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?