First, I'm not trying to get into this again! - but I had to reply to
    a couple of things:
 
Bill writes:
>I wouldn't shed too many tears for the poor Ivies if they are losing
>"coaches" like Brian Mason and, if the RUMOR is true, Jeff Kosak.  You can't
>have a winning hockey team with strict admissions policies?  Mason is WRONG
>WRONG WRONG.  Both Cornell and Harvard have had successful hockey programs
>for years.
 
    Of course you can have a winning team with strict admissions policies.
    But those policies guarantee that not everyone can have a winning
    team.  Harvard and Cornell will get their pick of the top players with
    brains.  There are very few of those, certainly not enough to go around.
 
>                    Of course, they have been able to recruit on this winning
>tradition and that, coupled with the two schools' being somewhat larger and
>more academically diverse (and more "prestigious"?) than Dartmouth, makes it
>easier for the Big Red and the Crimson to get the players they need to stay
>successful.
 
    Another reason to abolish the restrictions.  Inherent advantages that some
    schools have over others means that heavy restrictions hurt the haves
    much less than the have-nots.
 
>             Both have had down periods, though, most notably in the late
>'70s and early '80s, and anyway, these winning programs of theirs had to
>start somewhere.  In addition, Clarkson has consistently fielded good teams
>(they have missed the playoffs only once in the 29-year history of the
>ECAC), and St. Lawrence, up and down over the years, has become a highly
>ranked hockey power over the last few seasons.  Both of these schools are
>smaller than Dartmouth, and despite being non-Ivies, both schools, being
>members of the ECAC, have virtually the same recruiting restrictions that
>Dartmouth and the Ivies do.  (Let's not get into that again, shall we?)
>People also forget that Dartmouth has fielded some pretty good hockey teams
>in the past.  This is understandable, since the Big Green hasn't made the
>playoffs in ten years, but the 1978-79 and 1979-80 teams both played in ECAC
>championship games.  The latter squad won the Ivy League championship, and
>back then it meant something, as the Ivies were a separate division within
>the ECAC.
 
    All of this is irrelevant because Dartmouth, Yale, Princeton, and Brown
    (4 of the 6 Ivies) have been lousy since the institution of the index
    restricting hockey recruitment.  St Lawrence recruited those top players
    in their final years prior to the index (pre-index).  Likewise RPI, which
    didn't make the NCAAs because it couldn't beat teams outside of the ECAC
    despite finishing 2nd in the league.  The Engineers are nowhere near the
    caliber of team they were in 1983-86.
 
    At any rate, we still have a situation where approximately half the
    ECAC teams, almost the same ones every year, are able to compete
    with the rest of Division I, and the other half are pitiful.  There
    is no reason to expect that this will change.
 
>Can Dartmouth rebound from this decade-long slide?  Sure -- just look at the
>performances turned in this season by perennial ECAC doormats Princeton and
>Brown.
 
    But if you compare those performances with the rest of Division I, they're
    just two more below-mediocre teams.  It would be an improvement, no doubt,
    and certainly a step in the right direction if Dartmouth has a 90-91 season
    like Brown had in 89-90.  But I hope that's not what the people there are
    aiming for.  To be able to once again compete on a par with the top teams in
    Division I, the ECAC must get rid of the academic index.  I have not seen
    anything yet to dissuade me from this opinion since we went through this
    a few months ago.
 
 
    - mike