NHL has itself to blame

The NBA Finals are over, baseball reports in our region are depressing and the football news lately mostly is idiocy emanating from Pittsburgh, Berea and Columbus. Obviously, 'tis the season for fringe sports to shine and none are "fringier" than hockey and soccer.
Considering how few Americans care about "futbol," you have to admire Disney's guts to televise every World Cup Soccer game on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2. I know we're supposed to pay attention to soccer, but Americans don't.
And if being a soccer fan means emulating the crude behavior (excessive drinking, beating each other senseless in the stands) of European patrons of the "world's most popular sport," I'll gladly stick to hockey (even though it adds texture to the definition of solitude).
In a recent story on HBO's "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel," the former "Today" anchor reported on how European soccer fans throw bananas at black players and make monkey noises when blacks touch the ball. (Sort of makes you wonder why soccer isn't more popular with America's rednecks and bigots, doesn't it?)
Soccer executives say there's little they can do about such behavior. Apparently, confiscating booze, weapons and fruit before patrons enter the gates hasn't crossed their minds.
TV ratingshit bottom
As for my favorite cult sport, will we ever again see a mainstream sport gut itself the way hockey has? It's doubtful because you need special wisdom to engineer such a feat and (mercifully) there are only so many Gary Bettmans in the sports universe.
Bettman recently said -- reportedly with a straight face -- that he's happy having Outdoor Life Network as the cable-TV home of the National Hockey League. This came after it was reported that a Stanley Cup Finals game on OLN earned lower ratings than a baseball rainout on ESPN.
Playoff hockey ratings were so low that for every game I watched on NBC, there were 35-to-75 of you looking at other channels.
That's solitude.
With the Stanley Cup now residing on Tobacco Road after a stay in Florida, the NHL has succeeded in bringing hockey to some of the most unlikely places in America. If the goal was to erode its fan base, the NHL succeeded beyond Bettman's wildest dreams.
If you were to have asked a Penguins fan in June 1992 or a Canadiens fan in 1993 or a Rangers fan in 1994 if they could imagine that the Cup would be celebrated in Raleigh, N.C., and Tampa, Fla., before it would ever return to Pittsburgh, Montreal and New York City, who would have said yes?
NHL expansionhurt popularity
Fifteen years ago, the NHL had a dream to expand to America's Sun Belt, eventually adding nine teams to make 30 in all. Today, that dream has become a nightmare as far as national popularity is concerned. And the owners, executives and players are all to blame for the fall from grace.
When the NHL's lockout ended last summer (after the owners kicked the players' behinds and wallets), hockey had fallen so low on the American sports landscape that only OLN was willing to televise hockey.
Bettman's claim that OLN is available to most hockey fans is technically correct. Recently, Armstrong Cable, which services most of Mahoning County, finally added OLN to its lineup, but it's part of a premium package. Do Armstrong executives really believe that this channel is worth paying extra to see?
The recent NBC telecasts of Stanley Cup Finals Games 3-7 did not really hurt the network because it wisely didn't pay for broadcast rights. The NHL essentially gave NBC the games.
As for Carolina and Tampa Bay winning the Stanley Cup, Penguins fans have no room to complain. The taxpayers in those communities ponied up with the cash to build arenas to fund strong hockey teams. Pittsburgh doesn't appear interested in matching them.
What are hockey diehards to do? Not much. There's no argument to adequately explain our passion to nonbelievers. All we can do is accept that our sport has been surpassed by extreme sports, auto racing, golf, tennis and moguls skiing.
And probably lumberjacking.
Tom Williams is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write to him at williams@vindy.com.