City: not nearly as bad as expected Airport Transportation: probably the worst i've seen. There aren't any low cost options other than a 1 hour bus ride on a city bus Motel: pretty good - in hotel dining a bit limited. fortunately there were close by options People Mover: a really nice option. Local Arrangements: kudos to the organizing committee. food and beverage options after the game, unlike st. louis, were plentiful. good information at the booths in the hotels Venue: The politest thing i can say is that there were plenty of rest rooms and the food lines weren't as long as other places Ice quality: horrible is probably an understatement. Rink Placement: there are a couple of choices that might have been better. The biggest flaw was not putting the boards close enough to permanent seating. That left a woid between the ice surface and the permanent stands. Given that the front row of stands is about 4 feet above ground level, there is a serious problem with sight lines. I am utterly amazed that nobody gecognized that. crowd control: lousy, but understandable given the venue. accomodation: I think there was probably a reasonable attempt made to accomodate those who persevered enough to find a place to ask for accomodation crowd: i think 30,000 is an overstatement. revenue: in years past, the 3 game package cost around $180. Billboards in detroit were advertizing $40 packages. I'm speculating that the revenue did not increase significantly. Add the extra set up costs for temporary bleachers and icemaking, and perhaps the net revenue is down significantly from prior years. Sight lines: Despite the ESPN reporter's assertion that site lines were excellent, the number of rows of empty seats behind the benches is ample testimony against that. Lesson Learned: To conclude that this experiment did anything more than provide additional evidence that that hockey, especially national collegiate championships, should be staged in arenas designed for hockey, would be a misrepresentation. Committee: My thanks to the NCAA D-I Ice Hockey committee members (three of whom i think i'm on a first name basis with) for daring to take this risk. Had the experiment been a success, it would have improved the breed. As it is, staging the championships in a football stadium provided a whole lot of information. Future: Lets hope the community (fans, schools, coaches, conferences, committees, ncaa staff, and local stagers) will learn from this information to improve the tournament in the future. -- charlie shub on his laptop work: (719) 255-3492 [log in to unmask] cell: (719) 761-8778 http://www.cs.uccs.edu/~cdash fax: (719) 255-3369