This is about college hockey (bear with me) and about gender-equity
pressures on ADs of Div. I schools (like mine, Univ of SC) and inertia in
the resistance to supporting hockey in my corner, Columbia, of the New
South (not new enough).
 
    Last year we lured a tough guy AD away from the other USC in the West,
Mike Magee, an old Duke football lineman now in mid-fifties. He fired our
hapless b-ball coach and coaxed phenom Eddie Fogler away from Vandy where
they wouldn't raise his salary and where they don't admit enough
non-qualifiers to make a program competitive on nights when there's no
chemistry. Smart money says he will fire our football coach, Sparky Woods,
after two recent disasters on ESPN among others in a disappointing season
for the Gamecocks.
 
    O.K., I'm in my third year on the faculty athletics committee, and I've
been trying to ask him the questions that make him pause then choose his
words slowly and carefully--under freedom of information a local newspaper
writer regularly sits in on our monthly meetings. The owners of the local
minor league baseball feeder franchise want to build the first (!!) hockey
rink in the Columbia area, and bring us a new hockey franchise in the
Eastern League (Raleigh, Richmond, Chrlotte, etc.). So I ask Magee if he and
the University will at least give courtesy moral support to this promising
venture.
 
   Magee (a) smiles and says he has zero interest in hockey, and, when I
remind him we need more women's sports (to keep ahead of the equity police),
(b) says with a straight face that women don't play hockey! I correct him.
He slaps his knee, and says, aw, I can't get away with anything with you
guys. Laughs and, characteristically, leaves the meeting early. Water off
a big duck's back.
 
That's the news from Woebegone South.
 
Kevin Lewis (Harvard '65 -- which reminds me, keep the news of Team USA
             coming over the list. I played a little with Tim Taylor in
             college; I remember his love of the game and wish him well.
             In Columbia there's an ongoing blackout of news re. college
             hockey and Team USA.)