Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
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Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
AP
PELHAM, Ala. - Imagine the SEC on ice. The Frozen Tide vs. the Ice Vols.
OK, go ahead and laugh. But while Southeastern Conference sports won’t include ice hockey anytime soon, there could come a day when it joins the ranks of SEC football, basketball and baseball.
Non-scholarship club teams from eight SEC schools opened their first-ever tournament Friday at an ice rink in suburban Birmingham. The opening-day lineup pitted Tennessee against Mississippi State, South Carolina vs. LSU, Alabama vs. Florida, and Arkansas against Georgia.
A football game featuring any one of those matchups would likely be a sellout come fall. A crowd of a few dozen turned out for the noon opener of the Southeastern Hockey Conference Championship, which has no official connection to the SEC.
The teams’ volunteer coaches and non-scholarship players can dream of the mighty SEC sponsoring NCAA competition in ice hockey someday. Boston College beat Notre Dame for the NCAA hockey title in 2008 — how about LSU vs. Florida for the SEC ice crown?
Perhaps, but not anytime soon, according to Jeff Cheeseman, coach of the Alabama Frozen Tide.
“I’ve heard that they’re not ruling out in 10 years the idea of having a Southeastern Conference league, but there is a lot of work to be done before then,” said Cheeseman. “The only problem with that is they’d have to build rinks on campuses, and that’s big.”
Tennessee coach Steve Durrigan sees that plus another roadblock. Schools would likely need to start women’s hockey teams at the same time they began men’s teams to comply with Title IX, and he doesn’t see that happening in the South.
“There is just not a lot of interest,” said Durrigan.
SEC spokesman Charles Bloom said he’s never heard any serious discussion of the conference sponsoring an ice hockey championship, but only four of its 12 member schools would be required to get one started.
“It starts with the institutions. We can’t tell our institutions, ’We’re going to start ice hockey, so go start ice hockey,”’ he said.
No SEC school is pushing for intercollegiate ice hockey.
Tennessee skated past Mississippi State in the tournament opener — the Bulldogs are in their first year of competition — but State’s Scott Lawler still came off the ice grinning after he was called for a minor penalty.
“This is my last year of organized hockey,” said Lawler, a Huntsville native who played youth hockey and is getting ready to graduate. “I’ll thinking about going to graduate school so I can keep playing.”
The Ice Vols are favored to win the Southeastern tournament and already have qualified to play in the national club team tournament sponsored by the American Collegiate Hockey Association that starts next week in Rochester, N.Y. Tennessee should be good: It’s had a club team for 42 years.
In all, 10 of the 12 SEC schools have club teams. Kentucky is playing in another tournament, and Vanderbilt wasn’t able to make it. With Ole Miss starting a team next season, Auburn will soon be the only SEC school without a team.
Collegiate hockey isn’t easy in the South — the Alabama team drives 60 miles from Tuscaloosa to a rink in Pelham twice a week for practice.
“It’s a lifestyle, and it takes a lot of dedication to do it,” said Cheeseman.
But there are benefits, too. Cheeseman grew up in Ontario, Canada, and played college hockey at Lake Superior State in Michigan. Both those places are frozen right now, while college students in Florida are wearing shorts.
“The weather would definitely be a recruiting advantage,” he said.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
NEW YORK (AP) - As the glow fades from the Giants' Super Bowl triumph, some New York sports fans are tuning in to basketball and hockey, with the Rangers in first place and the Knicks' overnight sensation, Jeremy Lin, sparking "Lin-sanity.''
Robins: This year, six new breeds will be making their debut on the green carpet for the Westminster Dog Show, which begins Monday.
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Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.