Adriaan Klaassen understands that some people think his pursuit — his obsession, really — is crazy. They tell him at every turn.

Turning the Rutgers club ice hockey team into a Division 1 sport that will compete in the Big Ten? In an era when Title IX has caused colleges everywhere to slash men's varsity teams and the growing movement to pay athletes for the full cost of attendance threatens even more?

And to do this at a university where the athletic department can barely support many of its existing teams as it is, and where several teams that were cut in 2006 are still fighting for reinstatement?

Put it this way: The odds of making this happen are like those win-a-car promotions you see during the intermission of NHL games, where the participant has to shoot a puck into the tiny hole in a board covering the goal. Except, instead of trying to do that from center ice, he is standing in the parking lot.

Klaassen doesn't care.

"I'm going to jump on this," the 37-year-old Rutgers volunteer assistant coach decided six months ago, "and I'm not going to rest until it's done."

That process began with an online petition this month, one that Klaassen hopes brings attention to his quest. He is trying to meet with as many high-powered alumni as he can, soliciting advice and, hopefully, financial support.

He has reached out to the athletics department and said officials were open to the discussion but made no commitments. When asked about the push to make hockey a varsity sport, athletic director Julie Hermann said through a spokesman, "We are not currently in a position to add any new programs."

Anyone who has followed the department's financial struggles would have a hard time arguing that point, but that could change as the university becomes fully integrated into the Big Ten. Klaassen plans to keep making his case to anyone who will listen, pointing to hockey's popularity in New Jersey as a high school sport and recent success stories at Penn State and Arizona State. More on those in a minute.

He is a passionate alum who, like most people who love his sport, isn't going to back down from a fight. And if you listen to his argument with an open mind, and if you can look past those many obstacles that stand in his way, it's hard not to see the potential of what a Rutgers hockey team in the Big Ten could be.

It started on a pond in 1892

This seems like a pretty good question: Why isn't ice hockey a Division 1 sport at Rutgers already?

The team played its first game in 1892, just 23 years after college football was born on at the university, against a "picked team of Princeton men" on Westons Mill Pond in East Brunswick (and, just like the first football game, Rutgers won). The team, originally named the Raritan Redmen and later the Scarlet Stickmen, has had its share of starts and stops over the years in large part because of a problem it still faces now: The lack of a local facility.



Penn State faced the same problem. It was solved, in 2013, after billionaire Terry Pegula donated $88 million to the university to get an arena built and another $14 million to help endow scholarships and cover expenses.

Adriaan Klaassen is the driving force behind trying to make ice hockey a Division 1 sport at Rutgers.

Rutgers might have to find its own Pegula to make that happen (and if he's out there, he's certainly been hiding well). Arizona State will begin a full Division 1 schedule in the sport, starting in 2016, thanks to $32 million in private donations for supporters, including Don Mullett, whose son played for the team.

The costs are prohibitive, because not only will Rutgers have to pay the operational and scholarship costs for the men's team, but because of Title IX, it will have to do the same for a women's team. Those are that questions that Klaassen and his supporters must answer.

And if they do, Klaassen said, "I don't see a way it could miss."

He makes a compelling case. New Jersey produced 52 NCAA Division 1 players last season, which ranked sixth national. Only Princeton, which does not offer athletic scholarships, has a Division 1 team in the state.

High school hockey in New Jersey continues to rise in popularity. And here's what makes hockey different from most of the so-called Olympic sports: It is a money-maker for several athletic departments. Five of the top-10 hockey teams in NCAA attendance last season were in the new six-team Big Ten hockey league.

"If you were to wipe the slate clean and start over (at Rutgers), you would think that you'd have the three sports in the Big Ten that are profitable and can help support all the other programs," Klaassen said.

If more than 53,000 fans came out to see Rutgers play Penn State in football, wouldn't 5,300 or more make the trip to the Prudential Center if the two teams played in a Division 1 game? Or, if in a facility closer to campus, far more than that?

It's hard not to dream. It's also hard not to see the potential for the team to be competitive in a hurry, and on that topic, this is what one of the club team's most prominent alums has to say:

"We can probably win a national championship in hockey if we started Division 1 today sooner than we can in football," retired Brig. Gen. Bruce Bingham said.

'I want Rutgers hockey on the map'

Bingham played for the team in the mid 1960s and was recently inducted into its Hall of Fame. There is a great photo of him on the team's website, holding a machine gun in Vietnam and posing in front of a military jeep with a bumper sticker on its front fender.

Bruce Bingham, a retired Army general and prominent Rutgers booster, wants president Robert Barchi to acknowledge that hockey is part of the university's athletic planning.

"SUPPORT RUTGERS HOCKEY," it reads.

Just in case you thought Klaassen was tilting at this windmill alone, he has support from a prominent athletic booster. Bingham is well aware that his alma mater is preparing to unveil its long-range plan to upgrade its athletic facilities — something university president Robert Barchi has said would happen at the June 18 Board of Governors meeting.

He wants some acknowledgement from Barchi that hockey is part of the athletics future at the university, no matter how far down the line that is.

"I have used every scintilla of my influence and personal connections to get (Barchi) to say 'hockey,'" said Bingham, who is now executive director at Capstone Valuation Services. "Just say the word. I want Rutgers hockey on the map."

Yes, it would be a modest acknowledgement, but at least it would be a start. No one involved in this pursuit is naive to the obstacles ahead. These are hockey people, and they are hardwired to skate right at a challenge.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find Steve on Facebook.