Good story Chris and a great angle. A couple quick commentaries:
 
On Wed, 3 Apr 1996, Lerch,Chris wrote:
> It's been over 48 hours now, and I still can't get the Michigan Fight
>  Song out of my head.
 
Sounds like you're not the only one!
 
> A social highlight for the HOCKEY-L people is the annual dinner that
>  takes place between the semifinal games on Thursday.  Here you'll see
>  things like Wisconsin folks with plastic cheese wedges on their heads
>  breaking bread with people wearing Minnesota gopher ears.
 
This is just a beautiful example of the comraderie found in hockey that
isn't always present in other sports, and amplified in the college game.
It's probably my favorite aspect of the sport. On a Saturday night at the
Dane these two factions might be trying to kill each other, but they
realize that deep down their love of the game is stronger than their
school colors.
 
I live and die with the Bruins, but one of my best friends loves those
stupid Broadway Blueshirts. We always admired each other's love of hockey
and spit on it at the same time. When we left for school, we came to the
realization, as people had a generation before, that Bob Dylan had the
answer to what we were thinking. In Tangled up in Blue he sings "We
always did feel the same/we just saw it from a different point of view."
What I enjoy best about hockey fans and players is that although things
between fans and teams can get terribly ugly, the love of the game itself
is binding and overrules many fueds somewhere on down the road a bit.
 
We realize that we really do feel the same (our school is the best, yours
sucks) but we all see it slightly differently (Go Badgers, Go Gophers,
heck Go UMass, who ever).
 
> Folks told me that events like this make them realize the people on the
>  other side of the rink are just like them - they just happen to root
>  for different teams. And their love of the sport surpasses their
>  devotion to a single team.
 
Exactly! I mean, could you ever imagine a list comprised of fans from all
over the place being so civilized for other sports. Could an all-NFL list
exist with out Dallas and San Fran. fans ripping into each other. Could
an all-college basketball list survive a Duke-UNC game? And forget about
association football across the big pond! That's what makes the sport so
special, something like Hockey-L is possible.
 
 
>  the camaraderie all around you. I came away with the sense that even
>  though the sport continues to grow, it's still small enough, intimate
>  enough, where everyone knows each other, and more importantly,
>  respects each other...
 
>  One of the most popular items for discussion among fans I talked to was
>  the pros and cons of the sport becoming more popular, which is most
>  assuredly is...
>
> Tony Biscardi later said, "Look at me. I'm an average fan, a regular
>  guy. Yet I can go to the Hobey Baker presentation and get tickets for
>  the national championship. Isn't that great?"
>
Another terribly redeming quality of college hockey is that it right now
is about as big as it can be without being "big-time" and having all of
the negative connotations that are associated with that. It perfectly
walks the tightrope between being a minor, regionalized sport and having
the "Tostitos" Final Four next year in Milwaukee.
 
Last year scalpers were getting no more than $100 to see BU and Maine
play for the title in near-by (for both schools) Providence. Don't even
ask me what friends of mine got for their basketball Final Four tickets,
some of them got enough for a year's tuition. And that's with four teams
from a good distance apart, what if this was for a UNC-Duke final played
in Charlotte, basketball's answer to BU-Maine in Providence?
 
College hockey is a sport with a big-time feel, but a small-time
admission fee, and this all-important second part is what seperates it
from the NHL where people played $50 to see the B's tie Ottawa 1-1 last
night in a game that was as dull as it could be.
 
Leigh
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My condolence to any Robert Morris of Illinois baseball fans on this list.
 
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