–July of the selected starting year. These checks are not NCAA scheduling-compliance validation.

Advancing saves the completed schedule/results and strength settings, increments the year and seed, and carries opponents/sites into the next year with dates shifted by one calendar year. February 29 shifts to February 28 when needed. Weekdays may change. Up to 40 completed seasons are retained. The season year can run from 2027 through 2060. The target inaugural year and launch-budget home-games estimate remain independent after scheduling begins. Men’s and women’s season plans are kept separately when you switch a blueprint’s program setting.

Current and completed seasons are included in browser saves, JSON backup/restore and full HTML blueprint exports. Existing blueprints gain an empty season planner while keeping their previous design settings. New blueprints default to the school logo at center ice; a campus without a verified logo shows an explicit unavailable label. Arena diagrams use the existing local logo registry. Downloaded SVG and HTML files embed the image so it works away from the local server.