This is a good point from the boys at INCH. I have to ask the same question as well. On Friday and Saturday night I wanted to tape and watch the College Hockey Show Case games when I got home from the Sioux hockey games and there weren't a game to be had on Friday or Saturday on the Bing Ten Network and the Saturday games were not on Fox Sports Net either. To me this is a real head scratcher that they would put Northwestern basketball over college hockey, especially if they wanted more hockey programming from their Big Ten Hockey teams and their big discussion about wanting a Big Ten Hockey Conference this past summer. Yeah that's a real yawner. I wonder if the BTN could see the hypocrisy from a stands point of view. If they really were comitted to hockey they would have shown the College Hockey Show Case games this past weekend.
One reason the Big Ten wouldn’t mind adding hockey to the league’s stable of sports is to provide additional programming for the conference’s television outlet—especially on Friday nights, the dead zone of college athletics. But the Big Ten Network’s commitment to college pucks has to be called into question as based on its decision to forego televising any of last weekend’s College Hockey Showcase games, choosing to instead broadcast Northwestern men’s basketball on Friday and Saturday night.
In case you’re keeping track at home, four hockey programs—all of which have won national championships in the last 12 years—were bounced in favor of a hoops team that has never qualified for an NCAA tournament. That, Big Ten Net, is well below average [INCH]
I would say that it was an epic fail by the “Big Ten”. Maybe we should leave hockey to the people that are good at it, CCHA, WCHA > Big Ten.
Besides Big 10, which I would prefer not to support at all in order to avoid any credibility toward a Big 10 hockey confernce, there is the NHL, which has broadcast Sioux games in the past. But the most readily available broadcast is the team's website broadcast. Unfortunately, no one has figured out how to offer (or profit from!) away games. Can't there be some kind of reciprocity for season pass holders for away games? Some nominal fee? FightingSioux.com offers a fractional package. Why can't UMD (B2tv)and other teams in the WCHA?
ReplyDeleteThe Big Ten Network is a joke when it comes to hockey. I can remember one time when I was watching it and they left a live broadcast between Minnesota and Wisconsin to televise a live press conference of Kelvin Sampson resigning at Indiana hoops. I was at Buffalo Wild Wings and everyone was like "see ya." They paid they're bills and left. Unfortunately goon, college hockey is not the national sport that college hoops is. It certainly is more popular in the upper midwest, the rocky mountain state, and the northeast, but overall as a sport, hoops is more popular and that is where the Big Ten is going to continue it's televised focus.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I am trying to illustrate is that a few schools in the CCHA and Wisconsin were pushing for a BTHC and then they don't even have one of their premiere match ups on the tube. I think that is hypocrisy.
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