ECAC Finals Weekend not on TV

[billhoward]

If your two criteria for how to select an arena for the tournament are:
1) It's centrally located - I would amend this to include that it's near a large alumni base.
2) The city it's located in has family friendly destinations and attractions
Then I think there's only one arena that fits the bill: Madison Square Garden. However,  I think we can all agree that's unrealistic (and debatably even a bad thing because it won't even be close to selling out). Since that's the case, the league is stuck in the unenviable position of needing to pick the rink which is the least reprehensible.

I know this is probably an unpopular opinion here (and I was unable to attend AC last year, so maybe I'll change my opinion in a week), but I think Atlantic City is probably the best option. The league chose to eschew the game being centrally located (meaning in upstate NY or New England) in favor of being within driving distance of the large alumni bases in New York and Philadelphia (I know Cornell has a lot of alums in these 2 cities, and, while I don't know for sure, I think it's safe to assume that the other Ivies do too. I don't know about the other smaller schools in the ECAC though). And being unable to find any feasible rink in a city with family friendly attractions, it settled for just having attractions, instead of nothing at all.

Maybe the ECAC and the Boardwalk Arena thought it would attract casino visitors and general hockey fans.

In hindsight, Albany is the least undesirable tournament location. Let's see if the ECAC and Boardwalk Arena call it quits after 2 of the 3 contracted years.

[billhoward]

I don't think it's accurate to say Quinnipiac has no fan base.  It had the 6th highest attendance in the league, probably 5th if you take out the Fenway game in Harvard's column. More than Union, St. Lawrence and Clarkson, among others.  They have been known to fill their building - and the year they did make it to Albany, brought a sizable contingent -- certainly moreso than just about any other school in the ECAC.

Quinnipiac does fill its building, but I was at two Q home games this year that were listed as sellouts, with hundreds of fans disguised as empty seats. I suppose the tickets had been sold, but it didn't mean the building was filled!

Q fans leave after 2 if there's a party somewhere afterwards. There always is.

[jtn27]

I don't think it's accurate to say Quinnipiac has no fan base.  It had the 6th highest attendance in the league, probably 5th if you take out the Fenway game in Harvard's column. More than Union, St. Lawrence and Clarkson, among others.  They have been known to fill their building - and the year they did make it to Albany, brought a sizable contingent -- certainly moreso than just about any other school in the ECAC.

Quinnipiac does fill its building, but I was at two Q home games this year that were listed as sellouts, with hundreds of fans disguised as empty seats. I suppose the tickets had been sold, but it didn't mean the building was filled!

Q fans leave after 2 if there's a party somewhere afterwards. There always is.

My brother goes to Quinnipiac. From what he's told me there's a large standing area in the arena that the students like to stand in rather than sit in their seats. That could explain why a lot of Q games are listed as sold out but there are so many empty seats. Also, I know for a fact that the Yale-Q game sold out because he tried to get a ticket but there were none left.

[mikek]

Don't get too many crazy ideas about having a Conference Tourney with a ticket to the NC$$ tournament at stake at a venue that doesn't normally have ice for hockey games. You do not want to be playing important games on sh*tty ice.

Ford Field.

Ohhh, if you're going to go to Philadelphia, let's keep going to Baltimore. Or Washington DCAC!!!

Let's just go way outside the box and keeping going all the way to Vegas, that's what AC wants to be anyway.  It works for lower tier college bball tourneys why not college hockey.  The Orleans Arena seats 9500 and hosts an ECHL team.  Go to a WCHA style tourney so you get fans from 6 teams instead of 4.  If you can't get 10000 people to go to Vegas you aren't going to get them to go to city not named Boston or NY in the northeast...

In all seriousness if you can't have it at a destination people want to go to you might as well have the highest seed host it.  Put a minimum on the number of seats your arena has to have, if the highest seeds arena doesn't have enough seats then it goes to the next highest seed. If all the arenas are too small you aren't going to get enough fans anyway so just have it at the highest seed. Maybe it will motivate some schools to build bigger areans (...doubtful).

[ajh258]

Honestly, I don't mind AC except for the horrible ice surface.

[jtn27]

In all seriousness if you can't have it at a destination people want to go to you might as well have the highest seed host it.  Put a minimum on the number of seats your arena has to have, if the highest seeds arena doesn't have enough seats then it goes to the next highest seed. If all the arenas are too small you aren't going to get enough fans anyway so just have it at the highest seed. Maybe it will motivate some schools to build bigger areans (...doubtful).

This is actually probably the best solution (and as an added bonus it probably means lots of games at Lynah).

[PetuniaLiCicero]

WOW I haven't posted on here in over 10 years.
I feel like the whole point being missed on this thread is that the audience for the ECAC Championship game on television is MINISCULE. As in if a Polish language talk show was being aired, it would get similar ratings.
I noticed the MAAC basketball conference tournament was not televised in the New York area for the first time in I would guess 20 years.
I'm sure that gets higher ratings than ECAC hockey (though miniscule as well).
I will be in Atlantic City on Saturday. Anyone complaining about the lack of exposure of the games can get in a car and watch the games in person. While Atlantic City is not centrally located, it is not prohibitively far to drive from northeast locations. If you are that passionate about it, go to Boardwalk Hall.

[mikek]

Looks like the ECAC has just given up promoting the games altogether.  Went to the site to confirm the game times and this is what I got:

[KeithK]

Anyone complaining about the lack of exposure of the games can get in a car and watch the games in person. While Atlantic City is not centrally located, it is not prohibitively far to drive from northeast locations. If you are that passionate about it, go to Boardwalk Hall.

It is prohibitively far for those of us stuck on the west coast, for example.

[billhoward]

Anyone complaining about the lack of exposure of the games can get in a car and watch the games in person. While Atlantic City is not centrally located, it is not prohibitively far to drive from northeast locations. If you are that passionate about it, go to Boardwalk Hall.

It is prohibitively far for those of us stuck on the west coast, for example.

Too bad you can't make it. We need the numnbers. I fear the Cornell section risks being outnumbered by Harvard students now heading to Atlantic City, their Crimsanity hoops dreams crushed and returning to the first love, ice hockey. That's why Bright Center only drew 900 fans for Sunday's deciding game against Yale.

[dag14]

The ECAC webmaster must have slept in this morning because the games that were not posted at 10:30 are up now.

[scoop85]

Thank goodness that debacle wasn't televised.

[dbilmes]

Thank goodness that debacle wasn't televised.

The first semifinal wasn't much better, so it would have been bad PR for the ECAC if thousands of college hockey fans watched these two games tonight.

[css228]

Thank goodness that debacle wasn't televised.

I agree. I may have been really critical, but even I can see the silver lining in that.