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Online NCAA Hockey Survey

Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

Kepler said:
How did you rank "the premier event"?

1. Frozen Four
2. Olympics
3. Stanley Cup

IIRC Memorial Cup was not an option.
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No, but World Championship was. I went with that - the best players going at it during the NHL offseason when they actually have time to make a real tournament of it.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

They really failed to ask some key questions related to college hockey. They didn't ask if we thought Canadian Major Juniors were better than NCAA hockey, and if polls mattered.

Kepler said:
How did you rank "the premier event"?

1. Frozen Four
2. Olympics
3. Stanley Cup

IIRC Memorial Cup was not an option.
Click to expand...

They left out the most important one, the Broadmoor Trophy. Because everyone knows the WCHA Final Five is the real national championship. I ranked the Stanley Cup before the Olympics but put the Frozen Four first.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

LynahFan said:
Well, I hope I didn't skew the results too much, or they're going to go insane trying to figure out how to attract more old farts who live in Europe and don't actually attend any games. Good luck with that! ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't think they are going to take me up on my suggestion to hold the Frozen Four in Budapest anytime soon.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

bigblue_dl said:
Anything basketball related got a 0.
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I didn't go quite that far, but I also took some pleasure in giving hoops low marks.:D

My guess is that many others did the same. As such, the survey results will probably show there's relatively little overlap between the two fanbases. This leaves me a little nervous, though, about how the data will ultimately be used. For example, might the results be interpreted to mean that the Frozen Four could be returned to the same weekend as the hoops ff?

IMHO, that would be a disaster. One of my few negative Frozen Four memories came back in the 90's at one of the Milwaukee tournaments. While our national championship was being decided on the ice, a noticeable portion of the crowd was in the outer concourse, watching basketball on TV.:mad: This must NEVER be allowed to happen again. We may wish it were otherwise, but the hoops ff simply takes over its weekend.

I wish could have made this comment on the survey form itself. Maybe it's just me, but the lack of any opportunity to make explanatory comments was a significant weakness of the survey instrument. Yes, the form was already "long enough." But there should have been at least an opportunity to comment at the end.

All that said, I enjoyed the survey and was glad to have the opportunity to give the quantitative responses.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

I don't see the Frozen Four being moved back to Final Four Weekend, as that serves no one, and really hurts what little hockey visibility there is out there. We now have a sold out event wherever we play that is profitable, and an ESPN TV audience of one to three million people for the final, with the larger end of that audience when name brand schools are playing. That's what we bring to the table.

I could see the NCAA someday pushing the women's hoops final four back to our weekend, which would be annoying, but nowhere near as annoying as having to play the same weekend as men's hoops.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

Puck Swami said:
I don't see the Frozen Four being moved back to Final Four Weekend, as that serves no one, and really hurts what little hockey visibility there is out there. We now have a sold out event wherever we play that is profitable, and an ESPN TV audience of one to three million people for the final, with the larger end of that audience when name brand schools are playing. That's what we bring to the table.

I could see the NCAA someday pushing the women's hoops final four back to our weekend, which would be annoying, but nowhere near as annoying as having to play the same weekend as men's hoops.
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Wait, do people watch women's basketball? I can't bring myself to watch men's basketball without wanting to either throw up or shoot something, I can only imagine how painful it would be to watch women's basketball.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

Somewhat sarcastically, I think that there may be a benefit to having the Frozen Four the same weekend as the squeakball FF. The NCAA wouldn't demand so many of the tickets, because all the corporate sponsors, AD's, college presidents etc. would rather go to the basketball tournament. The result might be that more college hockey fans might bet better seats.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

bigblue_dl said:
Wait, do people watch women's basketball? I can't bring myself to watch men's basketball without wanting to either throw up or shoot something, I can only imagine how painful it would be to watch women's basketball.
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I agree with you - women's basketball is not a great spectator sport and the NCAA women's hoops tourney loses money, unlike hockey. That said, the NCAA would love to shove more women's hoops down our throats, since the TV audience potential is higher, given the larger tourney field and wider geographic penetration of the sport.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

CLS said:
Somewhat sarcastically, I think that there may be a benefit to having the Frozen Four the same weekend as the squeakball FF. The NCAA wouldn't demand so many of the tickets, because all the corporate sponsors, AD's, college presidents etc. would rather go to the basketball tournament. The result might be that more college hockey fans might bet better seats.
Click to expand...

Hockey Seating is a minor issue compared to the total loss of media exposure for hockey by playing in enormous shadow that men's hoops generates that weekend.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

bigblue_dl said:
Which is a good thing. If this helps the NCAA and other entities get more people and wider variety of people interested in NCAA hockey and hockey in general, then I am happy to take it.
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I guess it's inevitable but increasing the audience means the people attracted won't be anything like me. They like the blue tailed streaking puck on TV, they don't know offsides from icing, and with stupidity comes showboating, make superstars out of the players to attract an audience. I hate it when the media makes the rules because they have the power, and that's what happens when it gets big.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

Kepler said:
How did you rank "the premier event"?

1. Frozen Four
2. Olympics
3. Stanley Cup

IIRC Memorial Cup was not an option.
Click to expand...

I got it wrong. I put Stanley Cup because I figure pro sports trumps college or Olympics.:D
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

Kepler said:
How did you rank "the premier event"?

1. Frozen Four
2. Olympics
3. Stanley Cup

IIRC Memorial Cup was not an option.
Click to expand...

I put Stanley Cup, FF, Olympics. The Stanley Cup gets more attention on local news/ESPN and I just don't see the Olympics as a premiere event. It's bragging rights, but these guys don't often play together unlike some of the other team sports such as soccer which play together regardless of whether it's an Olympic year or not (one of my cousins played for the US Soccer team and even though they play for respective MLS teams, they still play as a cohesive national team year in and year out).
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

SCONF said:
I put Stanley Cup, FF, Olympics. The Stanley Cup gets more attention on local news/ESPN and I just don't see the Olympics as a premiere event. It's bragging rights, but these guys don't often play together unlike some of the other team sports such as soccer which play together regardless of whether it's an Olympic year or not (one of my cousins played for the US Soccer team and even though they play for respective MLS teams, they still play as a cohesive national team year in and year out).
Click to expand...

Since 1998, being a hockey Olympic Gold Medalist means you and your team are the very best in the world. And that's true in in every other Olympic sport but men's soccer (where Olympic Soccer is essentially a U-23 championship). It also means you are an Olympian for the rest of your life. There is more global cachet to having an Olympic Gold Medal than any other trophy you can win.

The Stanley Cup and Frozen Four are club championships. Great club championships for sure, but the Olympics involve the best on best in a global format and being held every four years makes winning Olympic Gold a rare thing. And more people watch Olympic Hockey than any other kind of hockey.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

Puck Swami said:
The Stanley Cup and Frozen Four are club championships. Great club championships for sure, but the Olympics involve the best on best in a global format and being held every four years makes winning Olympic Gold a rare thing. And more people watch Olympic Hockey than any other kind of hockey.
Click to expand...

But the national Olympic teams are now getting their front-line talent from the NHL, then the balance of the rosters are filled out with whomever. Not the same as in 1980 or 1960.

Writing that, I think of the number of players on the 1980 teams who WERE ultimately in the NHL, albeit in reverse order of what happens today.
 
Re: Online NCAA Hockey Survey

AMcoffee said:
But the national Olympic teams are now getting their front-line talent from the NHL, then the balance of the rosters are filled out with whomever. Not the same as in 1980 or 1960.

Writing that, I think of the number of players on the 1980 teams who WERE ultimately in the NHL, albeit in reverse order of what happens today.
Click to expand...

13 of the 20 US players on the 1980 teams played in the NHL after Lake Placid, and 7-8 of them became NHL regulars. In other words, if you had put that whole US team into the NHL the next year, they would not have been embarrassing. Rank and file Americans saw (and perhaps still see them) them as "college kids" and not as the highly-skilled hockey players they really were.

The Soviets, of course, were amateurs in name only, and I personally hated the fact that we had to send amateurs to play against seasoned pros. I like the current Olympic format, where the best players from each play without any of that silly hypocrisy.
 
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