Hello All:

I dont know about the ECAC/MAAC proposals to shorten the season, so I
cant comment, but I hope it doesnt go through. However I do know this,
if you look at some of the teams, they are already in the mid 40s, and
by tourney's end will be close to 50 games played. Speaking as a faculty
person at a D-I school, I think that is pushing it a bit. Is it
STUDENT-athlete or student-ATHLETE?

At Cal Poly, I routinely have softball and baseball players in my
classes. Women's softball plays up to 70 games in about 4 months, and
baseball can be higher than that. Continually I am officially asked to
give makeup tests, for copies of my lecture notes, to skip labs, etc....
at some point, it becomes too much, so ....

Let's talk regular season only: roundball plays typically 30. By
tourney's end they play at most 35. To me that is about the max. I think
the current 34 regular season hockey limit should be strictly adhered
to, and teams that currently exceed that with "exhibition" or "Alaska"
trips should not be able to do that. 34 is certainly plenty for the
regular season.

Now having said that, I also dont think lowering it below 34 is a good
idea either. 34 gives teams a chance to play about 26-28 league games
and 6-8 nonconf games (I still think this is way too low, roundball
typically plays 15-20 league games leaving 10-15 for really interesting
nonconf matchups, but I aint gonna argue here).

The ECAC and MAAC should instead act to get their members up to 34 (I
believe the non-ivies in the ECAC already play 32), and leave it at
that. Getting a late start and playing fewer games (like the ivies do)
really puts you behind the eight ball for the whole season. I think this
season when Brown played in Minnesota, they had played about 7 games and
the other team (not sure which) had 15-18 games already... there is no
way two teams, even with equal talent, can make up for this gap. It
takes game time to develop chemistry and this is too much to make up, IMHO.

Just my 200 lira,

Tony Buffa
RPI '64