Chuq writes:
 
>At 10:11 PM +0100 4/6/99, Karen/Greg Ambrose wrote:
>
>> My thought on Anaheim were formulated before I even left for the trip.
>
>That's too bad. If you'd gone into it with an open mind maybe you
>wouldn't have simply reaffirmed what you wanted to believe.
 
How can I have an open mind when I've plunked down over $2,000 for my
family to just travel the tournament?  My "belief" was that the tournament
had no business being there because there is no college hockey played in
the state!  What is there to see that could possibly change my mind about
an undisputable fact!
>
>> The
>> vast majority of college hockey fans do not live within 1,000 miles of the
>> Pond.  Why they are subjected to travelling across the country to see their
>> sport is unfathomable.
>
>Here's a big reason -- if you don't INVEST in growing the sport, the
>sport won't grow. You don't turn potential fans into fans by having
>them travel, because they won't. You bring the game to them and
>convince them to want more.
 
Tell me, how do the local fans who saw the games get UCLA, SC or any of the
other schools to field the sport?  Are these behemoths going to listen to
people who probably did not go to the school or contribute money to it? My
suggestion for you west coasters is that you start a campaign to get the
schools out there to field D1 teams in the sport.  Perhaps start with the
student body and others who go to these club games.  And then, if these
schools actually field the sport and demonstrate that they can garner an
audience, then a bid for the tournament would not seem so far fetched as it
did this year.
>
>There's another aspect to this. Alums. Not all fans of the sport are
>still living NEAR the college. It's a very narrow view to think that
>the only ones that matter are the ones that are still at school or
>within shouting distance of the school.
>
>> What percentage of the crowd for each game was local? Was it 5%, 10%?  If
>> the newspaper coverage of the tournament is indicative of local fan
>> interest, the games made little impact in LA.  In the Friday edition of the
>> LA Times, there was no article at all.
>
>There was good coverage in both papers, since we stole my families
>papers while staying there. There was also good coverage in the
>various TV news broadcasts I saw.
 
There was no article in Thursday's LA Times.  There was a half column in
the OC Register on Krog winning the Hobey on Saturday.  The only other
article in that edition was on the face masks.  If you think that's "good
coverage", I wish you could compare it to the stuff that was in the Boston
papers last year, or the Milwaukee paper the year before.
>
> From what I saw, and who I talked to, a huge majority of the people
>in the arena were from out of town. LOTS of those people were
>west-coast based Alums who don't have time/money to go EAST for the
>games, and finally had a chance to go to this tourney. Lots of
>silicon valley emigres were there, and I talked to some folks from
>Phoenix, as well as various other places like Seattle.
 
The NCAA did a survey last year that showed that there is a hard core of
7-8,000 people who travel to the tournament every year.  I am one of them.
My guess is every one of these came from "out of town".  Since it was
estimated that there were 8,500 at Thursday afternoon's game, the "local"
crowd was probably pretty paltry.  Maybe a little better on Thursday night
and better than that on Saturday.  But as I have said previously, all three
of these game would have banged out in a place where they actually know
something about college hockey.
>
>> In the Saturday edition of the
>> Orange County Register, the big article was on face masks in college
>> hockey.  Face masks have been part of college hockey for 20 years!
>
>yes, and the article you mention (but don't describe) was about the
>continuing controversy over them, in that the coaches want to change
>the rule to allow half-shields, while the NCAA refuses to. The doctor
>the NCAA is listening to sounds like a real dweeb. His response to
>all of the coaches and player's comments was "they're stupid, they
>don't know what they're talking about'. Gee, what great advice the
>NCAA must be getting.
>
>I thought the article was nicely relevant to the tourney and
>situation, and it was a nice change from what could have happened
>down there, which were nothing but puff pieces on how Paul's brother
>is so great. The local media actually looked beyond the trivial hook
>and talked about the tourney in some detail. Gee, how terrible.
 
As I said in my response to Vicki Price, I have no problem with the content
of the article.  I found it interesting if a rehash.  My point was that the
facemask issue was give play because it is something the curious in LA knew
little or nothing about.  Instead of focusing on the games, they were
focusing on an umbrella issue.  It would be like the St. Petersburg, FL
papers focusing on whether there should be dunking in college basketball
rather than the relative merits of UConn and Duke.
>
>> That's fine and dandy. But what about the fans of the four teams involved
>> who could not afford to pony up the bucks to spend four days in Orange
>> County.
>
>It all evens out. What about the fans who aren't local enough to
>their old teams so they can't see the regular season OR any of the
>playoffs? Greg, your view of this is very narrow, IMHO. The crowd in
>Anaheim was very into the series, very much attached to the various
>teams, and very into it. And many of them, from the samples of folks
>I talked to, were people who normally don't GET to these games
>because they're in the same sitaution you're in this year, only for
>once they got the chance to go. And they took it.
 
Look, most of the crowd was not from LA.  Most of it was from out of town
as you mentioned before.  I think its wonderful that all you college hockey
fans our there actually got to see the games.  However, I deeply regret
that it was at the expense of a greater number of fans who follow the sport
religiously in other parts of the country.  To use your logic, the
tournament should be in Atlanta next year, or maybe Orlando to hold onto
the Disney theme.
>
>but I guess once you move away from New Hampshire, you stop counting?
>that seems to be what you're implying.
 
Counting what?  You keep talking about the people you talked to.  I would
like to know how many that was.  And where did they come from?  I talked to
a hell of a lot of people too, and only one was from California (Santa
Barbara) a three year expatriate from Boston.  And the crack about New
Hampshire.  What does THAT mean?  I'm actually from outside of Boston, went
to school at UNH and would move up there before I would ever move to the
land of concrete and smog.
 
Greg Ambrose
 
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