11/05/24
April 07, 2002
"Minnesota exorcised the ghosts that have haunted its proud hockey program for the last 22 years by overcoming Maine, 4-3, in overtime Saturday to win the 2002 NCAA men's hockey championship." College hockey is the only sport I really enjoy watching, and Gopher hockey to Minnesota is like Nebraska football, Duke basketball, and English football all rolled in one. To have your school win the title in OT, and for our defensman Jordan Leopold to win the Hobey Baker award, this has been the best weekend of my short life.
I think my interest in college hockey is mainly because hockey in general in Minnesota is so big. Our high school hockey tournaments are played where the minnesota wild play and will draw over 15,000 people for each game. And a large portion of these kids will end up playing D1 college hockey around here and even out east. The Gophers have a television contract with Fox Sports Minnesota so every game is televised. This is very rare for college hockey so I understand that fans in other markets won't be able to follow their teams on TV. The web has also really helped cover college hockey. uscollegehockey has a message board that is very popular with fans from Hockey East, the Michigan schools, and the midwest so I can read about those schools that I can't watch on TV. The tournament this year was here in St. Paul and they had an Q&A session with the NCAA officials. Questions were asked why we can't get more games on ESPN and it basically comes down to fan base. College hockey just isn't nationwide enough for a majority of the people to care. I understand that this is just the way it will be, but I think it is unfortunate that even though NHL hockey is big in almost every big market, college hockey can't get that same respect, while college basketball and football are just as big as their professional leagues.
posted by emoeby at 08:51 PM on April 07, 2002
updated link if anyone is interested
posted by emoeby at 10:23 PM on April 07, 2002
Why is college hockey the only sport you enjoy, and how do you keep up with it when there's so little media coverage? I have trouble staying interested in sports that aren't ever-present in the media. For example, I briefly got all geeked up over Fort Worth's Arena Football Team (the Cavalry), but my interest couldn't survive the realization that there were only about 12 other people who cared. (I am, however, giddy about the new Fort Worth Cats who are building a new ballpark at the same site as their historic ballpark used in the early 20th century. It makes me wish I still lived there.)