WANT TO HAVE SOME FUN?

GO TO [www.syracuse.com]
THESE GUYS ARE THE POOREST SPORTS EVER!
GO BIG RED!

About as much fun as a spork in the eye...

I feel dumber for the experience. Here's the post at the very top of the forum when I visited (there were much, much worse examples of excuse making, but this one piqued my interest):

Who would win a Cornell vs. Maryland basketball game if it was played in a mud bowl? I don’t know, maybe Cornell. Sound like a funny question to begin with? Well, you’re right. The NCAA has a book about 2 inches thick that describes how everything is to be done for the tournament, right down to the spring tension on the breakaway rim. The games are to be played in ideal conditions so the best team wins, not the best blizzard basketball team. They should the same for lacrosse and make everyone play in a dome. I know many of you knuckle-dragging apes are confused by this concept because Mommy and Daddy punched you for fun when you were a kid. If you still don’t get it, then crawl over to the nearest upright walking human and ask to have it explained to you.

PS: They probably will never change the rules because SU would win nearly every year (PU’s 97 and 98 teams would still win, however)

Does anyone else in college lacrosse play under a dome? Lacrosse is a field sport where elements --sever conditions excepted-- are part of the game. If there's to be a rule, I'd rather it require that games be played outdoors (shelter for spectators is still welcome, though ).

Besides that, lacrosse was invented to be played as training for war by native americans...and don't you think they'd still fight no matter how muddy it got?

Wow, that is pretty silly. Perhaps they would prefer Syracuse only play box lacrosse?

I couldn't take it. I had to respond to that stupid message.

Of course Syracuse would win every year with that rule. They'd also be playing nothing but intrasquad games most likely...

Weather is definitely and should be a factor in any sport that wasn't designed to be played indoors. Certainly it would be silly to play billiards in a driving rainstorm (he's about to sink the 9 ball to win but No! a massive hailstone knocks it away from the pocket!...) but football, baseball, lacrosse, these sports were meant to be played out doors. You stop playing when weather gets severe but otherwise, good teams find a way to deal with the elements.

Why oh why am I responding to such a stupid post on a forum where the idiot author won't even read it? Shows how eager I am to keep trudging through this computer manual at work...

Hockey was originally an outdoor sport too but it seems to have weathered the transition to all-indoor status (save the MSU-Michigan game to start this past season). Would you have said the same thing around the time the use of indoor rinks became more standard?

Hmmm... now there's an image... Hockey in a rainstorm!

I wonder what the rules were, weather-wise, for outdoor hockey games... Was it "anything goes", like football, or "run for cover", like baseball?

From a 1940 post to the Syracuse Hockey Forum (love those archives!), on the day after a 4-1 Cornell hockey victory over Syracuse at Beebe Lake:

If you'd play us in a proper arena, then we'd administer a frightful thrashing, you impudent scalawags! We had no idea that there would be a typhoon strafing your miserable little puddle yesterday afternoon. Otherwise, we would've packed our rain-skates and hockey-ponchos! We'll see who's master of the ice under civilized conditions in a few weeks when you come up to our house for the rematch! We'll show you how real hockey is played, you Ivy-covered scoundrels! Build a rink, you barbarians!!!

Seems like the writing abilities of Syracuse fans have, umm, slackened a bit in the last 60+ years...

(BTW, Cornell finished their season that year by travelling to Syracuse and blanking the Orangefellows in their own barn, 4-0. The ensuing trash-talk got even uglier than the above post (if you can imagine!)... It is rumored that the expletive "horsehockey!" was first uttered on that very forum during the war of words that stretched well into the post-season...)

No, but for entirely different reasons. Extreme weather conditions and unplayable surfaces are far more common in outdoor, uncovered, open air hockey rinks than they are in outdoor, uncovered, open air fall and spring sporting venues (particularly with turf, which I think is always unplayable, but that's a different argument). Rain, wind, and generally crappy weather are a part of football, ultimate, crew, and lacrosse (based on my lone lax experience - if they didn't cancel it for that, then obviously they play in rain), and do not cause the termination of the game. Hockey *had* to move indoors, because failing to do so would result in far more cancellations and a crippling inability to spread to warmer areas. Lacrosse doesn't need to move indoors, since relatively few games are called for weather concerns. If baseball, which does get called on account of rain, doesn't need to move indoors, then neither does lax.

My take on the Syracuse fans' argument is that good teams can play through that stuff. They may not function at 100% effectiveness, but they should still get through it. Take a look at ultimate - the west coast teams don't do so hot in crappy weather, but the top west coast teams still play better than most of the northeast squads regardless of the conditions (in no small part because they can practice outdoors for 10-12 months a year). That's why they're the teams to beat.

Why do I feel the need to mention the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their lifetime record of never having won a game where the temperature at kickoff was below freezing?

I've actually been to a couple of outdoor college hockey games, at Utah Lake State Park in Provo (where BYU's club team used to play before the Seven Peaks olympic venue was built). It was a wacky scene, with games starting at 9:45pm, huge puddles in the corners, and delay of game penalties assessed for fans standing on the dashers, not to mention the intensity of the Utah-BYU rivalry leading to a lot of penalties, including DQs. The Utah coach and players talked about how you could never count on things going as expected down there, but no one ever complained that it was unfair. (Utah and BYU split their two games in Provo, while the IceCats took three points from the Skating Utes in the Salt Lake area.)

Tom has some compelling reasoning, but what if "rain, wind, and generally crappy weather" were part of hockey back when it was played outdoors? In other words, what if the games were not cancelled due to snow or rain but rather the players played through? The same logic would then apply i.e. battling the elements is part of the game so why move it indoors and change the game? That said, even if they played through the weather back in the old days, at some point the "safety of the athletes" would have become more important and they probably would have started postponing games due to severe weather anyway.

Does anyone know what the weather rules are for speed skating? I can't recall any postponements but I also can't recall any speedskating events held in snow or rain. And despite having the ability to hold all of those events indoors, for the most part, they are still held outdoors.

The difference with hockey is the fact that at some ponit the surface does truly become unplayable. I've played in snow and it's kind of fun. I've got no problem with that. The ice gets a bit slow but it can be played through. But when the weather is warm and it's raining it's not a question of whether you can "just play through it". When the ice melt you're stuck running in skates on concrete (if it's a rink) or drowning. One can slog through the mud ni the rain while playing football or lacrosse. You can't skate without somewhat respectable ice.

Now could they build outdoor rinks with massive compressor sthat could keep the ice solid on a 60 degree day? Maybe but it wouldn't be economical.

Yeah, and Zambonis used to consist of pushing a barrel around the ice. Maybe playing through the elements was fine generations ago, but the game has evolved to the point where it would be nearly impossible and dangerous to even try. Hockey, probably more than any other sport except racing and perhaps football, has evolved tremendously in the last 50 years to the point that you can hardly draw comparisons.

"Hey, guys, check it out! You can lift the puck!" (Probably very quickly followed by "Ow! My tooff!"

Thanks, Keith, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Can't play hockey without ice, and ice is more likely to become unplayable. Hell, the ice at the Whale became unplayable last year, and that's an indoor facility! )

I remember watching them push barrels around the ice between periods at Madison Square Garden (no, not the one for which they destroyed a wonder of architecture)--which was very definitely indoors.