Tuesday was the deadline for teams to submit their applications to join the WCHA, and Bemidji State was the only school to apply.
That could be bad news for the Beavers since all talk leading up to Tuesday's deadline was that in order for BSU to work in the WCHA, a 12th team would also have to be added for scheduling purposes--and even then it was rumored that it would have to be a fairly attractive 12th team in order to appease some outlying members of the conference.
WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod said four teams expressed interest, but none applied. If I had to guess on the four teams, it would likely be Northern Michigan, Nebraska-Omaha, Alabama-Huntsville, and someone really far east.
It would be a shame if a lack of a 12th team kept Bemidji State out of the WCHA. I'm sure there were a variety of very legitimate reasons why none of those teams were interested in the WCHA(Something about a guy who herds sheep?), but you also have to wonder if things might have been different if the WCHA didn't wait until the 11th hour to try and get this done. It's been clear that the CHA was dying and Bemidji's future in D-1 hockey rested on getting into the WCHA for over two years now, and the WCHA spent just over two months trying to find a partner to join with BSU. Maybe if some of the groundwork for this had been done a little earlier, those schools would have been more likely to apply.