More Exemplary Hockey Coverage from the Washington Post
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.
Leave a comment