> Gut feelings aside, is that weak enough for anyone willing to claim the
> ECAC is equal to the other three?
 
Of course, especially since the seeding of teams has until recently been
highly subjective, and the ECAC frequently was given poor seeds for the
same reason many will always assume it is not the equal of the other
leagues (even when as with last year's comparison of records with HE, the
actual data contradicts the errant bias) -- it will likely always suffer
from a perception of being a weaker league due to superior academics.  Just
one example: anyone who watched the crowd reaction to the Harvard national
title in '89 can attest that some less knowledgeable western fans fell into
this perception and were ready to laugh Harvard out of the rink.  After
all, they were nerds, right?
 
Well, perhaps (though I kinda thought that was the point of college).
However, they were also the best team in the NCAA that year, as they proved
on the ice.
 
We have this weird bias that the better the school, the worse must be its
athletics.  Hopefully Princeton in basketball, Harvard in the women's
basketball tournament, a spate of recent Ivy lacrosse champions, Stanford
and Duke's success in everything they try etc. might reverse this bias, but
I have my doubts.  It all goes back to high school -- you could tell at a
glance the jocks from the students, and you just "knew" who was the
superior athleete.  That level of bias, combined with defensiveness and a
touch of envy, still survives in many people long after those high school
days are over.
 
Their loss -- it's a great sport if you can watch it without bias.
 
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