At 7:04 PM 9/27/95, G. M. Finniss wrote:
>Hockey East home teams: New Hampshire(2), Boston College(1)
>ECAC home teams: Vermont(1), Colgate(1)
>CCHA home teams: Michigan(3), Bowling Green(2), Western Michigan(1), Michigan
>                 State(1), neutral site(1)
>WCHA home teams: Denver(3)
>
>With the exception of Colgate, all of these sites are near major cities, which
>obviously means the Prime people don't like to drive that far.
 
I thought Prime just picked up the broadcast of the station that was doing
the game, in most cases.  They may have sent in their own crew for the
LSSU-Vermont game last year.  When they pick up NESN games, they just stick
the Prime logo in place of the NESN logo.
 
Also, what qualifies as "near major cities"?  Burlington, VT is not big,
and it is probably closest to Montreal, an hour away.  UNH is in tiny
Durham, an hour from Boston.  And as you mentioned, Colgate is less than an
hour from Syracuse, a decent-sized city.
 
Some schools in or near major cities who do not appear: Harvard (Boston),
RPI (Albany), Brown (Providence & Boston), Minnesota (Minneapolis),
Wisconsin (Madison).
 
>Also, all are
>in arenas (there may be some exceptions here and there) that get large atten-
>dance figures and are known for loud atmospheres.
 
I'm not convinced that this was a big factor.  Look at the list of teams I
mentioned who will not appear.  And although BC's attendance will hopefully
pick up this year, it has been atrocious of late.
 
>But, one has to wonder why Denver received
>3 home games, which are all of the WCHA clashes televised, when teams like
>Minnesota (with a new arena) and Wisconsin (with a very noisy building) were
>passed over (especially when it's really tough to get into Denver in the
>winter, tougher than Madison or Minneapolis).
 
I'm wondering why the MSC broadcasts of Gopher games aren't picked up.  MSC
does as slick and professional a job as anybody, and the announcers are
good.  I don't know what "in" the Denver people have that MSC doesn't,
unless MSC just won't allow their games to be shown on Prime.  But they did
make them available to WABU last year in Boston for the Mariucci Classic.
 
Just as a note, the NESN HE schedule is remarkably well-balanced.  There
are 13 games currently scheduled, with 26 possible appearances.  HE has 9
teams, and everyone makes 3 appearances except for one team which has two
(BC - and there are three TBA games that BC may be chosen for).  You can't
get much more balanced than that.  I do know that HE sits down with the
NESN folks and they try hard to both cover everyone and hit the games of
some significance and interest.
 
As a college hockey fan, I'm glad Prime will be bringing us matchups like
LSSU-Michigan, CC-DU and LSSU-MSU; I'm disappointed that they will again
bypass matchups like Maine-BU, Harvard-Brown and Minnesota-Wisconsin.
(NESN will not have Maine-BU, but WABU will, and their production is good
enough that it could be shown nationwide).  I know Prime cannot show
everything, but some of these missed games would better showcase the sport
than some of the ones they have chosen.  Again, I have to seriously
question the way in which the schedule was drawn up.  The fans of the sport
across the country seem to be the real losers here.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
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