The game I
>saw Saturday (I'll admit it, it was my first game of the season) was your
>typical UND/UofM tilt.  A bunch of Minnesota boys beating a bunch of
>Canadian Juniors who get pissed off and get cheap.  Then, after soundly
 
Gee--I didn't realize Minnesota-bred hockey players are so much more
gentlemanly than their Canadian and other-state-in-the-U.S. peers!  I
honestly haven't observed this difference between Minnesotans on the
Goden Gophers or other teams and players from elsewhere.  And, I suspect
the Gophers themselves just might not want there to be one.  ;-)
>
>     About the in-state only recruiting.  When the Wooger intentionally
>goes out of state (or worse yet up to Canada) to get players, I, along
>with about 9000 others, will turn in our season tickets and ask the
>governer to get us another pro team.  Then we can watch the game those
>guys play on ice where you clutch and grab and fight.  I think they call
>it "professional hockey" down in Dallas.
 
Tell me--do the Gopher players get scholarships from Minnesota?  Or do
they just enroll in school there and play hockey for the simple, amateur
love of it?  The point is that scholarship athletes are, in effect,
professionals; i.e., they're being rewarded with financially significant
items in return for playing for their institutions.  How close
geographically they happen to have lived to the school they play for has
nothing do with "professionalism." Incidentally, how many in-state
players do the other Gopher athletic teams have?
 
Minnesota has a very strong youth hockey program, as a state, and only
three Division I programs competing in-state for the talent.  Thus it
has made good sense that UMinn has been able to play at a very high
level while not bothering to recruit out of state.  That's perfectly
reasonable, but there's nothing saintly about it.  If true "amateurism"
and "home state boosterism" were really what this is all about, you'd be
perfectly happy with club hockey, not NCAA Division I level competition.
 
Steve Christopher, Northern Michigan University
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