I don't think all of the blame goes to ESPN and the NCAA.  I seem to
remember a lot of talk a few years ago about contract negotiations between
the CCHA and ESPN.  It seems that ESPN wanted to air college hockey on
ESPN2 during the NHL players' strike.  The CCHA turned them down
preferring to stay with PASS (Prime Sports).
 
Roger
 
On Tue, 4 Mar 1997, Brian D Helland wrote:
 
> TV Coverage of NCAA Div.I College Hockey is a total joke.  Unless you
> live in a College Hockey town that has a local station that carries it,
> you are out of luck.  ESPN gets most of the blame, and rightfully so!!!
> They will air garbage like the "Extreme Games", Professional Pool (I kid
> you not, I saw it once!!!), and Yaht Racing.  But put an exciting and
> addicting product like College Hockey in front of them, and they ignore
> it.  Maybe it didn't occur to these corporate suits that if you gave the
> viewing public a taste of College Hockey, at least SOME of them might
> get hooked?!?!  But, I believe that the Anti-Hockey NC$$ is also to
> blame.  They don't care about Hockey at all.  They do nothing to promote
> it, and they have a whole host of rules that hurt it (Major Juniors Rule
> tops the list, but that's a different post).  I believe that, if given
> the chance, that Div.I College Hockey could become a major money maker
> for the NC$$.  But, since most of the NC$$ suits played or were raised on
> Basketball and Football, and they probably think of hockey as an
> "Elitist Sport" (which it is not!), they don't want anything to do with
> promoting it.  I think that it is up to College Hockey supporters to
> organize a private network of local TV stations in order to promote
> College Hockey.  It would feature Series of the Week, studio and coaches
> shows, ect.  Each league could organize their own network.  Then, all of
> us fans could tell ESPN to take a long walk off a short pier!!!!  Just my
> opinion, of course.
>
> Brian.
> (Go UND Fighting Sioux!!!!)
>
> HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
> [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.
>
 
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[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.