Re: Attendance at Regionals
They don't care about money either...at least not hockey money, which essentially rounds to zero in the grand scheme of things.
There are a lot of different groups of people who get called "The NCAA" in different contexts. These groups care about very different things. The NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Committee is made up of college hockey people, and cares very much about the public perception of their sport. The NCAA Division I Championships and Competition Cabinet is made up of mostly athletic administrators, and cares mostly about the consistent application of principles in creating the different Division I tournaments. The NCAA Division I Administrative Council cares about money and will consider any proposals based on how much it will cost and how much it will save (and doesn't really consider TV money in the debate for minor sports). The first committee will propose any rule changes, the second and third committees will approve or reject any proposals, and anybody else who is called "The NCAA" either will rubber stamp the decision or has no say at all.
So the question returns: pre-determined sites for the first round like Division I basketball, or home sites for the first round like every other sport the NCAA sponsors in every division?
I'm amazed that this is even a debate. Do NCAA tennis fans argue about whether the first round of the tennis tournament should be at a neutral site, instead of the top 16 seeds? I kind of follow NCAA softball, and I've certainly never heard it suggested that the regionals or super-regionals should be on neutral softball fields. But it comes up in hockey, because the committee made a bad decision two decades ago and the current committee can't find it in their hearts to admit that their predecessors were wrong, wrong, wrong.
I posted it several months ago, but the problem remains: for the casual fans (not the over-rabid fans like us who are reading this board in June):
* People only want to see their own team in the regionals, and don't care about other teams.
* People will travel to see their teams in regionals, but not too far: they won't fly and they mostly won't spend even one night in a hotel room to do it.
* People don't think they should be spending much more than they spend for a regular-season ticket.
Neutral regionals can't work within the context of the facts above, at least they can't work unless you have 20 teams in a 200-mile radius. The 16-team format used by lacrosse works for that sport, and it has probably the same constraints that I listed above. There's no reason that format can't work for hockey too. One of the best features of our sport is the enthusiasm of the fans. Let's bring that enthusiasm back to where it belongs in the most important games of the season.
Originally posted by Fishman'81
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There are a lot of different groups of people who get called "The NCAA" in different contexts. These groups care about very different things. The NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Committee is made up of college hockey people, and cares very much about the public perception of their sport. The NCAA Division I Championships and Competition Cabinet is made up of mostly athletic administrators, and cares mostly about the consistent application of principles in creating the different Division I tournaments. The NCAA Division I Administrative Council cares about money and will consider any proposals based on how much it will cost and how much it will save (and doesn't really consider TV money in the debate for minor sports). The first committee will propose any rule changes, the second and third committees will approve or reject any proposals, and anybody else who is called "The NCAA" either will rubber stamp the decision or has no say at all.
So the question returns: pre-determined sites for the first round like Division I basketball, or home sites for the first round like every other sport the NCAA sponsors in every division?
I'm amazed that this is even a debate. Do NCAA tennis fans argue about whether the first round of the tennis tournament should be at a neutral site, instead of the top 16 seeds? I kind of follow NCAA softball, and I've certainly never heard it suggested that the regionals or super-regionals should be on neutral softball fields. But it comes up in hockey, because the committee made a bad decision two decades ago and the current committee can't find it in their hearts to admit that their predecessors were wrong, wrong, wrong.
I posted it several months ago, but the problem remains: for the casual fans (not the over-rabid fans like us who are reading this board in June):
* People only want to see their own team in the regionals, and don't care about other teams.
* People will travel to see their teams in regionals, but not too far: they won't fly and they mostly won't spend even one night in a hotel room to do it.
* People don't think they should be spending much more than they spend for a regular-season ticket.
Neutral regionals can't work within the context of the facts above, at least they can't work unless you have 20 teams in a 200-mile radius. The 16-team format used by lacrosse works for that sport, and it has probably the same constraints that I listed above. There's no reason that format can't work for hockey too. One of the best features of our sport is the enthusiasm of the fans. Let's bring that enthusiasm back to where it belongs in the most important games of the season.
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