Between periods of Friday's Colgate/RPI game,
WRPI announcers interviewed ECAC Commissioner
Jeff Fanter. While I didn't catch the entire interview,
some interesting points were made.
 
One was that the ECAC was striving to use the live
internet broadcast to their advantage. It was unclear
whether he was alluding to an ECAC game of the week
or to work with those school's who have no internet
presence (St. Lawrence, Dartmouth,Colgate) to get onto
the net. It will be interesting to see how the ECAC proceeds.
In the past, Hockey East has put on the Game of the Week
but has backed off in favor of encouraging ("assisting")
its members to establish their own presence on the net,
Newcomer MAAC has started the GOW but none of the current
MAAC members has an established presence on the net. In addition,
attendance numbers for MAAC games have been awful with some
games drawing under 1000.  It's much too early to draw any
conclusions about hockey in the MAAC but it may be tough to
justify an internet presence for MAAC schools when they draw
so few at home and most of the schools have little, if any,
hockey tradition at the D-1 level. This tradition is usually
prerequisite for establishing a presence on the net since the
internet broadcast is most easily justified financially by the
argument that the broadcasts will draw geographically dispersed
alumni back to school sports events which can and does directly
translate to an increase in alumni donations. With no hockey
tradition at these schools, that argument can hardly be taken seriously
this early the MAAC's existence.
 
During a discussion of the format of the ECAC tournament,
it was stated that they still consider the final five an
experiment in progress. However, he stated categorically
that he did not consider going back to the Tuesday night
game as a viable alternative. It seems as if the decision
will be between the current final five or going back to
an 8 team tournament instead of the current 10. He states
that the current format is favored since the conference
is so balanced that the 9-10 teams are not incapable of
winning it all. As examples, he pointed out that St. Lawrence
came very close to knocking #1 Yale out in the 1st round
last year. Additionally, #8 Cornell got past RPI in the 1st round
to make it to Placid and #7 Princeton not only got past the 1st
round but went all the way to win the tournament.
 
As much as I dislike the current makeup of the tournament,
after just one year, Fanter does have a compelling argument
to maintain the status quo. Backing him up is an almost unanimous
dislike of the Tuesday night playdown game by every coach in the
league.
Mark Lewin
RPI '69
 
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