Of Fandom, Then and Now

[Greg Berge]

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.

[Al DeFlorio]

[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.

[KenP]

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.

[Steve M]

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.

[HeafDog]

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?)

[billhoward]

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.

[Beeeej]

[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

[billhoward]

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.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

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.  

[billhoward]

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.  

[ugarte]

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.

[Beeeej]

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

[billhoward]

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.

[ugarte]

[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.

[RichH]

[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."