Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?
I had to stay away from the board since Saturday night due to other obligations, but I wanted to continue the discussion.
On the video feed.
In this day and age of broad band access and the ability to create high quality streaming with relatively common equipment, there is no excuse for the extremely poor quality of the video feed from the epic quarterfinal between Minnesota and UND. The NCAA could have easily farmed this task out to a university communications department, or one of the standard crews that do the in-season work, and we would have a better product. They should look at the example set by the D3 crew in Superior. A high quality video feed, with various camera angles and plenty of replays. One of the best I've seen in Women's hockey.
I don't know what the problem is. Maybe it's that they're willing to put out a good product for the championships, but not the quarterfinals. The NCAA forces all these tournament streams to be free, and they must not be subsidizing whoever is providing these services enough to make it worth their while to do this well. That's the economics of it.
On the seeding.
All kidding aside in my recent postings, do believe that the seeding should be fair and equitable, and it is clear to me that UND should have been a higher seed. The question then becomes, how do you accomplish that with the current system and the small sample size of WCHA vs other conference results.
At the end of the day, the teams that deserve to be there should get a chance to do the talking on the ice. I'm a firm believer in letting head to head results on the ice decide who moves on and who does not.
Just some food for thought.
Yes, you're right, ultimately you need a better sample. But I think a better system will lead to better games being scheduled.
To be honest, this would require top eastern teams to want to play games against top WCHA opponents and there's no indication that this is the case. I'll give credit to BC and BU, because they clearly do want to play those games. There is zero indication that the top teams in the ECAC want to do the same. We could have had a very meaningful series between Minnesota and Harvard this year, but the Crimson decided that they didn't want to play the Gophers any longer. Cornell, as far as I can tell, is too scared to play WCHA teams.
It's not just on WCHA teams to have more openings for non-conference play. Those other teams have to want to do it, and I don't think they do. Allowing for a NCAA seeding system that rewards teams for a weaker schedule without putting any pressure on the ECAC to step up is ridiculous.
As others suggested, the Ivy schedule makes things hard, and Harvard loses another two games for the Beanpot. Again, I hope a better system would encourage more ECAC teams to play more WCHA teams. And as others have pointed out, we did used to have a lot of really great games between the top West and top East schools earlier last decade. It's too bad we've lost that.
David,
You know what else is second rate? How when a fan forum user uses the "contact" button to contact the forum administrators and then is completely ignored...for weeks on end...even after three follow up emails to see why their questions haven't been answered. Actually, it's not even second rate...it doesn't rate...you can't rate it because it doesn't exist. I'm speaking about common courtesy, business practices and competence. If those responsible have no intention to respond to questions then they should make the "contact" button disappear...don't you figure?
Thought you should know in case you might care and have some influence, assuming it isn't you that's responsible. Even if it is you that is responsible.
None of these emails have been going to my mailbox. Only some reported posts go to my inbox. I don't get the
fan_forum@uscho.com or
board@uscho.com email. I regret you've had that experience.
I will say that I had no problem watching the entirety of the Minnesota game. I did reboot it at one point, and it didn't take me right back to the game, but I was easily able to get back to it using the link on the Minnesota schedule page.
I tried several different ways of accessing the link and none ended up working for me. I saw the others (DC78-82) had a similar problem not being able to find the game, so it wasn't just me.
Let's not get too carried away by the excitement of one 3OT game. While I agree that using a statistical method other than RPI would probably be an improvement, criticism of ND's 2013 seeding should be based solely on (as David De Remer rightly points out) their regular season performance, not what we now know in hindsight about (and could not have known about while doing the seedings) their tournament performance. Just as the outcome of the MH/Cornell game doesn't imply that MH should have been seeded #2 and MH #7, so the fact that ND lost to Minny in overtime after losing to them in regulation 5 times this season doesn't in itself imply that ND should have been seeded #4 or higher. That thesis should be examined solely on a dispassionate analysis of RPI vs KRach vs Rutter vs whatever else there may be. After all, didn't 6- 26 Bemidji State take Minny to overtime, too, in just 5 attempts?
Yes, the intellectual case to replace the RPI needs to be based on a much broader range of data than just one team or one season. Still, UND's experience this year inspires me to urge change.
I don't think it's necessarily a women's hockey issue as opposed to a women's sports issue with the NCAA. Even look at basketball, a huge production unveiling the bracket for the tournament last night. I know they do a women's selection show too, but not to the extent of the men's. they do everything in their power to televise every men's game and the women's game gets relegated to select games on ESPN2. Now we all know that men's sports bring in more money than women's, but would the NCAA treating the women's sports with more respect elevate them to a higher level?
That's true, but I think these problems with women's hockey are first-order and really prevent the sport from growing as it should, whereas I don't feel the same way about ESPN's coverage of basketball.
Sad to say of course but even with the visibility from the Olympics women's hockey just has not been able to generate any long term commercial success. Just the way it is. Same is basically true of the WNBA.
Sure, but other women's sports have. The WTA does well.
Women's sports have suffered from a ton of discrimination (beyond simply how one might prefer men's sports to women's sports in a vacuum), and it's pretty much impossible to overcome that. The WTA proves there's some ability to overcome that though.
I had Serena Williams get asked this question when I was at Stanford this summer, and she said it was all about the WTA having better pioneers as, I expected:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151089501104553
This was my reaction I wrote at the time:
Thanks, the Grantland column below motivated the question. I love the tennis writing but strongly disagree any gap in athleticism between women and men is the primary obstacle for the viability of women's pro sports leagues. We pay a lot to watch men all the time when they're not the best men (e.g. college sports). The main obstacle is that history, fan bases, prestige, and brand equity -- whatever terms you want to use -- are all hugely important in the success of sports. Like the author, I wouldn't pay to watch Diana Taurasi play for the Phoenix Mercury, but I'd pay to watch her in the Final Four or the Olympics. College sports, the Olympics, the World Cup, and the tennis/golf Grand Slams are all great brands, and women's sports have only been financially successful building off those brands. The WTA Tour has worked because individual players get watched at prestigious events four times per year. Fans then come to a Stanford WTA Event to see a player who just won Wimbledon, and then the Stanford WTA event develops its own prestige over 40 years. In contrast, women's soccer only has the World Cup every 4 years (plus the U.S. has been memorable only every 12 years), and the Olympics are too crowded for any one sport to stand out. There is no women's pro team or league brand equity. The author raises the question of whether market mechanisms for women's pro sports are fair. Well, the social obstacle is that women are competing against men's pro brands that have been growing since long before Title IX, and even before women's suffrage. No improvement in the quality of women's athleticism is going to change that.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id...is-title-ix-pride-emotional-wimbledon-weekend
Now there are realistic limitations on how much women's hockey can grow, but there are a few basic necessities the NCAA should provide to give it some kind of fighting chance.
