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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!cornell!hal
From: hal@cornell.UUCP (Hal Perkins)
Newsgroups: net.sport.hockey
Subject: re: new collegiate hockey league
Message-ID: <5355@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Sep-83 18:28:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.5355
Posted: Thu Sep 29 18:28:23 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Oct-83 18:55:35 EDT
References: <3@ucbvax.UUCP>
Organization: Cornell Computer Science
Lines: 40

Last year, there was a proposal within the Ivy League (I believe at
the President's level, although maybe at the Athletic Director's
level) that Ivy League teams should change their schedules to play
each other team in the Ivy league three times each year instead of
twice.  This would reduce the number of non-league games from playing
every non-Ivy team in the ECAC once a year to only once every couple
of years.  The only dessenting vote to this was Cornell, which is
still reasonably competative with the entire ECAC, unlike many Ivy
schools.

This isn't final yet, and it is not entirely certain what Cornell
would do if it passed.  That decision would definitely turn the Ivy
league into a second-rate league.  Ivy schools already have some
recruiting disadvantage because they don't offer athletic scholarships.
But it's not too bad as long as the competition is first rate.  If
it is, there is some recruiting advantage to being a first-rate
school academically, as well as a place where a student-athlete can
play first-rate hockey.  Not to mention that Cornell has had two
all-American goal tenders the last two years, which proves that a good
player can receive recognition even if he plays in the Ivy league.
But if Ivy schools were to play almost all of their games against
each other, it would almost certainly hurt recruiting, because good
athletes want to play against good competition.  This apparently doesn't
bother the Ivy schools that haven't put together competative hockey
programs, but it would certainly hurt Cornell, and several other Ivy
schools that are competative a lot of the time.

The proposal of some of the non-Ivy schools to form their own league
was a reaction to the Ivy proposal, and doesn't have anything to do
with things like amount of time needed to travel to road games.  Neither
proposal is final yet (as far as I know), and there will probably be some
very heavy-duty political goings-on before anything is decided.  I certainly
hope that the ECAC doesn't split up along these lines, but I don't know what
will happen.  If there is interest in such things, I'll post updates to the
net as the situation evolves.



Hal Perkins                         UUCP: {decvax|vax135|...}!cornell!hal
Cornell Computer Science            ARPA: hal@cornell  BITNET:  hal@crnlcs