I know that this is a little late, but I wanted to add my $.02 to the
discussion which occured last week regarding putting college hockey on
national TV (in addition to, of course, the Final Four).
 
As a native Yankee who's been stuck in hockey-free country for three
years now, I've thought a lot about how the sport can be marketed to
Southerners who aren't familiar with it.  A couple of major points
follow (Note: I've erased most of your original comments from my files,
so if I fail to cite your sentiments properly, my apologies in advance).
 
1)  I do agree with the previous commentator that those of us who follow
the game would probably rather watch a BU-RPI matchup rather than a game
involving two nationally known schools (like Ohio State-Notre Dame) who
are not as competitive in hockey.  I'm not sure that this is what you would
get from ESPN; look at their NHL coverage- they don't necessarily show the
highly marketed teams (remember, Tampa Bay, San Jose, Dallas, and Anaheim
have the highest merchandise sales); instead, we get a constant diet of
the same top competitors every week: LA Kings, Pittsburgh, Rangers, Detroit.
Of course, this could result in watching Michigan beat up on one of the
weak sisters of the CCHA every other week.  What I think we would expect to
see would be a tradeoff between the two factors: if, just to use an example,
Ohio State or Wisconsin were not competitive in a particular year,ESPN would
probably show very little of them, despite their national prominence overall.
On the other hand, a school like LSSU or Clarkson would have to be having
an exceptional year in order to have any games broadcast.  This may not please
the die-hard fans (i.e. most of us on Hockey-L), but it does make a lot of
sense from a marketing perspective.
 
2)   Although it is true that Southerners view hockey with a great amount of
skepticism, it is catching on here (just a few examples: most of the ECHL is
located in the Carolinas and Kentucky; the Central League, which has the
highest per-game attendance of the lower-tier minor leagues, is located in
Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee; the IHL has just announced expansion into
Houston, and is looking at New Orleans for future expansion).  Now, getting
butts in the seats to watch a local team is one thing (the UA-Huntsville
folks have shown that this is possible in college), getting people to
watch a game on TV between two schools which they care little or nothing
about is admittedly a larger challenge.Some folks have suggested that
we build regional support here by getting some of the larger club teams
(Tennessee springs to mind immediately as one of the best) to go Division I.
There are, I think, significant problems with this idea.  First, most of
the larger regional schools (i.e the schools with national name
recognition in the SEC and ACC) are football schools first and
foremost, with basketball being a secondary butstill high
priority.  Hockey is bound to get nothing but short shrift insuch
an environment.  One of the reasons that UAH has done so well with their
program is that it is one of the major priorities of the athletic department
(they have a basketball team, but the state legislature won't let anyone but
Alabama and Auburn field football programs).  Second, too much expansion of
Division I hockey is going to lead to the inevitable diffusion of talent -
I would think that there's some limit at which the addition of new teams
will not be feasible because of this.
 
3)    Home Sports Entertainment (HSE), a Texas-based cable channel, has
added a Game of the Week to their programming, plus the College Hockey USA
program.  My friends in New Orleans (their cable system carries it; the Baton
Rouge system does not) tell me that the games are of decent quality, although
dominated somewhat by the CCHA.  Perhaps their experiment in a limited market
can give some indication if a national game would be possible from a financial/
ratings viewpoint.
 
To close, I would repeat that I think that such a weekly telecast could be
feasible.  Of course, the major considerations will be money and ratings
(which are important because they mean more money).  Diehard fans like us
may have to accept a less-interesting product for a while in order for the
game to build a following and support. I just offer these as observations:
I'd love to see it happen, but only time and money will tell.
 
Mark L. Johnson
Michigan Tech, 87-89
North Dakota, B.A. '91
Louisiana State University, PhD '95?