Here it is, the end of college hockey season and, since I'm not
a baseball, basketball or pro hockey fan, there's nothing to do except start on my tax returns and count the days until October.
 
Actually I have one more thing: tally up the results of the pool. I have the winners, I'm just fighting once again with formatting the results to post on e-mail.
 
A reminder to those who may have forgotten: the application for the lottery for next year's finals in Albany must be in by April 14.
 
Just a few more comments on ESPN coverage. Fortunately, there were 3 excellent games. Unfortunately, the announcers were so biased as to detract from the games. I really like to listen to the crowd noise to make me feel as if I were there, but the announcers detracted so much from the broadcast, I was forced to turn the volume off.  The only two things they missed: Pat O'Brien playing Len Ceglarski and Ronald Reagan playing Doug Flutie with Len giving the team the "Let's win this one for the Gipper". They also missed having Brendan Morison come on after the game to give his famous "The best team didn't win" speech.
 
I was really neutral about both teams. I have no ties to either
UND or BC. If I had to favor any team, it probably would have been BC, since they are the eastern team, the slight underdog
and their team hasn't won in so long (as opposed to UND).
But after all the Flutie shots and statements like "about 1000 North Dakota fans travelled here from Grand Forks; the rest
of the 11000 fans drove an hour from Boston to cheer on their Eagles", I just couldn't stand it any more. I found myself pulling for the Sioux just because the announcers seemed to think the game was just a formality before the trophy was awarded to BC.
 
I would expect more objectivity from a regional broadcast. But this was national. I just expected better. Someone mentioned the comparison of touting just the stars and downplaying the team effort.  I hadn't really thought of it that way, but it was an excellent point. Maybe that's the trick the announcers use so they only have to familiarize themselves with a few players and don't have to learn a lot about all the players. Whatever.
At least the games are televised and my TV has a volume switch.
We're far better off with coverage now than we were in the past.
 
All I can say is
Wait til next year
 
Mark Lewin
RPI
class of '69
 
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