The goal of the NHL is to eventually land a lucrative US television contract- hell, it doesn’t even have to be lucrative at this point, any US T.V. will do. How about the Cartoon Network?

So why not help the cause at a grass-roots level? In virtually all the new southern US NHL cities, youth hockey has exploded. Kids love the game. They get it. Unlike their parents who may not have had as much exposure to the game, the kids don’t need to have the puck high-lited by a blue circle on television in order to know what’s happening with the play.
By this measure then, if youth hockey is expanding in the South why wouldn’t NCAA get on board and help further the cause of the sport?

Given the immense popularity of college sports in the US, coupled with the fact that many of these fans follow the college stars when they hit the big leagues, wouldn’t it be prudent to get some southern NCAA hockey going?

Last week, the NCAA released its latest annual report on student-athlete graduation rates. And the numbers appear to be holding steady: 63 percent of NCAA student-athletes who entered school in 2000-01 went on to graduate. That’s the same figure as last year, and up from 60 percent in the 2004 report.

Looking across the board at all collegiate athletic organizations (including the NAIA), graduation rates are up from 58 percent three years ago to 62 percent. Not bad, but athletes aren’t “improving” at the same rate as the general student body, which saw its rate climb from 54 to 61 percent.

We use the ironic quotation marks for “improving” because we know a few things about statistics and what they may or may not mean. It’s easy these days to be jaded and assume that colleges are lowering their academic standards to make their graduation rates look better. Let’s see some reports on that before we rejoice.