GOWER

SPORTS COLUMN Does anyone really care that hockey is back?

Scott Gower GOW00001@BYUI.EDU NW Hoosier

On Oct. 5 sports viewers will have the opportunity to see something that hasn’t happened in some time: the beginning of a new season of the National Hockey League.

The NHL will be returning for the 2005-2006 season after a lockout cancelled the entire 2004-2005 season.

If you are as excited about the return of professional hockey as you are about the possibility of each visit to the dentist ending with a doctor’s request for a root canal, don’t worry. Not a lot of people feel differently.

If you are expecting NHL popularity to reach the poor level it was at when it left, you’ll be about as disappointed as a missionary who’s got a girlfriend “waiting” for him.

Don’t think of me as a “hater” of the NHL, but as a realist.

The NHL wasn’t exactly the sports “Prom King” when it left; television ratings were incredibly low.

The 2004 NHL All-Star Game, which was broadcast on ABC, received a rating of 1.8, according to the Journal Sentinel from Milwaukee. One rating point equals 1,055,000 households, meaning that around 1,900,000 people tuned in for the game.

If you think that sounds high, listen to this:

On Sept. 19, Monday Night Football brought in a rating of 10.8, with 11,935,000 people tuning in.

Dancing would have blown them out of the water, with FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance, which generated an average rating of around 5.4.

And all of this was before the lockout. If you don’t think that a lockout will hurt its popularity, ask baseball what it thinks.

Baseball was widely considered to be America’s pastime. Then the Major League Baseball had a strike, and its popularity fell like a freshman’s grades after he realizes his teachers don’t take attendance.

Coming back from a strike is not easy. Lower to middle class fans don’t take too kindly to people who consider seven-figure salaries to be an insult. Just ask NBA player Latrell Spreewell, as he “struggles” to put food on the table for his family.

Now people won’t even be able to watch NHL games on ESPN. Comcast, a cable provider, offered NHL $200 million over the next three years to broadcast games.

ESPN decided that it would not be in its best interest to match the offer.

You hockey fans out there, might want to check your TV, because as far as I know, the cable here does have the Outdoor Life Network, the channel which will be broadcasting the NHL for Comcast.

It’s great that hockey is back, but will anyone notice?