A long-time pet peeve of mine is that despite claiming to be an
alternative news source, when it comes to sports, National Public
Radio is frighteningly mainstream, and in particular they prattle on
incessently about "March Madness" this time of year.  (In fact I
nearly wrote to Weekend Edition Saturday to follow up a letter
complaining about how little attention the women's Final Four[TM] was
getting, in order to point out that there were in fact sports other
than basketball holding their championships and being completely
ignored.)

Imagine my surprise, then, to hear John Ydstie and Stefan Fatsis (a
Wall Street Journal reporter who does a regular piece about the
business of sports) finish a conversation about the NHL's woes with
"Let's talk college hockey"!  They mentioned the Frozen Four[TM] by
name, got the site and all four teams right, and talked about what a
phenomenal success this year's has been attendance-wise, and how it's
grown over the years.  They even mentioned the recently-concluded
women's championship, won for the second year of its existence by "The
University of Minnesota at Duluth", and speculated that the next step
was for men's hockey powerhouses (they mentioned two Western teams and
Boston University) to develop Division I programs.  The only quibble
I'd have is that they could have mentioned that quite a few men's
hockey powers (including both participants in today's championship
game) already have D1 women's teams.

All in all, a well-researched minute of two of discussion, and a
refreshing surprise from NPR.  (Maybe I will write that letter after
all, letting them know I was glad to hear them give some mention to
one of my favorite sports.)

The piece was near the end of the first hour; a synopsis and a
RealAudio file of the piece itself are available on the web at

http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=04/05/2002&PrgID=2

The piece is entitled "Hockey" (it's mostly about the NHL) and is
located about halfway down the page.
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                 [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/

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