David Haftield writes:
 
>greenie <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
>>In a way I almost kind of wish that no Boston team would have made it to
>>the final four this year, as the house would have been filled only with
>>solid hockey fans and not bandwagon jumpers. Now *that* would have been the
>>best way to judge if Boston is "hockeytown" or not.
 
>Hmmm...I'm not sure how to interpret this statement.  This seems to imply
>that all college hockey fans rooting for Boston-based teams are
>fair-weather bandwagon jumpers.  While I have absolutely no data to back
>this up, I would argue that this is totally untrue!  I don't dispute the
>stories about some of the local fan's interest being driven by who was
>playing.
 
        I think this list is unduly harsh towards fans whose interest
in the Frozen Four is dependent on whether their team is in it.
Looking at things from the opposite perspective, you have to respect
someone who makes a trip to a tournament they would not otherwise have
attended, in order to follow their team.  That said, criticism of
folks who waited to get tickets to the final *game* until they knew
who'd be in it (which is really what Greenie was talking about) is
well-placed.  If you're attending an event, it's good form to watch
all of the games once you're there.  And waiting to secure tickets to
the final until your team's semifinal is over, when your team is the
local favorite, is just plain boneheaded.
 
        It also seems to me like the NC$$ is just begging for people
to sell off their tickets by making everyone buy tickets for all three
games, and then turning around and
        1) Putting a long break between the two semifinals so that
they're separate events
        2) Printing up tickets for all three games and not just a
single pass (I believe the tickets from Milwaukee even had
individual-game prices printed on them, even though you couldn't buy
them that way)
        3) Not having a consolation game, so that two of the four
teams are done on Thursday
 
Compare a typical four-game tournament (alas, none of the four
conferences ran their tournaments this way) where each day the two
games are held one after the other on the same ticket, and all four
teams play both days.  That really encourages fans to attend every
game.  Of course, conference tournaments don't sell out, so the same
group of people can fit in the building all at once.  Scheduling the
Frozen Four as three separate one-game events lets the maximum number
of people see the games they want to see.
 
                                         John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                               <[log in to unmask]>
                      <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/joe.html>
 
        Learn about the NCAA selection process on the web at
       http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?pairwise
 
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