I read with interest the numerous messages that I received this morning about RPI's decision to remain in the ECAC instead of switching to the HE. The comments turned to whether the school should be called RPI or Rensselaer. (For years the only way that I could remember that it was Rensselaer and not Rensselear was that the ending was the same as my name, which some will argue is also spelled incorrectly.) Personally, I cringe whenever I hear RPI referred to as Rensselaer. It seems that most technological schools are trying to shed their technological label. At least two schools that now play Div-I hockey, Clarkson and Lowell, had "tech" in their names when I was at RPI. Well, this discussion is diverging from college hockey. In one of the messages on this subject D. L. Sullivan stated (quoting from the RPI student newspaper). >Also noted in the announcement was that the ECAC >hockey league includes many of Rensselaer's most cherished hockey >rivalries, including those with Clarkson, St. Lawrence, Harvard, Brown, >Cornell and Princeton. Having read many other messages that have appeared on H-L about rivalries, most notably those (I think from Pam) that mentioned that although Minnesota's number one rival was Wisconsin, Minnesota is the number one rival of at least four schools, Wisconsin, UMD, St. Cloud, and North Dakota, I started to think about the six ECAC schools that were mentioned and the five that weren't. In my opinion, the list is a bit weird. Although Clarkson and St. Lawrence are probably their own biggest rivals, RPI is certainly a rival of each, and I certainly have no qualm about their inclusion. Cornell was a one-sided rival of RPI when I was there, as Cornell was typical the #1 team in the east and sometimes in the country at the time. Also, Cornell's coach, Ned Harkness, was previously at RPI. Thus RPI and its fans got up for Cornell, but not vice versa. Because of this, RPI was in 68-69 and 70-71 able to upset Cornell at the then-called RPI Fieldhouse. Since that time I think that the rivalry has evened out, and is now both ways. When I was at RPI, I would have laughed at the thought that Harvard was considered a rival of RPI. The reason for this was that Harvard refused to play RPI. (RPI played too roughly.) I don't think that RPI and Harvard played each other before mandatory scheduling started in the ECAC in the late 1970's. Now that the teams play each other twice a year and are close to each other in talent level, their as a rivalry. This brings us to Brown and Princeton. Having followed RPI for 30 years now, I can't think of a time that I would have considered either of these fine institutions as having a rivalry with RPI. Certainly in the ten years that I was at RPI, I never considered games against either of these teams a truly important game (not that I wouldn't attend anyway). At the time that RPI was a national power in the mid-80's, both of these schools had, in my opinion, weak teams, and from what I could gather from the little news that I got in DC, most games were blowouts. Over the last three or four years, RPI and Brown have been comparable in talent, and maybe a rivalry could develop, but I don't think that there is one. I suspect that one of the reasons that RPI decided to switch its satellite broadcast this year from the Brown game to the Clarkson game, is that the interest in Clarkson will be much much greater than in Brown. I am curious if any of the many RPI alumni on H-L has ever regarded Princeton as a rival. The few years in the last thirty that Princeton has had a good team corresponded to those when RPI's were poor. Notably absent from this list is Union. Clearly, Union is not one of RPI's "most cherished hockey rivalries" because Union has not had a Div-I team for too long. But because of the proximity of the two schools a rivalry will eventually result. I would have listed Colgate and Vermont on the list of RPI rivals before listing Princeton and Brown. As to the HE, RPI had a similar rivalry with BU when I was at RPI to the one they had with Cornell. RPI had a much inferior team but managed to pull an occasional upset. I will always remember the 7-0 victory in 68-69 where RPI managed to win with a center playing goalie. Somehow, RPI, which has always had an undermanned squad had only one goaltender on that year, senior Tom Nichol. Twice that year he was sick or injured. On the first occasion, sophomore center Barry Sherwood was drafted to play goal against BU. I assume that BU was very overconfident, and RPI played the best defensive game that I have ever seen, but when it was over RPI was on top 7-0. Later that year (I forget against who), when Nichol again couldn't play, RPI lost with defenseman Brian Dickey in goal. (Sherwood had left school in the second semester. He probably didn't like carrying the dufflebag ;-) ). Also, later that year, in a first round ECAC playoff, BU bested RPI 4-2. As to the rest of the HE schools, RPI had rivalries to some extent with Providence, Northeastern, BC, and New Hampshire -- certainly in each case greater than with Princeton and Brown. The remaining HE teams did not have Div-I (Merrimack, UMass-Lowell, UMass-Amherst) or had been Div-I for only a short time (Maine) prior to the ECAC-HE split. Ralph Baer RPI '68, '70, '74