When I made my original comments about my novel concept that American
colleges should primarily be about educating Americans and secondarily
providing athletic opportunities for Americans- I was besieged with indignant
e-mail. Mostly from my friends north of the 49th parallel and from students
at American schools that seem to think they need to play more than one anthem
when playing another American school. (Logically Saturday's contest should be
preceded by 3 anthems- Finnish being one of them). It was good to see a kid
from Connecticut be the most exciting player on the ice. Hopefully there will
be many more to come ala Brian Leetch. Query- Tommy Dagerman- came to BU for
the 2nd semester? In theory (and I am not suggesting it in this case although
it did happen in softball with an Australian at UCLA)- he may never attend a
class and leave school at the end of the semester? I throw this out for
intelligent discourse. This is the classic problem of athletic scholarships
and "amateur" athletics. Will the new trend be to really recruit in Europe
and bring in a slew of Finns, Swedes, Czechs, Slovakians et al? I am sure
there must be a ton of talent in the old USSR yearning for the USA? Anyhow it
was a great game and an opportunity to watch a couple of players that I have
seen since they were mites (Herr, Merrick, Drury) and one I coached behind
the BU bench.
 
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