On Mon, 14 Mar 1994, Kevin Lewis wrote:
 
> The perception has grown slowly that, at fifty, I'm pretty old for this
> readership (this friendly core circle of self-deprecating hockey nuts),
> or at least old for those who send in posts. I did not expect that reading
> the daily logs--some days it's like cleaning the stables--would make me feel
> old. But it has, and this has made me wonder if hockey in this country, like
> MTV, is only for the young.
 
Well, my father (whose age I will not print here, because he will read
it) is in your ballpark and is applying for an email account as a
Merrimack alum just so he can read hockey-l.  Right now, I send him a
compilation of posts to read.
 
> Following this line of thought, it occurs to me that we will not get the
> exposure and the sport will not grow and, in growth, touch deeper down into
> the American psyche (:-)) until it survives, as a love, into our older age
> brackets.
 
While I can hardly offer a school as small as Merrimack (2,000 students)
as indicative of the college hockey "market," they typically draw a crow
that I would say is at least half local people aged 25-30 and above.  We
have more of a problem drawing a consistent student crowd. The older
fans, IMHO, also tend to be a bit more knowledgeable than the students.
(And they show up for all three periods, instead of just the second and
half of the third.)
 
> Or maybe the issue is not college hockey but, in the case of Hockey-L,
> computer familiarity. Is it mainly the young who use the net or join lists
> or spend hours reading everything because they have grown up with computers
> (and my generation hasn't) and have more time on their hands? :-) Would
> this explain what I am sensing?
 
Perhaps its not so much a question of computer familiarity, but one of
access.  Most people I know who have access to internet do because of a
Unix or Vax timesharing account they hold as a student at a college.
Others have accounts attached to their place of employment.  The smallest
group seems to me to be those who use BBSes as Internet gateways- and
these are more likely to be your harder-core digitheads.
 
So to some extent, the average hockey-l-er age would seem to be affected
more by the average age of college students because of increased computer
access than by increased computer knowledge.  Here at $yracuse
University, there is a fine (but overburdened) Unix system and an old,
in-the-process-of-being-phased-out Vax. Even so, I believe that less than
25% of those on campus use electronic mail on a regular basis.
 
> Greater computer know-how may be a factor, but I don't think it entirely
> explains what I'm getting at. Which is: why can't hockey (college hockey in
> particular) hold more appeal for the older crowd? Why does it seem from the
> postings on the list that it's often a matter of kids in the student section
> thinking up nifty jeer choruses and hating and baiting the all-too-human refs?
 
Perhaps a better question is why other college sports (basketball,
football) do have the ability to cross over into those age groups IF it
is true that hockey doesn't.  The most likely reason to me is that the
crossover follows the patterns of the analogous pro sport- and the NHL
right know is still the poor stepsister of the NBA, the NFL, and even pro
baseball.
 
> Was that a low blow? Apologies.
 
I'm sure the refs will get over it ;->
 
> Item: There's a *game* out there on the ice, a game of infinitely variable,
> gracefully executed passing and positioning, punctuated by heartening
> collisions and vivid displays of stickhandling and shooting skills. Again
> I want to say (reinforcing) thanks to those who report in vivid detail,
> so that it comes alive, the action of games you watch and I can't. Thanks.
> It has been a great season (my first on the list), and I thought I had lost
> it for good when I moved south twenty years ago.
 
Wow.  Did you copyright that?  Quick, before the Hockey News calls!
That's gotta be one of the most literary praises of hockey I've ever heard.
 
> Kevin
 
Great post, Kevin.  Add 50 bonus points for not using the word "Maine"
anywhere in the text.
 
David M. Josselyn
[log in to unmask]
 
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