The World University Games (WUG) may have just gotten under way, but they've been generating controversy for the last five months.

No. 1-ranked Rhode Island is the only top-five team in the ACHA not to send any players. Penn State, Ohio, Illinois and Lindenwood -- the other top five teams -- combined to send a dozen starters whom they'll lose for nearly an entire month.

Rumors started circulating in August that the Rams refused to send any skaters to the WUG, the equivalent of a college-student Olympics, in order to better their chances at a national championship.

But Rhode Island coach Joe Augustine refuted the claim.

"I've heard it from a couple of guys through the grapevine," he said. "But nobody has ever picked up the phone and said, 'Look. Why is no one going?' It really just comes down to finances."

While it may be difficult to believe a Rhode Island team that boasts 44 corporate sponsors, 48 individual sponsors, 30 players on a sponsorship program and recently opened a new $12 million arena in September 2002 has financial troubles, that's the story to which Augustine is sticking.

Players were forced to come up with their own funds to attend the hockey tryout from Aug. 6-8 in St. Cloud, Minn. And if the skaters were chosen to advance to the WUG in Austria, they had to come up with $1,200 -- USA Hockey paid for the remaining cost of the trip.

For Penn State, at least, money wasn't much of an issue.

"I think some of the money is coming out of the Endowment Fund to pay for the trip, and the booster club may raise some money," Icers forward Kevin Jaeger said before leaving for Austria. "We're not paying for the trip at all."

Ohio coach Dan Morris also said "there's no cost to our players" and stated there were five to six areas from which the team would be receiving funds: such as "our college, our team and the student activity council."

Still, Morris said he understood that attending the tryout in St. Cloud might have been too much of a burden for the Rams' players.

"The camp was maybe unfair to someone who lives in Rhode Island because they have to travel to Minnesota to try out for the team," he said.

Augustine said he encouraged all of his nominated players to attend the WUG but asked, "What do I do? Make the guys go?"

According to the Rhode Island coach, the decision was up to every individual whether or not he wanted to go.

Augustine even went on to say that he "feels left out, too" because he was offered the assistant coaching position but was forced to turn it down. Augustine works only part-time at the University of Rhode Island and has two jobs, the other of which is at Coca-Cola where he's worked for the last 20 years. Of course, most jobs don't allow one-month vacations.

Although Augustine said the decision to not send anyone to the WUG won't give his team an edge, it's pretty difficult not to imagine an advantage arising from a Rams squad at full-strength squaring off against a Penn State team that is without three of its best players -- Kevin Jaeger, Joe Maglaque and Eric Harbaugh.