Okay, I've calmed down a little. I was going to start this post with "I take back every nice thing I've ever said about ESPN," but I won't. The important thing to keep in mind that while College Hockey is orders of magnitude more important to us that tennis and golf, everyone thinks their sport is more important than all others. The only fair way for a sports network to conduct themselves is to treat all sports equally. ESPN is supposed to have a policy that live sporting events are followed to their conclusion. For the first five periods of the Maine-Michigan game, we saw the application of that policy from both sides, and I cannot fault ESPN for anything they did before the start of the third overtime. Yes, it sucked for people without eSPn2 to have to miss the first period (but at least some of us did get to see it, which is more than ESPN had to do; I don't believe the golf was shown on the dEuCe while the hockey game ran late), but would it have been more fair to cut off the tennis before it was finished? Is our sport more important than theirs? By the same token, showing the golf only during the intermissions of the hockey game and covering the overtimes live was the fairest thing they could do. (Although it would have eliminated a lot of confusion and nervousness to run "flood-warning" trailers across the bottom of the screen every few seconds telling viewers "Due to the tennis over-run, the Maine-Michigan NCAA Hockey semifinal is being shown on espn2; as soon as the tennis match ends, ESPN will join the broadcast in progress", "Due to the hockey over-run, the Senior PGA tour cannot be shown at this time; as soon as the game ends, ESPN will join the broadcast in progress" and "The Maine-Michigan hockey game is in an intermission; as soon as play resumes, we will rejoin the live broadcast" at the appropriate times.) What ESPN did that was wrong, even inexcusable, was not to cut away from the golf for the third overtime. I absolutely disagree with Ryan Robbins on this point. ESPN's obligation is to apply its policies evenhandedly, and by instituting a double standard and not showing the end of the Maine-Michigan game live, they wronged this section of their viewership. Further, they insulted us by trying to pass off a tape-delayed broadcast as live, and were downright stupid in not showing the tape from the start of the third overtime. (I mean, even if we had been fooled--as I was before I read the posts--into thinking we were watching a live telecast, we would have had a right to be angry that they cut away from the golf too late to see the first 25 seconds of sixth-period action.) Keeping in mind that we should give ESPN positive feedback for carrying the NC$$s at all, the letter I intend to write will go along these lines: 1. Thanks for carrying college hockey on both networks. 2. It would have been nice to be updated on the final score of the Maine-Denver regional game earlier than we were (esPN2 told us that Maine had won at least an hour before they gave the final score). 3. I thought I understood your policy about staying with live broadcasts, and so I understand your preempting the first period of the Maine-Michigan game, and likewise the flip-side of preempting the golf for first two overtimes. But why then did you not show the third overtime live, and what possible excuse do you have for passing off a tape-delayed broadcast of the final few seconds as live coverage? 4. You should arrange to be e-mail accesible via the internet at large, not just Prodigy. Surely the proprietary income you receive from the policy of limiting yourselves to Prodigy can't weigh against the advantages of wider publicity on the net as a whole. I believe this diplomatic tone will be more effective than simply cursing them out. That said, I don't think they should be let off the hook. Most viewers who watched the game probably don't realize that they were duped. This mailing list is the only reason I know it, since I was distracted during the final intermission, and had no more than a vague impression that it was taking longer than it should. I believe ESPN deserves a certain amount of public humilation for this, so I propose that someone who had a first-hand experience of learning the outcome of the game before ESPN showed it write a letter to Sports Illustrated suggesting they be nominated for a Heidi Award. If this gets printed, it will also have the advantage of providing more visibility for College Hockey (as long as you avoid sounding overly whiny, which would give people a bad impression of college hockey fans). As if we needed anything else to get the emotions boiling on top of 100 minutes of great college hockey (plus about 40 minutes of the BU-Minnesota game before it stopped being a contest). John Whelan Cornell '91 <[log in to unmask]> .sig not fit for public consumption!