I: >> Really? I suppose there were still TV timeouts for the >>assorted RSNs and commercial stations carrying the regionals. I'm >>sure I'm the only one who feels this way, but I'd be pretty happy if >>the NC$$ put all their eggs in the PPV basket, made sure the >>broadcasts were available thru cable outlets and not just mini-dishes, >>and then played the regionals without TV timeouts. Jim Walker: >This would leave a lot of people out of the picture (pun intended). >I, for one, am a displaced New Englander living in California and the >odds of my local cable company offering a college hockey PPV event are >slim. The odds of a local bar showing the games are even >slimmer. And, to top it off, I live in an apartment building so I >can't buy a satellite dish. This leaves me with AudioNet, which is >great and I rely on this for most of the season to hear the games but >sucks compared to seeing the games on TV. >Also, this wouldn't help expand college hockey viewership. A lot of people >that wouldn't otherwise tune in, may watch the game if ESPN is doing the >broadcasting. Sure, but it don't think E$PN is going to pick up the regionals any time soon. (Four of the eight games were on the deuce three years ago.) Sounds like you're in the same situation I am (except that at least in California you don't have to buy a membership to a sports bar--er, "private club"). What I'm saying is that if the NC$$ scrapped the TV timeouts, thereby making the regionals only attractive to PPV distributors, you and I would be no more screwed than we are now, and at least we'd have the satisfaction of knowing that the flow of the game was not disrupted for a telecast we had no way of seeing. BTW, I actually watched the last two games of the West Regional on M$C in a sports bar in Santa Barbara last year. This year I was home on regionals weekend for the first time since I started caring, and I was totally out of luck. (Then again given the ECAC's performance I wouldn't have enjoyed it much anyway.) John Whelan, Cornell '91 <[log in to unmask]> <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/joe.html> Learn about the NCAA selection process on the web at http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?pairwise HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.