Both Serratores are retiring, and college hockey loses a family act

College hockey is about to lose the best brother act it has ever had, and it's losing both of them in the same spring. Frank Serratore announced this week that his 30th season at Air Force is his last. His younger brother Tom made the same call at Bemidji State two weeks earlier.

Two coaches who built something out of nothing, at two schools the rest of the sport used to treat as a road trip to survive. One more winter of them, and then the bench looks different in Colorado Springs and in northern Minnesota at the same time.

What they built

Start with Frank. He came to the Academy in 1997, after four seasons running Denver in the early '90s. He has more than 500 Division I wins, seven NCAA tournament trips and seven conference titles, and he's the winningest coach in Atlantic Hockey America history.

The one everybody remembers is March 2009. Air Force shut out top-seeded Michigan 2-0 for the program's first NCAA tournament win, then lost to Vermont in overtime one step from the Frozen Four.

Tom got the step his brother didn't. That same spring, Bemidji State went to the Frozen Four. Tom is 416-397-108 in 26 seasons there, with six regular-season conference titles and three tournament titles, at a program a lot of the sport overlooked.

Frank's version of 2009 is the best line of the week. "It's little brother syndrome," he said. "He's always got to be first."

Why now

Neither one is leaving because the fire went out. Tom said more has changed in college sports in the last five years than in his previous 20. Frank named the two things.

"This transfer portal and the NIL that's creeped more and more into our game," he said, "has taken a lot of battery acid out of guys."

He's right, and the list proves it.

Keith Allain, Jeff Jackson, Mike Schafer, Brian Riley, Bobby Daniels and Wayne Wilson have all walked away in the last few years. The coaches who grew up recruiting 17-year-olds out of junior now spend spring managing a portal. That's a different job, and a lot of great hockey coaches never signed up for it.

Who's next

Both programs kept it in the family. Joe Doyle, an Air Force alum from the late '80s and the associate head coach, takes over at the Academy in 2027-28. Travis Winter, who played defense for Tom at Bemidji from 2005 to 2009, gets the Beavers.

That's the right move twice. Programs like these don't win by outbidding anybody. They win because the people inside them believe in the place, and both successors already do.

Quinnipiac's Rand Pecknold is already the dean at 33 seasons. After this spring, Scott Sandelin at Duluth, at 27, is the only other coach left in that neighborhood.

Rivalry file: Air Force and Bemidji aren't on each other's schedule this season, so there's no last brothers' weekend. The farewell tours run separately.

Air Force starts Friday with an exhibition against Omaha. Bemidji opens Saturday at home against St. Cloud State.

My call: go see one of them if you can. You'll be watching coaches who made small-barn hockey matter nationally, and we're not getting many more of them.