Of Fandom, Then and Now

Reading over the post-game thread concerning the out of town scores, I will say this about PWR: it has led to an explosion of interest in and knowledge about the other teams around the country. Prior to PWR, even those of us who were obsessed with bracketology were vastly ignorant of the non-ECAC hockey world. At best, fans would have a hazy notion of the teams ranked around us in the polls. And of course, for the most part, the only way to follow the results was to wait for the afternoon edition of the papers, which would carry the previous day's CCHA and WCHA scores, if we were lucky.

Since crumudgeons such as I often embarrass ourselves by publicly pining for the glory days, it doesn't hurt to acknowledge that today's college hockey fans, particularly the students, are much more aware and appreciative of the game's universe. It adds a great deal to the fun of following the game, especially for those who only see a handful of games in person.

[Q]Greg Berge Wrote:

Reading over the post-game thread concerning the out of town scores, I will say this about PWR: it has led to an explosion of interest in and knowledge about the other teams around the country.[/q]
I think great credit should go to the availability of the Internet. Getting any college hockey scores in North Carolina in 1979-80 was simply impossible.

I also think having a national powerhouse team is part of the reason. When we were out of the polls through much of the 90's and ranked in the 20's for RPI, I didn't keep track of who was where in the polls.

The internet and satellite dishes have made all of the difference. Even when I attended every Cornell home game in the 80's, I didn't have a clue what was going on outside the ECAC until the national championship game. Living on the West Coast since graduation meant that for many years I found out how Cornell was doing (or did) only via the Alumni news. Finding excellent web sites like eLynah, TBRW, USCHO and others has rekindled my interest in Cornell hockey and college hockey as a whole. Having a satellite dish allows one to see teams all across the country play. The impact of those games on Cornell's PWR status makes them even more interesting.

Don't forget the fact that there's no NHL this year, which I'm sure has steered more people to look a little deeper into the college game.

(Hear that, ESPN? How 'bout a little love for college hockey?)

You (Greg), Al DeFlorio and others all made important points:

- Anybody anywhere can keep up on college hockey via the Internet. No longer do you have to hope the NY Times deigns to run the scores (only) of the college hockey games on Sunday or maybe Monday.

- You can see a couple games a week because of satellite or extended cable, on TV, and if you were crazy enough, a couple more as Webcasts.

- PWR really does help bring some competitive sense to the national landscape. We're all griping about whether Cornell should be No. 4, 6, or 8 in PWR right now. But PWR does legitimately show where a team trends toward, eg top ten, around No. 10, 10-20, ouit of the top 20.

- And it certainly does awaken your interest again when your team is a national contender. Until about 2002, Cornell hockey had been kind of a snooze for me the previous decade, awakened only by a couple highlights in the mid-1980s.

I think there are probably wrestling fans at Iowa State or Lehigh (or Cornell for that matter) who feel the same way about their sport as a result of the above, too. Ditto for lacrosse in the spring.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:- And it certainly does awaken your interest again when your team is a national contender. Until about 2002, Cornell hockey had been kind of a snooze for me the previous decade, awakened only by a couple highlights in the mid-1980s.[/q]

Is it possible you missed us winning back-to-back ECAC titles in 1996-97, and reaching the NCAA quartfinals in 1997? Not what I'd generally put in the "snooze" category.

Beeeej

Sorry, I meant Cornell hockey had been doing a Sleeping Beauty number for about two decades but there were exceptions and you highlighted the most notable one. Cornell got refrigerated ice in 1958, it take a bit less than a decade to make something of it. Ivy titles, ECAC titles, NCAA final fours up the wazoo from 1967 until 1973. Then a much lower standard of accomplishment after 1980's final four. We didn't own the Ivy League, we didn't even stroll into the ECAC finals each year, and the NCAAs seemed to be an every five-years kind of thing except the back to back 1996-97 years, until 2002 and 2003. Kent Manderville tying the game with :02 left against Michigan in the 1991 NCAAs did not make up for the rest of the 1990s through 1996. It was all the more exciting, those back to back 1996-97 ECAC title / NCAA tournament years because they came so early in Schafer's tenure and a lot of people were hoping what he accomplished then was a permanent change. Turns out there were the ECAC tourney losses to Princeton the next two years and another wait until the two good years (2002, 2003), the el foldo against Colgate last year, and now this year could be a benchmark for whether Schafer has built an enduring dynasty, albeit one where the standard of excellence may have to be, because of so many more teams playing hockey, making the NCAA tournament, not making the final four.

And this was all in the context of saying a lot of things make it better and easier to be a Conrell fan now than most anytime in the past. The Web sites, TV coverage ... and a better Cornell team.

One other aspect that's very different from my time is that way back then, the NCAA tournament was 4 teams and there were only three conferences. Two of the tourney berths went to eastern schools and two to western schools. If you won the ECAC tourney or the regular season you pretty much made the NCAA's. It was that simple. You didn't need to keep track of other schools, because the ECAC standings and tournament results were all that mattered.

If you were pick four years to be a sports fan at Cornell, you might often pick the four years you were there because you were there and you found sports moments to savor. That's why so many graduation speeches read like, " ... live in a complicated time like no other." We want to be unique. Plus there has been no time when it absolutely sucked to be a fan at Lynah. Even the .500 teams were pretty exciting compared to any given four years at RPI (OK, there was 1985) or Colgate.

CLASS OF ’70. I think the Cornell Class of '70 or '72 had the best of all worlds. If you entered in 1967 and departed in spring 1970, perhaps even graduated (pass me that joint, Bobbie), you saw the most glorious years of Cornell hockey. And the lacrosse team was darn good. Plus I don't think there was much of the way of finals each spring. Intense dislike of the Vietnam war led to protests and classes being called off, but only in spring semester, when it was warm enough to sit around libe slope, and you still got your diploma. And lastly the Pill worked well enough, and STDs were curable enough, that the social atmosphere then was most excellent - if you could get a date. Oh, yeah, and you could drink at 18 legally.

CLASS ’72. If you were entered in Fall 1968 and graduated in the Class of '72, you entered with the run all the way to the title game against Denver in hockey, you saw the 29-0 season, you saw Ed Marinaro's glorious sophomore year and that incredible 281-yard / 5-TD game against Harvard, you saw an Ivy league football title (Fall 1971) back when it had some meaning outside the Ivy League, and you saw Cornell win the first ever NCAA lacrosse championship that could be won on a playing field not in the south-dominated post-season ballot. You also saw the hockey team make it back to the NCAA championships (if not victorious) in 1972 and you left thinking Cornell was in the hands of a dynamic young hockey coach, 29-year-old Dick Bertrand, who would propel us to decades of NCAA final fours. Bob Kane had done an amazing job getting athletic facilities upgraded (though nothing like the last 10 to 15 years of construction) and we didn’t know quite yet he had hired a turnaround specialist basketball coach allegedly good with black athletes who actually had a horrible drinking problem and couldn’t get along with student athletes of most any color. Nor did we know then that Bertrand was not that shining path to the future. Those graduation years were a bit before me, but, I think, that was as good as it got.

CLASS OF ’64? CLASS OF ‘87/’88? I think. Maybe 1964 and the Gary Wood / Pete Gogolak football years came close, but hockey and lacrosse weren't at the same level, and I can't think of any time (sorry) when Cornell basketball was truly exciting unless it was the weekend Penn and Princeton came to play. OK, there was one backed-into-the-Ivy-hoops-title year circa 1987. And so maybe that was a third decent era, circa class of 1988, with another blip of hockey superiority; Joe Niewendyk; and Richie Moran’s last charge up the hill of excellence before fate/luck/timing moved the gold standard of lacrosse from Ithaca to Princeton. (Can you think of another guy who got dumped from his position because luck ran out who remained as loyal to his school as Moran?)

Now with all our access to information, it's easier to develop an affection for Cornell sports and you can graze on whatever is popular at the time if you're an occasional sports fan. Plus the Class of 1964 did not have the chance to gather at a sports bar in Manhattan in March 1970 to see the hockey team win that 29th game at Lake Placid, nor did they have the chance to see Webcasts and do a near-real-time chat. That is so nice.

CLASS OF ’05? CLASS OF ’06? I think we might be on the cusp of another golden era right now: hockey, lacrosse, wrestling. I am not a die-hard wrestling fan but it’s a sport you can get into pretty easily, the Cornell facility is incredible, and that’s one sport where you simply cannot be out of shape if you plan to do well. Maybe this is a golden era, maybe this is just that belief that the times we live in must be the most golden of times because we’re living in them. Regardless, you don’t anymore need to be a mail subscriber to the Ithaca Journal or Cornell Daily Sun to keep up.

Trust me, Bill: the early 90's were a great time to get one's first exposure to Cornell hockey. I think there is a disproportionate number of fans here whose first exposure was the Lemon/D'Crozier/Manderville/Ratushny/Nikolic squad.

I like how you contracted D'Alessio and Crozier. :-{)} Yes, they were my first exposure, too - I was indoctrinated with cheers of "Kill, Norton, Kill!"

Beeeej

If you were a dedicated fan in the early 1990s, when did you start to feel that maybe something wasn't clicking and since you can't fire the whole team, maybe a coaching change was in order?

Or was it always a yearly hope-springs-eternal feeling? Sort of like the NFL house ad Sunday night showing all the smiling Jets and Falcons and etcetera players and the tagline at the end says, "Tomorrow, we're all unbeaten."

There were, what, four straight ECAC final four appearances 1989-92, and since you didn't know the outcome until the end (no ECAC titles any of those years), you were hopeful during the season and hopeful next year would be one level better?

One would think that circa 1993-95 and the two or three seasons well under .500 would be a negative leading indicator.

Not trying to make fun of anyone being a fan then. But what suffering. And was there a sense of deja vu all over aqain when Schafer followed his two ECAC title years with a couple really mediocre (losing record) years? Makes you think what a precarious perch it is.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:
If you were a dedicated fan in the early 1990s, when did you start to feel that maybe something wasn't clicking and since you can't fire the whole team, maybe a coaching change was in order?[/q]It was already brewing when I arrived in January '90. I can't stand this dump-and-chase hockey with all of these NHL draft picks! was the typical lament. The Skandurski years (does it work as well there, Beeeej?) were the final nail in the coffin.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

If you were a dedicated fan in the early 1990s, when did you start to feel that maybe something wasn't clicking and since you can't fire the whole team, maybe a coaching change was in order?

Not trying to make fun of anyone being a fan then. But what suffering. And was there a sense of deja vu all over aqain when Schafer followed his two ECAC title years with a couple really mediocre (losing record) years? Makes you think what a precarious perch it is. [/q]

Well, I can tell you that it felt pretty special to be in the Class of 1996 (or as a friend of mine calls it, the "class of destiny." The view from the mountaintop really does seem better when you've started in the deepest valley...or some cliche like that. We were there for one great 4-year crescendo. From that horrible, horrible '92-'93 season where we failed to even make the ECAC playoffs...to a PC Drouin crossbar away from advancing to the NCAA Quarterfinals vs. a team we owned. From having to endure an 11-game losing streak freshman year to throwing one helluva party in the bars of Lake Placid senior year. From having to look at empty sections (F-H) every game to having to camp-out overnight for playoff tickets.

To answer your first question, there was a game in the '94-'95 season, where a friend and I shed our Waldo pep band shirts and infiltrated Section B to try to start a "McCutcheon Must Go!" chant. Although we were just met with odd looks from our fellow students, it was clear to us that we had had enough. Enough drowning our sorrows. Enough watching "Dump-and-suck" hockey. Enough watching Harvard and Clarkson having their way with us. Although Charlie Moore was a little loopy as "CEO of Athletics," he's responsible for one of the most significant hirings in CU Hockey history, and I grant him a full pardon for his insanity.

The change was monumental. The season win totals my 4 years went 6-8-11-21. I've got many stories from both that miserable freshman year, as well as that walking-on-air senior year. But I remember the date when many of us really started to believe. Nov. 11, 1995. It was a great weekend for CU sports: The football team had beaten Columbia (yes, historically BAD Columbia) for the first time in 4 years, and during my Seniors On The Field moment, an out-of-town score from New Haven set up a game for the Ivy Championship at Franklin Field. The soccer team clinched the Ivy Title. Oh, and a hockey game in November sent fans over the glass in Lynah. From that moment on, we just held on for an incredible ride. After enduring '92-'93 as my introduction to CU Hockey, the only word for it was "magical."

Sure, "Skandurski" works, though ironically I actually remember a few of us being nervous the first time Elliott had to go out for an injured, previously pretty consistent Skazyk.

For me, a large part of the ennui resulted from seeing the very highly touted Kent Manderville grossly underperform compared with his potential. A few of us expressed our conviction those two years that it wasn't actually him, it was his evil twin, "Skippy."

Of course, now we'd love to have a few more players who put up Kent's kind of numbers - 11-15-26 as a freshman, 17-14-31 as a sophomore - but his sophomore year he also spent a lot of time in the penalty box, and didn't seem to care too much what other people on the team were doing. When LeNeveau, Duffus, and Pelletier left early, many of us found it difficult to understand - when Manderville left, some of us breathed a sigh of relief only overshadowed later by our elation at McCutcheon's departure and Schafer's arrival.

Missing out on ECAC titles despite a trip to the tourney four years in a row was tough to take, but it was still pretty cool to go to Boston four years in a row. It was probably tougher for those who personally remembered seeing ECAC and national titles. I certainly think it was tougher to see us miss Lake Placid and Albany in '99 and '04 after seeing what we'd been capable of in '96, '97, '02, and '03.

Beeeej

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

If you were a dedicated fan in the early 1990s, when did you start to feel that maybe something wasn't clicking and since you can't fire the whole team, maybe a coaching change was in order? [/q]

I was fortunate enough that my initiation into Cornell hockey, the first season I followed the team from beginning to end, was the magical 1985-86 season. Little did we realize, as we screamed our hearts out during that dramatic and spectacular ECAC championship run, that those memories would have to sustain us for TEN MORE YEARS.

As ugarte mentions, some rumblings had already begun during the 1989-90 season. That year, the Big Red went into the last weekend of the regular season needing but one point to lock up second place -- which would have been the team's highest RS finish since '78. The team took to the road against Vermont and RPI and... lost both games. Oh well, this at least set up a quarterfinal series against hated Harvard, who Cornell hadn't beaten in five years. Despite being the home team, the Big Red was pretty much written off against the boys in crimson, but the Good Guys wrapped up the series in two pretty dominant performances, sending Bill Cleary off into retirement a LOSER.

I can still see to this day Ross Lemon's heart-breaking penalty-shot miss in the ECAC semi against RPI, so let's move on quickly, shall we?

... to 1990-91. Gad, this one still hurts, even 14 years later. If anyone's dumb enough to say, "We've got first place locked up", I am going to sentence him or her to an in-depth review of the 1990-91 season. Folks, it is possible to blow a three-point lead with a tiebreaker in hand with six games left, because this team did it. Again it came down to needing one point over the final weekend, this time for first place, and this time hosting Vermont and RPI. But the Big Red failed to show up for either game, leaving us rooting for Harvard (!) to beat second-place Clarkson (which they did) and, the next night, Dartmouth to do the same (which they did not). This was the most talented Cornell team in a generation (14 NHL picks!), and to watch them fall short in the regular season, in the ECAC tournament, in the NCAA's, and oh yeah, they didn't even win the Ivy title -- well, it was agonizing.

I think the seed of doubt started growing roots and leaves in earnest after that, though the 1991-92 team's run to the championship game bought the coaching staff some time. There were certainly calls for Coach McCutcheon's head after the unbelievably bad 1992-93 season, but that wasn't justified. You can't expect greatness when your team loses more letter-winners (11) than it returns (10). Quick sidenote from that season: if you think we're in trouble backup-goalie-wise now, consider that Andy Bandurski had a walk-on career JV'er as his only backup for the first two and a half months of the 92-93 season, until Eddy Skazyk arrived in January -- and was playing two weeks later.

1993-94 was somewhat of an improvement -- well, let's face it, pretty much anything would have been -- and although there were still noticeable problems, 1994-95 was emerging as the year Cornell would take a Step Forward. Of course, our loftiest goals at the time were for a winning record and maybe quarterfinal home ice; it's all a matter of perspective.

Needless to say, It Didn't Happen. The 94-95 team had lost two seniors (one of whom only played half the year) and had picked up Jason Elliott, who at least early on was showing the talent that would make him one of the best Cornell goaltenders ever... and they finished ninth. And they needed an outrageously good string of performances by Skazyk, after Elliott began his sophomore slump a semester early (and Bandurski had left the team), to achieve even that. I held out as long as I could -- it makes me uncomfortable to openly advocate for someone to lose his job -- but that did it for me.

I had the privilege of participating, in a small way, in the interview process for head coach after that season. I went in expecting to be bowled over by Mike Schafer (figuratively, not literally), and I was. Insanely great hire, Charlie Moore. Thank you.

[Q]Not trying to make fun of anyone being a fan then. But what suffering. And was there a sense of deja vu all over aqain when Schafer followed his two ECAC title years with a couple really mediocre (losing record) years?[/q]

Abso-tively, posi-lutely not. 1999 was a disappointment (more so than '98, when the team had lost a lot of defensive talent and then had a huge number of injuries during the season), but the above diatribe, coupled with the championships, explains why I was (and am) willing to give Coach Schafer a pass on pretty much anything short of NCAA violations.

Just previewed this -- man, that's long. I hope the ELF readership will forgive an old-timer (ouch) for rambling... just doing my part to point out that, unless you were a Cornell fan back in the late '60's, you've probably never had it so good.

Of course I'm biased, but I believe USCHO has an extraordinary amount to do with this.

When those of us who started USCHO did so in 1996, the whole idea we had in mind was exactly what is being talked about here -- that college hockey was not being serviced elsewhere, and that we thought it was crazy that people in Boston (for example) had no idea who Brian Bonin was (the previous year's Hobey winner) -- and vice versa.

The parochialism of college hockey is still somewhat silly - but it's a lot better than it used to be.

College hockey was - and still is to an extent - the sport that's just not popular enough for ESPN and The Sporting News, but is popular enough to demand quality coverage. We had no intention to make money then (and don't really now) -- we genuinely just felt that college hockey deserved REAL coverage, and the Internet provided an avenue that made cost of publication very cheap. And we had enough newspaper veterans to guide it along

It was met with extraordinary skepticism by many in the hockey community and NCAA, because no one knew what the groundrules should be for independent online publications. The key for us, then, was to have the utmost standards of professionalism and journalistic integrity. It doesn't mean USCHO was, or is, perfect (and neither is the New York Times) - but those standards were put in place and emphasized immediately. Stylebook, journalistic ethics, news standards, professional appearance at games, etc...

All of the same applied for my attempts that season (1996-97) to do the first Internet-only broadcasts of NCAA events. At the time, Mark Cuban (now well known as owner of the Dallas Mavericks) was barely starting up his company, AudioNet (later sold to Yahoo for $6 billion). As a result, he was directly accessible. I still have e-mails that I exchanged with Cuban. I pitched him on the same idea I mentioned above about the popularity of college hockey. I explained how college hockey was the most affluent demographic of any fan-base, and yet it was spread all over the globe with no way to get the information.

This was just before almost every school started putting their radio games over the Net. So he agreed to give up the bandwidth for free, and I broadcast all four ECAC tournament final four games, and all 11 NCAA games (Grady Whittenberg actually did the four games that took place at the West Regional). This also required the cooperation of Joe Bertagna at the ECAC and John Painter at the NCAA to recognize the value of it and allow the broadcasts to take place without charging a rights fee. More people, by far, listened to the broadcasts involving Cornell than any other team.

After that, everyone started putting their games online - and well, there's a lot more - but that's all that's relevant to this story

It was seven years before USCHO had a competitor, and seven years before CSTV. Would all of this happened eventually from someone? Most likely. But when?

There's still more to do. I still want to see a weekly hour-long radio/satellite/net-only show devoted to college hockey, with guests and call-ins ... And/or a TV show along the same lines. There just hasn't quite been the opportunity, because of bandwidth costs, logistics, etc...

Back to Greg's original premise ... USCHO brought PWR to the public consciousness, and to the NCAA's consciousness for that matter, in 1997. Even though the NCAA was actually using it and just didn't know it (long story). So that really went hand in hand.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

If you were a dedicated fan in the early 1990s, when did you start to feel that maybe something wasn't clicking and since you can't fire the whole team, maybe a coaching change was in order?[/q]

I've always considered the abolute breaking point to be the 3-player recruiting class of 1995.

I remember the McCutcheon must go chants and I remember participating. So it wasn't all odd looks.

It's a little over-zealous to say we were a crossbar away from playing a team that we had owned. We hadn't even beaten Vermont that year - just two 2-2 ties. Granted that was a pretty nice accomplishment considering how strong the Cats were that season. But I remember thinking that a Cornell-Vermont NCAA matchup might take a week to resolve.

Adam,

Thank you very much for everything you have done to promote College Hockey. It's pretty cool how closely I can follow it again now, in spite of the fact that it gets almost zero coverage where I live. I especially loved the article you wrote about the Cornell-Harvard rivalry a few years ago. It was nice to find out that Lynah was still one of the toughest places for a visitor to play.

Keep up the good work.

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

I remember the McCutcheon must go chants and I remember participating. So it wasn't all odd looks.[/q]

Same here. I also remember people circulating a rumor that one of the players fathers (I want to say Ryan Hughes) was bad mouthing McCutcheon to other parents with kids in juniors.

As a member of the Class of '72, I have to agree that they were good years. Men's gymnastics dominated the Ivy League, too. A national championship in the IRA regatta. They even ran the season ticket line well.

As a townie, following the teams in the early to mid '60s, I'd have to say that times were pretty good then, too - for the football you mention, for the basketball with Steve Cram and Blaine Austin, and the hockey program starting to make a move with Laing Kennedy and company. Seems to me that track and wrestling were pretty strong.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

If you were pick four years to be a sports fan at Cornell, you might often pick the four years you were there because you were there and you found sports moments to savor. That's why so many graduation speeches read like, " ... live in a complicated time like no other." We want to be unique. Plus there has been no time when it absolutely sucked to be a fan at Lynah. Even the .500 teams were pretty exciting compared to any given four years at RPI (OK, there was 1985) or Colgate.

CLASS OF ’70. I think the Cornell Class of '70 or '72 had the best of all worlds. If you entered in 1967 and departed in spring 1970, perhaps even graduated (pass me that joint, Bobbie), you saw the most glorious years of Cornell hockey. And the lacrosse team was darn good. Plus I don't think there was much of the way of finals each spring. Intense dislike of the Vietnam war led to protests and classes being called off, but only in spring semester, when it was warm enough to sit around libe slope, and you still got your diploma. And lastly the Pill worked well enough, and STDs were curable enough, that the social atmosphere then was most excellent - if you could get a date. Oh, yeah, and you could drink at 18 legally.

[/q]

Plus we had an incomparable civics lesson in the form of the Straight takeover in the Spring of '69. Not only did we have the perfect season and 4 final fours, but we may have been the last class to have had even a hint of what used to be known as a liberal education. The long trajectory leading to today's political correctness, speach codes, et. al., began, or at least became fully visible, in our years.

A good read about this aspect of Cornell during the glory years of hockey is Donald Down's "Cornell '69".

And BTW, it wasn't that hard to get a date.

[Q]RichH Wrote:
freshman year... senior year... Oh, and a hockey game in November sent fans over the glass in Lynah. From that moment on, we just held on for an incredible ride. After enduring '92-'93 as my introduction to CU Hockey, the only word for it was "magical."[/q]

But when did you compose the Ballad of Matt Weder? That's what we really want to know! Cough it up Rich!

[Q]jeh25 Wrote:

RichH Wrote:
freshman year... senior year... Oh, and a hockey game in November sent fans over the glass in Lynah. From that moment on, we just held on for an incredible ride. After enduring '92-'93 as my introduction to CU Hockey, the only word for it was "magical."[/Q]
But when did you compose the Ballad of Matt Weder? That's what we really want to know! Cough it up Rich![/q]

The first winter I was not within easy driving distance of Ithaca. Would've been Jan. '99.

[home.stny.rr.com]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2005 05:14PM by RichH.