newman@bgsuvax.UUCP (Tim Newman) (06/04/85)
Ohio, unfortunately, may never be able to support an NHL franchise.
Cleveland should be able to support a team, but then they also should
be able to support a baseball team :-).
High school hockey is big in the state - especially in the Cleveland
area. I would estimate that nearly half of the schools with high school
hockey programs are in the Cleveland area. So there definitely is a base
for hockey in the state. Also, there are three NCAA Division I hockey schools
here - Ohio State, Bowling Green (national champs 2 years ago), and Miami.
Ohio Univerisity in Athens also had a Division I program in the early 70's.
Also, several schools have Division III programs. Plus, Toledo has a minor
league (IHL) franchise (although they've been having problems keeping it in
Toledo because of poor attendance caused by a losing program).
What of an NHL franchise, then. Cincinnati did have a WHA franchise
which was solvent at the time of the absorption by the NHL of some of those
teams. I never really heard why the Stingers weren't added. With a
college program at nearby Miami University, Cincinnati might be a nice
sight for an NHL team. But, the high school program is weak there and
I've never seen any newspapers in that area go big into hockey coverage.
Cincinnati would probably draw better than Pittsburgh does right now, but
not much better. It is also in one of the smaller national television
markets. Moving up I-71, what of Columbus. They have the hockey Buckeyes,
after all! Too bad that Columbus is a terrible hockey town. They never
even post hockey news to the net! The Buckeyes do well to draw 1500 to
their games (this is on a campus of 50,000 people in a major metropolitan
area!). The fans they get seem to only go for the fights, indicating
that a major-league World Wrestling Federation franchise would do better
in the Capital City than would a hockey franchise - of any type. That leaves
Cleveland. I really think that Cleveland COULD support hockey if the
media attention was right. They have a nice facility to play in (BG played
the Russians there this past January) along with the population and
youth base which is so necessary to ensure the popularity of the sport.
A successful franchise there could rely on support at least from this
small city of BG 2 hours away. Many alums from BG are from or live in the
Cleveland area, too, so people with knowledge of hockey are "in the
woodwork." A WINNER would draw in Cleveland (unlike Detroit, which seems
to draw win or lose - now that's a good hockey city!).
I know I'm babbling on, so I promise to hurry to a conclusion. I feel
that hockey CAN draw here (and, indeed, elsewhere in the States) if and
only if proper media attention is accorded it. The point about the USA
Network's hockey coverage by our friend at UCLA is all too typical of
the terrible hockey coverage down here. Until people enter the media who
are hockey-wise and until the media focuses attention on hockey, hockey
doesn't have a chance anywhere down here. The current numbers of American-
born players in the NHL is right now perhaps a result of the media attention
on the USA gold medal in the 1980 Olympics and the American upset of the
Soviets. The only way hockey is going to "come back" down here is with
the media attention. If Cleveland paper(s), for instance, would focus
on NHL results and if Cleveland TV news would focus on NHL game highlights,
you might see enough interest in hockey to warrant an expansion franchise
there. Shootouts (as proposed by Marcel Aubut (sp?) ) or rules changes
are NOT going to attract USA fans. Media attention will.
I apologize for the length of this
Tim Newman