>By Tom Powers
>St. Paul Pioneer Press
...
>        In legal disputes, judges look to the Constitution for answers.
>In religious arguments, theologians check the Bible. When it comes
>to hockey, John Mariucci should be the final word.
 
Yikes.  This guy is pretty frightening.  He really has his own column
out there?
 
It is clear that Tom Powers does not live in the Real World(tm).  He
lives in his own Gopherland, where the Word According to Mariucci
reigns supreme.
 
Meanwhile, 95% of those who support college hockey in the USA support
programs with real problems and real obstacles in recruiting.  But I
guess we are heathens.
 
>        So it's time to beef up the border patrol. Those scholarship
>benefits should be going to U.S. youngsters.
 
I wasn't aware that Minnesota was awarding scholarships to the United
States of America.
 
>        Granted, it's easy to sit here in Minnesota, where there
>are a dozen hockey players on every street corner and dictate what
>out-of-state schools can and can't do.
 
It's no surprise that his system would result in Minnesota winning the
national championship every year. :-) It certainly sounds like sour
grapes on his part.  The Gophers haven't won in years...let's change
the rules.
 
As I had suggested privately to the Minnesota folks, it might not be a
bad idea for him to spend a week in the Merrimack Valley and see what
Lowell and Merrimack have to deal with in trying to build a winning
program.  He could listen to the stories of players offered scholarships
who turn them down to walk on at Boston College and Providence...local
players who reject Merrimack and Lowell because they want to play in
nice on-campus buildings like BU, BC, and UMass (and Minnesota) have...
coaches who are expected to win as much as those in Minnesota but who
have to spend thousands of hours a year on the road and in hotels all
over North America just to try to find that one kid who will turn
things around.  He might learn a lot about what the true nature of
college hockey really is.  The truth is that the situation in Minnesota
is very much not the norm.
 
Oh well...in the grand scheme of things, Tom Powers' narrow-minded
views really don't matter a hill of beans.  But with all his talk
about quotas and limits, I'm happy that he wasn't in charge when my
great-grandparents decided to come to this country less than a hundred
years ago.  I wouldn't be here today.  Nor would many of the kids who
are currently playing for the Gophers, either...
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                                            [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93