13 January 2007

An open letter to Brent James, athletic director at the University of Maine at Orono

Dear Mr. James:

My name is Mark Coen, and I attended tonight's men's hockey game between your school and Boston University at Alfond Arena. I was seated in section FFF, row 7, seat 10. I note this because, for $23 (the same price I would pay at the state of the art Agannis Arena at BU), I got a seat with an obstructed view.

What it did not obstruct were the four times the game was stopped in order to make repairs to the nets, which apparently come off the moorings and break if they're looked at cross-eyed. Which leads me to the point of my letter: please take some of the $23 I paid to see 85 percent of the game and replace your shitty nets.

Thanks,

Mark

3 comments:

Paul Crowley said...

Sorry to hear about the obstructed. Thenagain catching a game at Alfonse is rarely ever a good experience. But, heh. at least you got to see a Terrier victory. Quite a weekend. Stealing two from the Black Bears in their house and the Pats pulling off an amazing comeback. They'll sleep well in Beantown tonight.

Anonymous said...

Last time I was at Alfond I was assaulted by some woman wearing flannel with at least 3 missing teeth. She had "standing room season tickets". My obstructed view tickets that night required me to sit with my left leg swung over the back of my head and tilted to the left in order to see 30% of the ice. Maine has never been known for treating opposing fans well. Welcome back ... thank goodness you got out alive.

Mark said...

In the two games I've been to at Alfond I've never been treated badly. For Saturday, I think I can attribute that to the stellar officiating of Scott Hansen, who called a penalty - shooting the puck after the whistle - that I had never seen called in 19.5 years of college hockey.

And, just to make sure I noticed, he called it twice! It carries both the 2 minutes for the minor infraction and a mandatory 10 minute misconduct.

Maine fans were not pleased, and Whitehead got into it with Hansen after the game (he took a misconduct penalty after the game from this). Maine racked up 67 minutes in penalties and had one guy sent off with a game misconduct. Very strange.

For want of anything better to post, here's a breakdown of if I've been to the most populous 100 cities in the US, and if so for how...