For the record, here is the letter I sent ESPN via their WWW
interface, http://web1.stawave.com/studios/espn-let.html
 
        Please send any comments to me by private email.
 
                                        John Whelan
                                        Cornell '91
                                        <[log in to unmask]>
 
Dear ESPN:
 
        First of all, let me thank you for providing coverage of the
NCAA Hockey Tournament, on both ESPN and espn2.  In this time of year
when a sports fan is surrounded by hype for the NCAA Basketball
Tournament, it's nice to see someone devoting air time to the
underappreciated sport of college hockey.
 
        That said, I have a few comments on things you could have done
better.  I watched the two regional finals broadcast Saturday, March
25 on espn2, Minnesota vs Colorado College and Lake Superior State vs
Boston University.  The other early game was between Maine and Denver
University, and while the announcers of the Lake State-BU game
identified Maine as the winner early in their game, the score was not
announced until the middle of the second period.  Particularly glaring
was the lack of mention of the Maine-Denver game in the SportSmash
show during the intermissions of the Lake State-BU game.  There were
extensive highlights of the Minnesota-CC game, which was appreciated,
but surely you could have spared a few seconds to give the score of
the other tournament game which happened at the same time.  I myself
don't care about the hip attitude which "the deuce" likes to maintain,
but as long as it doesn't interfere with the presentation of sports,
I'm glad to have a network which provides coverage of events normally
ignored by the national media.
 
        Now, about the Maine-Michigan national semifinal on Thursday,
March 23.  (You knew I was going to get to that eventually, didn't
you?)  Unlike many people I've communicated with, I do not find fault
with ESPN for pre-empting the first period with coverage of women's
tennis.  I understand that these conflicts can arise when covering
live events, and while I consider hockey more important than tennis
(and football more important than auto racing, to cite another
example), I know that some of your viewers feel oppositely.  The most
evenhanded thing a sports network can do is to establish a policy and
apply it uniformly.  I know that ESPN's policy is to stay with live
events until their completion, and I respect that.  I am also grateful
that I personally got to see the first period on espn2.
 
        For the first two overtimes, you applied the "live events"
policy in the other direction, and needless to say I was glad to see
all of that live.  And switching to the golf coverage during the
intermissions was also the fairest thing for you to do.  So I have no
complaint with anything you did before 2:30pm PST, although there were
a few things you could have done to calm the nerves of tennis, golf
and hockey fans, such as running a trailer across the bottom of the
screen every twenty seconds or so explaining the situation.  (For
example, "Due to the over-run of our live tennis coverage, the
Maine-Michigan NCAA Hockey semifinal is being shown live on espn2.
ESPN will begin its live hockey coverage as soon as the tennis match
is complete.")
 
        What I would like to complain about is the handling of the
third overtime.  By not showing any of the 28-second period live, and
by presenting the sequence leading to the Maine goal ten minutes after
the fact without identifying it as a tape-delay, you gave the
impression of a double-standard in your "live events" policy.
Further, concluding the telecast without a single replay of the
game-winning goal produced a decidedly anti-climactic end to the
five-hour marathon of a game.  To my knowledge, ESPN provided no
explanation of this fiasco except to people who called to complain.
Losing the satellite feed may have been beyond your control, but the
way you handled it was fairly classless.  Neither did you level with
college hockey fans about what we were seeing, nor issue the public
apology we deserve.  I could find no mention of the circumstances
surrounding the third period telecast in the NCAA Hockey coverage on
your World Wide Web site.  I cannot blame you for a technological
mishap.  I can blame you for trying to sweep it under the rug.
 
        Finally, let me congratulate you on your wisdom in
establishing a web site.  I'm certain the positive publicity in making
yourselves available to the entire internet community will be more
valuable in the long run than any proprietary income you may have been
receiving by limiting yourselves to the closed world of Prodigy.  I
would further suggest that you make available an internet email
address for letters to ESPN so that net users without WWW access can
give you feedback as well.
 
                        John T. Whelan
                        Cornell University, Class of '91
                        Department of Physics, UC Santa Barbara
                        Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9530
                        <[log in to unmask]>
 
        Disclaimer: my opinions are my own and in no way represent
those of UCSB, the Physics Department, or Cornell.