There has been much talk recently about who is to blame for RPI's
recent loss to Princeton. As I wasn't there, my opinion is certainly
worthless. It seems to me that one cannot this early in the season
even conclude whether or not this was an upset as not enough games have
been played, although certainly the 9-1 score does not correpond to the
relative talent level of the two teams.
A number of people have commented that in one-sport schools undue
pressure is put on the team in question by the fans and the local
media. RPI fits the description of a one-sport school (or at least one
that the students care about). This was the situation when I was there
(1964-74) and still appears to be the case now. I think, as has been
commented upon before, that this pressure gives rise to both upset wins
and upset loses (and I am not stating that Princeton was one of these).
It has been stated that the Siena basketball team actually gets more
press than the RPI Hockey team, but clearly there is enough ink for
both.
I guess that a good question would be what could be done to keep this
pressure from occurring. I don't have an answer. I personally think
that it is a good thing for a small school to have one sport that is
big-time. What else is there to do in Troy on winter weekends besides
studying and going to Hockey games? Not much, when I was there. From
my experience there was very little school spirit at RPI besides for
watching the Hockey team. I have seen no evidence on Hockey-L that
this has changed in the least. (Actually, the only change that I have
noted is that the male-female ratio has changed to 4-1. My Freshman
class had about 25 females in a class of slightly over 1000, and this
was the most females in history at the time, indeed supposedly more
than in the other three classes there at the time in total.)
It has been commented that RPI is still feeling the effect of winning
the national championship in 1985 -- do it once and they expect it
every year. I have a bit of a hard time believing this. It is now
nine years since 1985. When I arrived in 1964, it was ten years since
the 1954 championship -- almost the same -- and I don't recall much
talk of that. Of course, then none of the players from 1954 were still
playing hockey at least at the pro level, while several players from
1985 are in the NHL and the minor leagues making it a bit harder to
forget the championship now.
I had not thought about it this way previously, but this year is in
a couple of ways similar to my Freshman year. In both cases, the team
was coming off of an NCAA appearance and had a new coach. In 1964-5,
the team lost its best player from the year before, Bob Brinkworth, and
struggled to a .500 record suffering from the usual lack of depth. I
don't think that the analogy can be carried much further as the school
in 1964 was quite happy with the performance in the tournament while
apparently that is not the case now. (I am not stating that I think
that RPI should have beaten UNH last spring, only that that was the
prevalent opinion put forth at the time.) In 1964, RPI was seated 6th
in the ECAC and ended up third in the tourney. When SLU decided not to
attend the NCAA tourney (does anyone know why?), RPI went in its place
and again finished third.
Little has been stated about what occurs at other schools that are also
one-sport schools. There has been some comment about Bowling Green, but
the situation, although perhaps similar, is not exactly the same there
because BGSU is a Div-I school. (I do hear about their football and
basketball teams on the news, never about RPI's.) What is it like at
Clarkson, LSSU, MTU, etc? Do people think that Clarkson's early season
performance over the last few years is due to the same phenomenon?
Ralph Baer
RPI (I can't say Rensselaer) '68, '70, '74
By the way, in 1968-69, an 0-9 Princeton team beat a nationally-ranked
RPI team that had earlier that year beaten Cornell with Ken Dryden.
|
