As a 4 year Brown Hockey fan, I too, must take issue with Professor Valente's
remarks about us.  During my first two years (which included an NCAA appearance
and two ECAC final fours) the Meehan was often packed with noisy fans.  In fact
as Andrew Breecher pointed out, the "Zoo Zone" in particular was so boisterous,
 that we had many confrontations with the AD's Minister of Security, Jeff Ward.
 
I can recall, for example, that during the 1994 ECAC qtrs with Vermont, we
practically blew the roof off the place (despite having the best student seats
given away to the visitors as punishment for raucous student behavior!)  A few
Brown players even generously commented that they believed they would have lost
that series if not for the Meehan crowd.
 
Last season things got a bit worse, but only after the team took some pretty
high profile beatings which turned off fans.  This season,I admit, fansupport
has been awful...but the team has not been very good.  People come to see
winners (except for Boston Red Sox fans...sorry, had to get that one in, I root
for the Yankees).  Our home reocrd was particularly bad, and that exacerbated
the problem.  You hear this complaint from lots of places, not just Brown.
 
I'll bet if you'd asked a couple of years ago, Professor Valente, or at any
rate many others, would've said that RPI fans were among the most loyal in the
ECAC.  This year, the team was bad, and so were the crowds.  That's just the
way it goes.
 
I'm not saying that Brown fans are the greatest...a sense of rah-rah "school
spirit" maybe one of the things you sacrifice in a community as socially and
culturally diverse as ours.  Most of us (even those diehard Hockey fans like
me, who haven'tmissed a home game in 4 years) think it's worth it.
 
Carl Sussman
Brown U. 1996
"I may choose my law school because it's ECAC."
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.