A Tale of Two Athletic Departments

Cornell is playing Northeastern on Saturday afternoon in the NCAA Hockey Tournament in Grand Rapids, Mich. It's a 9-hour drive from Ithaca, and a 13-hour drive from Boston. Cornell has a long and storied hockey tradition, with raucous students and loyal alumni. Northeastern has a long tradition of losing to pretty much everyone in hockey, until they turned things around a couple of years ago.

Yet it's the Northeastern Athletics Department, and not Cornell's, which seems to care about helping students get to the hockey games.

The Northeastern Athletics Department has arranged for a student travel package that includes round-trip bus transportation, a two-night hotel stay (double occupancy) and one ticket for all three regional games. Buses will depart from Forsyth Street at 7 a.m. on Friday, March 27, and return depending on the outcome of Northeastern's games.

Cost is $175.00.

As for Cornell?

I stopped by the Cornell ticket office yesterday morning to purchase tickets for the regional, and I was told that instead of buying an all-session pass for $65, I should purchase a student pass for $30. Well, fine. Problem was they didn't have any student passes. They gave me the number of the Grand Rapids arena's box office manager -- Marcus -- and told me to call him to buy my ticket.

After trying to reach Marcus seven times, I finally got through this afternoon, and he told me that they were no longer selling student tickets. Or all-session passes. Instead, I'll have to pay for two full-price single-session passes.

So not only did Cornell not have any student tickets available, they had no easy system in place for helping interested students purchase tickets. Nor has Cornell made any attempt to help students travel to any away hockey game, whether nearby Colgate, ECACs at Albany, or anything else.

I don't think there will be any other Cornell student fans at the biggest game of the season, while Northeastern will have a busload.