> OSU coach Jerry Walsh, on limiting NCAA hockey teams to one full-time
> assistant coach:
 
> "But on the other side, that's what I've been dealing with for years.  I've
> only had one full-time assistant and half of another assistant here for
 years."
 
> A response, posted on this list:
 
> "If for some reason OSU should decide it is not prepared to work as
> hard to field a DivI hockey team as many other schools, then so be it,
> but don't try to field such a team by bringing everyone else down."
 
> The respondant's attitude wouldn't surprise me if it were a minority
> opinion, but nobody on the list has come forward to challenge it, and
> that is disturbing. Does *everybody* out there equate de-emphasizing
> athletics with respect to academics with "not working hard"?
 
Sorry -- I don't think cutting the number of coaches is the same as
"de-emphasizing athletics withj respect to academics." It is, in a
broad sweeping generalization, the NCAA attempting to cut costs, and
look good, without knowing much about the situation. Cutting coaches
means each student-athlete gets less coaching, has to wait longer to
get the coaches attention, etc. It doesn't cut practice times, lessen
the number of intrusive road trips, or do anything to help the
student-athlete do better in or have a better attitude toward academics.
 
The original rule would have also limited off-campus recruiting to the
head coach and full time assistant, leaving the weekly coaching duties
to the part-time assistant and whichever recruiting coach was in town.
This was fine-tuned (if I got it right from the papers) to only limit
the number of coaches recruiting at the same time to 2, and not specify
which coaches it had to be.
 
Cutting the number of games is a similar bad implementation of a good
idea, when there is a *VAST* difference (in my opinion) between 32
games, all played on friday-saturday nights (or on other nights when
school is not in sesssion) and 32 games, half of which are on
weeknights even while school is in session (this is not an attack on
the eastern teams, btw, if we wanted to do a real comparison we should
also take into account travel distances and times. In fact, if anything
it is an attack on college basketball, which plays anywhere and anytime
that TV will pay for it...).
 
When hockey failed to get its coach back at the NCAA convention, one
of the local papers reported that among other mistakes hockey made,
they didn't get their proposal approved by the NCAA council (or some
other smaller leadership body -- I don't remember the exact name) prior
to the convention. It seems that the only Division I hockey school that
had a representative on this committee VOTED AGAINST HOCKEY's PROPOSAL
-- and everyone else said, in effect, "if X voted against their own
proposal, why should we vote for it?" X is an eastern school, but I
don't remember which one. Maybe someone out there can add to this
report...
 
 
	--david
 
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david parter				university of wisconsin -- madison
[log in to unmask]			      computer sciences department