F.W. Sharrock wrote:
 
> Please, enough of the gratuitous insults to the Army hockey team!
> ...  For the record, this season,
> Army also tied Princeton, currently #1 in the ECAC; last year Army
> beat Cornell 4-1; for the last two seasons, Army lost to Colgate by
> a single point.  Hmmm.
>
> One can only imagine what an Army team that was not "decidedly
> lesser" could do.  However, not too shabby that a team composed
> solely of players from the United States can tie the two top ranked
> teams in the ECAC, eh?
 
 
This is a classic R-E-S-P-E-C-T problem: when a major underdog stands up
and bites a favorite, the main response tends to be "the favorite played
horribly" rather than "the underdog is better than we thought".  And,
indeed, everybody I've heard talk about the Cornell game in particular
pronounced it horrendously bad hockey.  Even that might be
question-begging: Cornell may well have looked bad precisely because Army
shut them down.
 
Army has 2 problems with garnering respect, no matter what they do.  First,
the Indies just don't get broad-based respect either in the public mind or
in ratings.  Second, when Army *was* in the ECAC, they were guite
un-gratuitously awful.  (Not that Cornell handled them then, either... :-)
 
So, if you keep playing well but never get respect, what can you do?  Well,
one answer is that eventually you *do* get respect -- it's just an unfairly
long process.  Another answer is, does it really matter?  Wins are wins and
ties are ties. :-)
 
Greg Berge
Let's Go Red!
 
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