2007-08 fan wishlist

[KeithK]

[quote ebilmes][quote Dpperk29]athletes go to class???[/quote]

At Cornell, some of them do.

[quote Liz '05]People schedule class on Fridays???[/quote]

Just because it's scheduled doesn't mean you have to go B-][/quote]
Athletes generally don't go to class on the Friday before a road weekend.  Or at least the hockey team doesn't.  The team typically leaves on Thursday afternoon.  Short trips like Colgate may be an exception.

[Beeeej]

[quote Josh '99]Corn nuggets are overrated.[/quote]

I'll sure miss that Josh fellow.  Struck down in the prime of his life... awful.

[Beeeej]

All that happened when I fell on the ice in the bear suit was that the Pep Band started chanting, "The bear drives a cab!"  Then someone else had to go and ruin it, apparently.

Funny, the guy who followed me as the Marching Band's PA announcer also ruined things.  Curious...

[bandrews37]

[quote RichH]
1) Fix/replace All-Access.  
Most obvious one.  Enough has been written here about it.  We all know it.  After the experience of the Duke lax webcast with ACC Select...we now know a quality product & model is not only possible, but is in use now.  Most of us would gladly pay for a reliable service.  I'd prefer it to be internal to the university, but if a league-wide service like ACC Select exists, why not try an ECAC or Ivy League branded subscription service?  CSTV is too bloated and difficult in its current form.
[/quote]
I might be the only one to disagree with this one. What home games I couldn't get to, I was able to catch on All-Access and never had any problems with it, and I've never had any issues with any of the archived games, either. I agree CSTV's customer (dis)service sucks, but honestly, anyone with an intermediate knowledge of computers should be able to figure out any bugs with the system. The few times that it didn't work for me were on my end (connection issues, mostly). It's improved a lot over the last six months - multiple camera angles, graphics, etc. I'd rather have Jason on anyway - at least you know he knows what he's talking about. Besides, I think it's funny that people point to the ACC Select and call that a good broadcast - meanwhile, over at Laxpower.com, they're ripping it to shreads. It just goes to show that no matter what format they go with, someone's ultimately going to be unhappy with it. I will say that it would be good to see some type of all-inclusive Ivy package that includes football, hoops, and lacrosse. And in talking with some of the rink folks about the video, they're prevented from doing multiple camera angles due to fire codes. The all-access broadcast uses just one less camera than when TV comes in, only losing the camera behind K, I think it is. I guess my thought with this one is be careful what you wish for - it could always be worse. I actually prefer the CSTV system to the one most of the other Ivy schools are using.

2) Go back to old starting times.
There's a fairly large number of people with jobs who attend games.  The start times for games were 7:30 on Fridays, 7:00 on Saturdays.  Maybe that's too difficult to remember.  With the universal 7:00 start times, I've found myself hitting snags in sneaking out of the office, traffic delays, etc. that I get there late.  For the Dartmouth game in Hanover, the start time was pushed back to 7:30 due to an afternoon women's game.  It may have only been 30 minutes, but I found that extra time to be a luxury.  Gives people time to fight traffic, get into town, find parking, and/or maybe have a bite to eat before heading to to the arena.  Games will still end by 9:45.

I prefer the 7 pm start. Gives me more than enough time to leave work, grab a bite to eat (and not at McDonalds or Burger King), and still get to the rink as warmups are starting. Then again, I'm also proactive and take a change of clothes with me to the office on game nights. Also, it gives more time to hit the bars after the game to celebrate the wins. Don't ever discount that extra half hour of bar time...

My adds...
- more games on TV - and not just on Time Warner. There's MSG, SNY, Fox Sports, and we can't get on any of them??
- (since it's a wish list, I'm allowed to wish!) a new arena to watch games in. :-) Seriously, a lot of the problems we as fans have are a direct result of the old barn. The ushers assume many things, probably because they can't see exactly who's doing what. All-access is limited with camera positions because the rink wasn't built 50 years ago with webcasts in mind. I think you can build a new facility with much of the same charm as the older one - look at the baseball building craze for that. Actually, let me amend this to me winning the lottery so I can donate the winnings for a new barn, since that's the only way this will happen.
- a cease-fire on the Andy and athletics-bashing. I know he's not the most popular figure around here, but there are several items that athletics has done to benefit the hockey program and to make the fans happy. He's made a long-term committment to Schafer (not that I'm thrilled, but I know I'm in the minority, and that's fine with me), they went ahead with the rink renovations, knowing the majority of fans would rather keep Lynah than have a new facility, and (in spite of it being yet another popular fan-bashing point), put in the higher glass. Why's that a good thing? Because the alternative to the higher glass was netting all the way around the rink. Given your choice of the two, which would you rather have? Really, talk with some of the folks over there, and not just when you've got something you want to gripe about. Let them know if they're doing something that you like, not just bashing them when they screw up. Everyone screws up at their jobs... it's just not everyone has an internet message board bashing them when they do (and, since I know it'll inevitably be coming again, no, I do not work in athletics. I've just taken the time to get to know some of the people who work over there, and really, they're not evil incarnate).

[Will]

[quote bandrews37]I prefer the 7 pm start. Gives me more than enough time to leave work, grab a bite to eat (and not at McDonalds or Burger King), and still get to the rink as warmups are starting. Then again, I'm also proactive and take a change of clothes with me to the office on game nights. Also, it gives more time to hit the bars after the game to celebrate the wins. Don't ever discount that extra half hour of bar time...[/quote]

Just out of curiosity, where do you work?  (At least, what geographic area of Ithaca?)  And what time do you typically get out of work on Fridays?

[DeltaOne81]

[quote bandrews37]
I might be the only one to disagree with this one. What home games I couldn't get to, I was able to catch on All-Access and never had any problems with it,[/quote]

Well, I only bought All Access for 1 month (this month) and have so far watched/listened to 3 events. One, the lax game last weekend, was entirely MIA. The other 2 - the Q games - were fine, although I missed the first period of the first one because my account, which was working fine earlier in the day, now would let me log in and then tell me I couldn't access anything.

However, there's one big thing you're missing. The reason I only had AA for one month (and have canceled so it will lapse in a couple weeks), is because AA may work okay, so long as you meet their very specific system specs. IE and Windows (and XP and above only, right?). I, like a decent number of people on here, have a Mac. I was able to (pay to) watch the away Dartmouth game through their system. I was able to watch the Notre Dame neutral site game through the alternate service Cornell tried out. I was able to (pay to) watch the Duke lax game through playonsports.

(Btw, my girlfriend has a Dell, so that's how I was able to watch, but I only relented for the playoffs. I'm not going to pay someone who doesn't want to bother to support me.)

In fact, basically every other streaming video service I've seen offers video through a standard WMP 9 plug-in format. Only AA decides to use such fancy flash and animation and graphics that only Microsofts blessed platforms can view it.

That may make sense from a business standpoint based on marketshare, but from a university standpoint, it is not a good idea to push away a whole section of alumni. Especially when a university like Cornell has a distinct Mac history.

Even MSNBC.com, who used to make their free video playable only on IE on Windows, gave that up because they realized its trivial to let anyone view it. Couldn't AA at least provide an alternative set of links available through an HTML page that load in a WMP plug-in? Nah, that makes too much sense.

[jtwcornell91]

In particular, last year's Cornell video feed worked just fine under Linux.

[Chris '03]

I might be the only one to disagree with this one. What home games I couldn't get to, I was able to catch on All-Access and never had any problems with it, and I've never had any issues with any of the archived games, either. I agree CSTV's customer (dis)service sucks, but honestly, anyone with an intermediate knowledge of computers should be able to figure out any bugs with the system. The few times that it didn't work for me were on my end (connection issues, mostly). It's improved a lot over the last six months - multiple camera angles, graphics, etc. I'd rather have Jason on anyway - at least you know he knows what he's talking about. Besides, I think it's funny that people point to the ACC Select and call that a good broadcast - meanwhile, over at Laxpower.com, they're ripping it to shreads.  

Here's the thing, All-Access the last two years has been a lot like playing a lousy round of golf but finishing with a birdie on 18. As you walk off the course you think, "that wasn't so bad. I can do this." In reality that doesn't change the fact you just put up a big number for the day and improvements throughout the year shouldn't excuse AA for all its shortcomings. I'm on a mac right now so I can't check some old archived games that I never got to see (because they never got archived properly) to challenge your point that they're all there as far as you know. I do recall having a miserable time during football season with webcasts starting late and cutting out. And not once was it "on my end" unless it was a user end problem for everyone on here. Why has AA tried to reinvent the wheel two years running? Both years the service has been an abomination during football season and into hockey season but by playoff time they have replays and a considerably more consistent product? I'm glad athletics is investigating other options because while you keep saying over and over that the other products suck just as much, the only product I've seen with consistent failures to even provide content is AA (and it's not just here on eLynah, check out other AA schools' boards or search USCHO). In the end I'm not looking for a tv quality HD broadcast with mike emerick every week (sorry, bill). All I want is the piece of mind that if I buy this product I will get what I'm paying for: video of home games with the radio broadcast, radio for road games and prompt and accurate archiving. I want to know that if I make time on 7pm on a saturday, I'll be able to see the game and if I have to watch it at 7am the next morning instead, it will be there for me.

As for ACC Select, I don't think people on laxpower are ripping the service so much as the individual schools' varied levels of production quality. As I understand it, each school is left to their own devices to provide the content and the quality is variable. Most of the complaints I've seen have been of the announcer is dumb/camera angles bad variety which they bitch about with respect to CSTV broadcasts too. It's not "why isn't this working at all" like we get with AA.

2) Go back to old starting times.
There's a fairly large number of people with jobs who attend games.  The start times for games were 7:30 on Fridays, 7:00 on Saturdays.  Maybe that's too difficult to remember.  With the universal 7:00 start times, I've found myself hitting snags in sneaking out of the office, traffic delays, etc. that I get there late.  For the Dartmouth game in Hanover, the start time was pushed back to 7:30 due to an afternoon women's game.  It may have only been 30 minutes, but I found that extra time to be a luxury.  Gives people time to fight traffic, get into town, find parking, and/or maybe have a bite to eat before heading to to the arena.  Games will still end by 9:45.

I prefer the 7 pm start. Gives me more than enough time to leave work, grab a bite to eat (and not at McDonalds or Burger King), and still get to the rink as warmups are starting. Then again, I'm also proactive and take a change of clothes with me to the office on game nights. Also, it gives more time to hit the bars after the game to celebrate the wins. Don't ever discount that extra half hour of bar time...
[/quote]

I'd rather be able to get to the game on time and lose half an hour at the bars than miss the first period but get to hear about it for an extra half an hour later. Plenty of season ticket holders don't live in Ithaca and even among those who do, plenty of people work until 6 giving them hardly enough time to eat and get to the game for warmups at 6:22.

My adds...
- more games on TV - and not just on Time Warner. There's MSG, SNY, Fox Sports, and we can't get on any of them??

Unless the university shows the same dedication to athletics promotion that the Q does and starts paying for the time or the ECAC gets its act together as a league, it ain't happening. Not that it wouldn't be great exposure...

- a cease-fire on the Andy and athletics-bashing. I know he's not the most popular figure around here, but there are several items that athletics has done to benefit the hockey program and to make the fans happy. He's made a long-term committment to Schafer (not that I'm thrilled, but I know I'm in the minority, and that's fine with me), they went ahead with the rink renovations, knowing the majority of fans would rather keep Lynah than have a new facility, and (in spite of it being yet another popular fan-bashing point), put in the higher glass. Why's that a good thing? Because the alternative to the higher glass was netting all the way around the rink. Given your choice of the two, which would you rather have? Really, talk with some of the folks over there, and not just when you've got something you want to gripe about. Let them know if they're doing something that you like, not just bashing them when they screw up. Everyone screws up at their jobs... it's just not everyone has an internet message board bashing them when they do (and, since I know it'll inevitably be coming again, no, I do not work in athletics. I've just taken the time to get to know some of the people who work over there, and really, they're not evil incarnate).

First on the higher glass. Does it suck for the fan whose seat has a newly obstructed view? Sure. I really don't care though. As I see it the higher glass is at least in part due to the fact that with the new benches it's harder to bank the puck off the glass and down the ice without putting it in a bench. More glass allows more room to get the puck out.

I'm not ready to forgive andy for being an ass just because he gave schafer an extension and didn't stop the lynah renovations. And I'm not ready to forgive athletics for its annual mismanaging of the ticket line, the whole boondoggle over students paying for football, lax, etc., or the fact that few administrators seem capable or willing to carry on a civilized conversation with students or alumni.

As for what I'd add:
-At least a couple basketball/hockey saturday doubleheaders (I know it's tough for hoops league games because our travel partner is a solid 4 hrs away, but it can at least happen for columbia or an OOC game)
-the return of the phone to start "your mom called"
-a logo (NOT huggy bear) painted at center ice)
-a(or 2 or 3 or 4) sound beating(s) of harvard for the first time since March 2005
-here's some wishful thinking... returning the remote control sieve to it's older form where it actually called out what the guy was doing (including replacing the rhythmic "skate skate skate" with actually saying it on each stride)
-whatever the webcast is, let it be usable on any platform
-student bus to the colgate game

[jtwcornell91]

Maybe we wouldn't bash the Athletic Department so much if they hadn't been treating fans like shit since at least 2002:

http://cornellbigred.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/090902aab.html

[Chris '03]

[quote jtwcornell91]Maybe we wouldn't bash the Athletic Department so much if they hadn't been treating fans like shit since at least 2002:

http://cornellbigred.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/090902aab.html[/quote]

I didn't buy in that year because I was still in Ithaca, but this quote cracks me up:

In addition to live audio broadcasts of currently available sports, you will also have access to weekly coach's shows, press conferences, video highlights, practice or post-game clips and more.

[ugarte]

I want Columbia to start a D-I hockey team so that I can see a game in New York City every year.

[KeithK]

[quote bandrews37]... and .. put in the higher glass. Why's that a good thing? Because the alternative to the higher glass was netting all the way around the rink. Given your choice of the two, which would you rather have? [/quote]
Well, since this is a wish list I'd go for a third option.  How about having the state legislature pass changes to liability rules that would explicitly prevent someone from suing over injuries as a spectator at a sporting event.  It should be as the back of the ticket claims.  Sit in the stands where pucks can go flying and watch at your own risk.  That way we can have low glass and no netting at the same time!

(Honestly, I'm not trying to hijack this thread into a political discussion. Let's not get into this argument!)

I've just taken the time to get to know some of the people who work over there, and really, they're not evil incarnate

Nah, they're not evil incarnate.  The folks in charge simply seem dedicated to changing the Cornell hockey experience in ways that (IMO) make it worse.  Their priorities aren't aligned with those of the fans (or at least of the majority of the posters here).  On top of that they have acted petty and spiteful on a number of occasions (e.g. Age and press passes).  I'll gladly stop bashing the AD when they deserve better treatment, but I just haven't seen it very often.

[Jim Hyla]

[quote KeithK][quote bandrews37]... and .. put in the higher glass. Why's that a good thing? Because the alternative to the higher glass was netting all the way around the rink. Given your choice of the two, which would you rather have? [/quote]
Well, since this is a wish list I'd go for a third option.  How about having the state legislature pass changes to liability rules that would explicitly prevent someone from suing over injuries as a spectator at a sporting event.  It should be as the back of the ticket claims.  Sit in the stands where pucks can go flying and watch at your own risk.  That way we can have low glass and no netting at the same time!

(Honestly, I'm not trying to hijack this thread into a political discussion. Let's not get into this argument!)
[/quote]Meaning you can say your piece and we can't respond? So you get the last, and only, word on this subject? I know that's not what you meant, but once you open a subject, you can't expect everyone to just sit back and say nothing.

There are many wonderful, and justifiable, reasons to have glass around the rink. I may not want to start listing the reasons why I think government, and other "higher" powers, have a role to play in maintaining a healthy and productive society, but they do exist. However, first and foremost is the presence of free speech.

There, how's that for not responding?::screwy::

[Ben Rocky '04]

[quote KeithK]Well, since this is a wish list I'd go for a third option.  How about having the state legislature pass changes to liability rules that would explicitly prevent someone from suing over injuries as a spectator at a sporting event.  It should be as the back of the ticket claims.  Sit in the stands where pucks can go flying and watch at your own risk.  That way we can have low glass and no netting at the same time! [/quote]

I don't think you'd find hardly anyone who would disagree with you. Its entirely logical that Cornell shouldn't be fault when you get hit with a puck while you voluntarily attend a sporting event. The higher glass is reasonable, and the net at the end of the ice, but please, no more.

[Rosey]

[quote Ben Rocky 04]The higher glass is reasonable, and the net at the end of the ice, but please, no more.[/quote]
I disagree: I don't want the netting in front of G.  I pay attention to the game.  If you don't, then you take a greater risk of being on the receiving end of a slapshot.  Your problem. :-D

Kyle