Just some thoughts on the media coverage in Madison, WI.  It comes and goes,
but is generally pretty good.  Andy Wagner mentioned the broadcast on TV of
the Final Five -- the blackout was completely lifted, so Milwaukee TV was
just lame.  I personally called channel 15 in Madison to thank them for their
TV coverage and express my hope to see more.  The tape delay of home Badger
games is nice, but how about some away games; I often am frustrated while
waiting for a TV timeout for the people in North Dakota or Minnesota, knowing
that no-one in Madison is seeing it live, and we never see away games.  The
current TV stuff is done by the public TV station, and I don't pretend that
they have the kind of money to do away games -- the WCHA needs a TV contract!
A game-of-the-week like the CCHA had would increase fan exposure.
 
As far as newspaper coverage, Bill Brophy, sports editor for the Wisconsin
State Journal, is a pretty big hockey fan, so coverage tends to be reasonable.
Again, any Badger basketball takes precedence, but it's hard to argue with
numbers in what the public wants to read.  The coverage is predictably WCHA
only -- I get my other-conference news here.  That could be better, at least
for big games, like BU-Harvard or LSSU-Michigan.  Today's paper has a nice
top-of-the-sports-page story on the Phinal Phour, with info about each of
the teams, even though the Badgers are out of it.  Perhaps they already had
the "feature" space allocated for an article about the Badgers :-).
 
And yes, I did complain to the Tribune about the "College Ice Skating"
embarrassment.  The Trib generally doesn't give two hoots about college
hockey.  Hockey=Hawks, and even that plays second fiddle to Da Bulls.  Ugh.
 
But hey, D2: The Mighty Ducks had a great opening weekend, so we can expect
lots of tykes on skates filling the hockey leagues for years to come...
 
Go Crimson!  Crush the boys named Soo!
 
-john nash
[log in to unmask]