Greg R. Berge wrote:
 
> Well, how far apart do you think ECAC teams are?  90 miles apart is very
> close, believe me.  Only SLU-Clarkson, Union-RPI-Vermont, and Harvard-Brown
> are even remotely as close as that in the ECAC.  A couple hour's drive just
> should not be a big deal, especially in a west culture where one drives to
> get to the mailbox (I say that as a proud adoptee Oregonian who observes
> people at my work driving to get between building *across the street* from
> each other! ;-)
 
This was actually more directed at hockey east fans, since they are the ones
who usually can't get the distance thing down.  Still, in the WCHA, the long
trips are the ones involving four digits.   A couple hours' drive might not be
too much.  In two hours, I can get from here to St. Cloud or Duluth.  Add a
couple more hours and I can also get to, well, nowhere.  (Madison is about 4
1/2).  Denver and CC, in addition to being small, are 1000+ miles from any
other league schools.  As Erik Biever said, all of the Michigan sites are
better than a ten hour drive from here.  Don't expect to see too many North
Dakota fans in Ann Arbor this weekend.
 
These kinds of travel times play a major role.  Greg Ambrose basically
complained that western populations don't have much love for hockey since they
don't show up if the local team isn't involved.  A major part of his example
was that Michigan and Michigan State fans didn't go to games in Detroit when
their team wasn't in it.  How many Cornell fans will be in Albany this weekend
for a tournament that the Big Red isn't in?  It is somewhat farther than the
drive from E. Lansing to Detroit, but we're talking in the same ballpark.
 
> True, but.  It is also a fact that the western schools tend to be Large
> Midwestern Universities -- state schools which have enormous state-wide
> support.  The in-state percentages and base enrollments of the CCHA and
> WCHA schools are huge, and a lot of these folks also stay in-state after
> graduation.  Most ECAC schools have an out of state diaspora rivaling or
> even larger than than their in-state alumni pools.  It is probably not a
> coincidence that the school with the largest traveling fan base in the ECAC
> is also a school with a relatively large and very geographically-diverse
> alumni.
 
True, but.  It isn't just the big public schools that outdraw eastern teams.
Colorado College, which is neither big nor public, averaged more than 5,000 per
game.  Denver and North Dakota did as well, and they aren't that big (8,000 and
12,000 students respectively).  I'm not sure how many fans Lake Superior
averages, but it's small too.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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