College hockey completed its biggest weekend of the season Saturday night, but you’d never know it from your Sunday morning coffee with the Washington Post.
The first thing you should know is that the Sunday WaPost sports section ranks among the largest in the entire U.S. Sixteen full pages yesterday. There’s conspicuously little space-eating advertising within it, too. In sheer girth, this is a very meaty sports section.
You might however wonder: wasn’t it distinctly possible, what with the NCAA hoops tourney, men’s and women’s, in full madness, and spring training heating up, that college hockey — even its postseason — simply got crowded out? In point of fact, it matters not what day or week or month of the year it is on 15th St. — the Post ever ignores all things college puck. No season previews, no holiday tournament roundups, not even buried deep a concise listing merely of the weekend scores. Ever.
And what specifically did WaPost cover for us in college hockey’s absence yesterday morning? I’m glad you asked. On E3 we were treated to approximately 20 column inches of update on the second annual National Marathon (it seems to be “finding its stride”). Next to it, commanding more than 30 column inches, was Angus Phillips’ column on yellow perch fishing in the region. I’m not going to go Chris Simon over that — Angus’ column is a Washington institution.
Horse racing (gobbling up 16 column inches) (in March) greets us on E5.
Things get real interesting on E7. It was a Sunday of regular season NBA duty, so of course the entirety of that page was devoted to the league. As was the entirety of the preceding page, E6, too. Koran-sized coverage for the NBA regular season. Imagine the coverage if in that league the first 46 minutes of the games mattered.
Here’s a headline of note on E8: “Ilchenko Overcomes Jellyfish, Humans.” The dateline is Melbourne, Australia, which is considerably closer to Washington than a hockey-supporting editor is to 15th Street. It’s a swimming story. In March.
I’m definitely not interested in my readers reminding me again of the Post’s hatred of hockey and instructing me to grin and bear it. The Post, dear readers, is a news organization, and there was most definitely news of the non-yellow perch variety to chronicle this weekend. In fact, there was a triumphant moment of virtuosity, authored by Minneosta’s Blake Wheeler, that transcended any bias based on regional or niche classification. Even ESPN acknowledged it. And there was more, including the novelty of two military academies meeting on the ice for a birth in college hockey’s Elite 16.
Instead, we get box scores (two of them) for early season action completed by four women’s lacrosse teams.
I must conclude with the obvious and the rhetorical: Who thinks this morning’s WaPost has college hockey’s brackets up in the paper? You’ll find those here.
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18 Comments
Does anybody know if this news & notes actually made it into the print edition of the Wash Times?
While I don’t read the Wash Times other than the sports section, over the years, I have been impressed by the sports coverage.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/sports/20070319-020102-2309r.htm
You really can’t blame the (Com)Post for this one. The closest Division I NCAA Hockey team is Princeton.
Now if the 2009 Frozen Four fails to garner their attention, then I’d agree with you.
One final interesting tidbit (and something worth getting upset about), the University of Maryland was looking to increase scholarship opportunites for female athletes to stay within Title IX compliance. They added women’s water polo (because it would also help the women’s swim team) and were considering adding women’s ice hockey but instead went with Competitive Cheerleading because it was cheaper.
Actually, I am well within the bounds of fairness to critique here. The Post has no trouble covering NASCAR, and yet I’m hard-pressed to find our local track in town. Incidentally, Navy has designs in the near term of making the move to D-I status in hockey. Wanna make a wager on whether WaPost assigns a beat reporter to that?
It wouldn’t surprise me if there were relatively many NASCAR fans in the region. I’m quite confident that there are far more auto-sports fans than there are collegiate hockey fans around here. With no regional schools involved, I can’t blame them for overlooking it. I think it’s a reasonable decision.
Perhaps I in-artfully framed my disgust, so let me try it this way: far from expecting a full-fledged ‘beat reporter’ for the college game, I was wondering if, in the midst of 16 Sunday sports section pages, larded with horses, fish, and swimmers now, it was too much to ask for merely the recitation of the previous evening’s college puck scores, boxscore-free, even?
Is this asking too much?
I agree with the others that there is a limited audience for college hockey in the region; however, I think it is reasonable to expect that the boxscores for the NCAA tourney games be published…hopefully that is the case.
I would have liked to see at least a mention of the tourneys and the Caps prospects participating, but I am not surprised that did not occur either.
I love my college hockey, but I wouldn’t expect coverage in the WAPO outside of agate scores and maybe a brief or two about the HE or CCHA finals Saturday night.
The Post’s footprint does stretch all the way down here to Tidewater, full of NASCAR junkies and goes through Richmond, which has a race (or two) ever year.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask. I shamelessly ask for more than I think they should give me when I lobby for my interests. But I think given the weight of the region’s interest in horses, fish and swimmers it is not objectively unreasonable that they have not accommodated those of us with this interest. In light of the editorial biases of the Sports Section, it certainly isn’t surprising.
Now, speaking my opinion, those biases which I have perceived in the Section’s management are something I am be prepared to call professionally questionable and unreasonable.
To be clear, I intended no rhetorical device in saying, “I shamelessly ask for more than I think they should give me when I lobby for my interests.” I mean that honestly about myself. In rereading my comment it seemed to me that it could have been misinterpreted.
anyone have suggestions as to where to watch this friday’s bu vs. msu game? it’s on ESPN U…
What an outrage. How dare The Post cover things I don’t like and ignore things I like?
Look, Quixote, you obviously know how to turn a phrase in a George Will kind of way, but you’re beating the Barbaro in the worst kind of way.
maruk — Apparently the hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians who once subscribed to the Post but no longer do ain’t so thrilled with the contemporary product either.
But improved by your enlightened sensibilities, I’ll be sure to give the Lady Patriots of George Mason’s next lacrosse game a fairer shake. How early do you think I should arrive there to be assured a seat?
You can add the Washington Times to your list. This morning’s pathetic ramblings by Dave Fay give all journalists a bad name. If there was any further evidence needed that Fay has completely lost touch with Washington hockey, his vitriolic rant in today’s paper is the final nail in the coffin. ( no pun intended)
Undoubtedly, the Post, like most newspapers, is losing subscribers left and right. Equally true, I’m sure, is the fact that those former subscribers are all college hockey fans.
My sensibilities are no more enlightened than yours, and I have no desire to turn this into one more example of the kind of juvenile arguing/shouting that passes for entertainment these days. This topic excepted, I enjoy your blog.
It just seems that your entire argument comes down to this point: The Post should cover hockey more because I say so.
To you, college hockey is news. I stand with you in that belief. The Post clearly does not feel that way, and they can run their business any way they want. Whether they run it into the ground remains to be seen, but how much ink hockey gets will not make a bit of difference in the scheme of things.
I reckon my argument comes down to this point: Why do you care so much? There are plenty of other media out there that I suspect can feed your jones. You probably know them better than I do. Near as I can tell, there is no college hockey information embargo.
For me, life is too short to sweat stuff like this, so I have a difficult time understanding why this bothers you as much as it does. But hey, do what ya gotta do. Keep on ventin’ in the free world and I’ll skip to the next post.
b.oor4, you are dead-on. Fay embarrassed himself with his piece, which is both incorrect (regarding the state of the Caps and Pens two years ago), and flat-out making stuff up (the baloney about Backstrom, which NO ONE else has reported – is Fay really that good, or just telling a bold-faced lie?).
Disgraceful.
Maruk — this will be my final word on this matter, and we’ll let it be a point of disagreement between us: I’m hardly alone in delineating the malicious bias at 15th St., or noting its effects. I’d commend to you the hockey team owner’s veritable Ph.d dissertation on bloggers vs. MSM of January. He didn’t wax impassioned out of the dearth of subjects to discuss; the very future of pro hockey in this town is at stake. There’s a chicken-or-the-egg quality to the discussion as well: The Post actually had fantastic coverage of the Caps once upon a time, and I’d note that the Cap Centre stands (correspondingly?) were well filled. Even with a litany of springtime failures. I wonder what role the paper plays in establishing the Deadskins as the only game in town? Not an insubstantial one, IMO. Now in its desperation to thwart its circulation death-spiral it’s sinking its teeth into radio and television imprint in the region. The stakes are high indeed.
I’m with you all on the dearth of collegege hockey news in the Post’s sports pages, but equally deficient, with the exception of the Georgetown University team, is the Post’s coverage of college lacrosse. We lacrosse fans don’t even get a compilation of results in the Post’s Sunday editions except for a distinctly local team like the Hoyas. What is most irritating to me is the Post’s habit of treating teams like Loyola, Johns Hopkins, Mt. St. Mary’s, etc., etc., etc like locals when it suits their circulation needs, but stiffs them all when it comes to reporting sports news out of the main stream, i.e., college hockey and lacrosse.
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