Mike wrote...
>I'm certainly not trying to prolong this or pick on Reg, he just
>expressed something I have seen and heard many times...while my personal
>opinion is that schools should recruit who they want from where they
>want (as long as rules aren't broken), I think it is dangerous and
>unfair to label the way Minnesota has recruited as "classy" and
>"honorable".
 
>It is nice that Minnesota has been so successful for so long by
>recruiting the way they have, and it is perfectly okay by me if the
>folks there are proud of having maintained this tradition.  But
>calling the practice of recruiting only in-state players "classy" and
>"honorable" implies, intended or not, that nearly every other program
>in DivI is not classy or honorable because they recruit out of state
>or out of the US.
 
>After all, few programs have had the kind of easy access to local
>players that Minnesota has had.  The next closest comparison I could
>make here is Boston College which had a similar type of access to
>Massachusetts kids until recently.  In fact, for a long time, I heard
>it said that "BC doesn't go to kids; kids go to BC".  For the other 8
>DivI programs located within 45 minutes of BC, if they were going to
>remain competitive, they had no choice but to look out of state and to
>Canada.  That doesn't mean they gave up on the local kids.  And we
>shouldn't forget how much time and effort the coaches put in to try to
>bring in the best players possible.  I think Merrimack assistant Stu
 
(remainder of this excellent post deleted...)
 
     Once again, Mike has stated the case very well.  UMinn has
an outstanding talent pool of high school players from which to draw,
and competes only with UMD and SCS in-state.  Clarkson, for example, is
one of six Div I teams in New York state (I think, if we omit Army) which
doesn't have nearly the same amount of talent as Minnesota.  Besides,
Clarkson is much closer to Montreal and Ottawa than it is, say, to Albany,
and yes, we do get Canadian students who aren't on the hockey team.  Yet the
partisan Minnesota announcers on Prime Network's telecast of the Gophers'
NCAA tournament win over the Knights last year seemed to imply that there
was some dishonor in the fact that our roster had a number of Canadians
and even (egad!) a Finn.
     As for the issue of emphasis on athletics vs. academics, I agree with
Bri that there is plenty of hypocrisy.  I don't think it's limited to the
NCAA, though.  College hockey seems to have, as some have already said, a
nice balance (unlike the "big" sports) in which most of the players are
serious about their education and Universities don't become factories for
pro players.  If I were to say, however, that I think players shouldn't be
recruited or given scholarships, the hypocrisy would be mine.  By being on
this discussion list we are placing emphasis on college hockey and showing
that our teams are important.  If a person does that, travels long distances
for games and spends lots of money on school/fan related souvenirs, they
are fueling the machinery which leads to Universities emphasizing winning
among their athletic teams.  We can't have it both ways, wanting ESPN to
show games, cheering our teams until we're hoarse, but still wanting
college sports to be just a small accessory to students' educations.  The
main reason college hockey hasn't become like football and basketball is
because there aren't more rabid hockey fans like us.  I have met the enemy
and he is me.
 
-Glenn