By: Justin Coffin

The average sports fan doesn’t tune in to the NHL draft every year, and don’t worry neither do I. Many hockey fans will just wait until the player wears the logo of their favorite NHL team to start paying attention. Truthfully, many of these players in the NHL are not made in college during the regular season. Much is the same with basketball, where players are made in the summer and flex their respective muscles on the big stage we call the NCAA season.

NCAA basketball? Yeah, we love it. Mostly in February and March but yeah we dig it.

College football? Yeah man, I mean, I buy the game every year and follow all the teams and bitch about the BCS but I still love it!

We love these sports why? The Atmosphere mostly. Most people can remember their first football or basketball game and sometimes immediately fall in love. These are spectator driven competitions, much like professional baseball. Now, I was one of those kids growing up on basketball, football, soccer, baseball, and track and field. My school didn’t have a hockey team and truthfully at 6-2 175 and skinny I was much better suited for the hardwood than the ice, but never was I really introduced to hockey until after I graduated high school. Yes, I was a pretty big Red Wings fan but when you live near Hockeytown USA how can you not follow at least a little bit?

When I first stepped onto campus at WMU, I was, of course, drawn to the football games. Pretty rabid fan base until the first half is over. Then beer, liquor, and hotdogs take over the comatose brains of the student body here. I was impressed as I actually expected less. Western isn’t on television much so in order to be a true fan I have to actually go to all of the games. Since I get in for free this isn’t much of a pain. The difficult decision was, which events should I attend? My new friends here recommended I go watch our “badass hockey team” which didn’t sound like a half bad idea. It was early in the season and I looked up CCHA predictors and prognosticators had our WMU squad pegged as anything but badass. I went to Lawson Ice Arena Anyway…..

Michigan State University was in town for the weekend. Naive as I was I showed up 30 minutes before puck drop thinking “I bet I’ll get a good seat.” Boy was I wrong. I had to stand on the railing in the back in order to see anything. Though I wasn’t in the middle of the sea of 2000 students screaming madly for our hockey team, it was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I had been to Big Ten football and basketball games, professional baseball games, and even an NFL game, but this topped it all. An impressive 4-2 victory later capping off a series sweep of the spartans in Kalamazoo was enough to get the whole community rocking, and sold me on my new favorite sport to attend. And by the way, these fans didn’t leave to go drink at the end of the second intermission. This was true, genuine, fight-for-our-team approach from this student body. It really says something about a sport when you can take a student body noted for its generally poor attendance and passion and have them stay till the final horn sounds and lock arms singing the alma mater with the band. Pretty powerful stuff.

I was pleasantly shocked at the devotion of our fans towards our hockey team. I haven’t missed a game since that night and don’t plan on breaking that chain. This kind of atmosphere occurs at any school with a big time college hockey program so don’t think i’m pegging Western as the only place with such an atmosphere. College hockey is so seeped in tradition and history it is baffling to me that it is not covered in mainstream media. If you think I’m crazy, go to a college hockey game at Michigan, Notre Dame, Western Michigan, Ohio State, North Dakota, or even Adrian College. No matter how small or how enormous the fan base, you will be surprised at the passion brought by these fans. Hockey is 60 minutes split three ways filled with nothing but balls-to-the-walls intensity where you’re allowed to show emotion without receiving a 15 yard penalty, and news flash, this sport has a tiny version of an RPI and selection system like the NCAA basketball tournament. This sport has all the hard hitting intensity of football, and all the class of a baseball game. Like it should be in our favorite college sport, football, this sport has a playoff where the champion is decided on the ice, where it should be. College hockey is the most underrated atmosphere in the sporting world and is something every sports fan needs to experience.

Why are you still not watching?