I:
 
>>        Really?  I suppose there were still TV timeouts for the
>>assorted RSNs and commercial stations carrying the regionals.  I'm
>>sure I'm the only one who feels this way, but I'd be pretty happy if
>>the NC$$ put all their eggs in the PPV basket, made sure the
>>broadcasts were available thru cable outlets and not just mini-dishes,
>>and then played the regionals without TV timeouts.
 
Jim Walker:
 
>This would leave a lot of people out of the picture (pun intended).
>I, for one, am a displaced New Englander living in California and the
>odds of my local cable company offering a college hockey PPV event are
>slim.  The odds of a local bar showing the games are even
>slimmer. And, to top it off, I live in an apartment building so I
>can't buy a satellite dish.  This leaves me with AudioNet, which is
>great and I rely on this for most of the season to hear the games but
>sucks compared to seeing the games on TV.
 
>Also, this wouldn't help expand college hockey viewership.  A lot of people
>that wouldn't otherwise tune in, may watch the game if ESPN is doing the
>broadcasting.
 
        Sure, but it don't think E$PN is going to pick up the
regionals any time soon.  (Four of the eight games were on the deuce
three years ago.)  Sounds like you're in the same situation I am
(except that at least in California you don't have to buy a membership
to a sports bar--er, "private club").  What I'm saying is that if the
NC$$ scrapped the TV timeouts, thereby making the regionals only
attractive to PPV distributors, you and I would be no more screwed
than we are now, and at least we'd have the satisfaction of knowing
that the flow of the game was not disrupted for a telecast we had no
way of seeing.
 
        BTW, I actually watched the last two games of the West
Regional on M$C in a sports bar in Santa Barbara last year.  This year
I was home on regionals weekend for the first time since I started
caring, and I was totally out of luck.  (Then again given the ECAC's
performance I wouldn't have enjoyed it much anyway.)
 
                                         John Whelan, Cornell '91
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                      <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/joe.html>
 
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