Survey Says?

The NCAA wants you to help them fix their crappy social media account for hockey. Which, first of all, no. Pay me money and I will consult for you. But second of all, yes, I can’t help myself.

Look, you could fix your terrible twitter account by 1. changing the name to reflect that you only cover men’s D1 hockey or 2. cover women’s hockey and men’s D3 hockey with some actual effort.

Apologies to D3 men right now, you’re not really my wheelhouse and there’s just no way I can provide as passionate a post sticking up for what you fellows do. However, guess what, you’re mostly white men who have played a college sport so your life is likely to turn out great.

I mean, this garbage has to stop. I’m not interested in hearing the NCAA whine about how women’s hockey doesn’t pull in ratings and money. Of course it doesn’t, when you can’t even bother to use free social media platforms and exploit free labor from eager young sports management and/or communications majors who don’t yet know to demand pay for their work.

Indeed.

Sportswriter Nicole Haase provided myriad examples of how the NCAA fails from the get-go to promote women’s hockey. When you look through the list of concrete, documented examples Nicole gives, it’s pretty easy to apply Occam’s Razor and conclude the NCAA actually does not want anyone to watch women’s hockey. If you don’t promote it or provide access to it, then it’s very easy to say no one watches it! What other conclusion can one come to, looking at the evidence:

1. Women’s stats, milestones, and achievements are almost never celebrated. All players of the week, stars of the week, plays of the week, whatevers of the week are men’s D1 players. Men’s hat tricks are celebrated, women’s hat tricks are ignored. (Some men’s D1 player got a hat trick which was touted as the first of the season last year, even though Ashleigh Brykaliuk had already notched one, as had some other women I don’t care about as much.)
2. Men’s D1 hockey alumni in the pros are highlighted on the account. Meanwhile, I am not sure they are aware that there’s pro women’s hockey anywhere in the world, let alone that NCAA alumnae are tearing up those leagues.
3. The NCAA tweeted twice about the women’s D1 national championship game on the day of the event. It was televised live for the first time, so you’d think they would want to promote it and get their money’s worth. Apparently not. I’m not sure because I was busy having panic attacks, but I believe the NCAA tweeted twice per second about the men’s D1 national championship game on gameday. Was there a women’s D3 national championship game? Who knows?
4. The NCAA doesn’t even have someone who is dedicated to women’s hockey social media coverage. Not even a chimpanzee banging away at a keyboard receiving bananas as payment. (Well, roughly 65% of a banana after taxes.)

I took the survey (which initially did not have a comment box, so of course they couldn’t actually find out what people wanted or didn’t want).

Well, none of those things really describe me. Where is the checkbox for deranged blogger and berater of refs?

I also would like to check “None of the above” for why I follow the NCAA Ice Hockey “channels.” Channels? Do you mean accounts? I do not understand. And like I said, none really apply. I don’t “discuss” hockey with other fans via the NCAA’s Twitter account. I discuss it with fans on my own account. And also by screaming at people in the stands. The account doesn’t show anything I can’t see on TV. The account doesn’t promote my favorite teams; in fact, it seems to almost exclusively promote teams I don’t like. I guess there was that whole men’s hockey playing in the national championship game that they covered.

There’s just no way I could in good conscience check “To keep up with all things hockey.” That would imply that the NCAA’s social media platforms keep up with all things hockey, when they actually keep up with a couple things hockey. Even if that is my intent when following it, there’s no way to indicate that they are not living up to my expectations.

Naturally I checked “I consider myself very knowledgeable about college hockey in general.” However, there’s no acknowledgement that people could be fans of multiple teams. Like, say, a men’s and women’s program at their school. Or a D1 program and a D3 program. I don’t think that’s actually covered under “knowledgeable about a few teams.” Or perhaps I am being overly nitpicky? That would be a first.

Again, this focuses on things that I like, rather than how well they are doing at providing me with this content. As Weldie pointed out, “off the field” is not a thing in hockey. Well, not in ice hockey. Perhaps this was the field hockey survey?

Speaking of broken records, I don’t care if I sound like one on this topic.

If anyone answered “yes” to that second question, I want to know what other accounts you’re following. Maybe you’re just following Goon, Bruce Ciskie, and that account that pretends to be about college hockey and then tweets alt-right nonsense (no, the other one, this isn’t mentioning Goon twice). In the case, yes, the NCAA is the best account you follow. Well maybe second best bc Bruce sometimes retweets me.

I chose “never” in regard to clicking on links. It’s the closest to “once in a blue moon” that I could get.

Whoa whoa whoa, NCAA. You are in no way in danger of producing too much content. You are actually producing not enough content. That is the whole freaking problem.

I don’t think the comment box was there in the original survey. I can’t say this for sure, but based on 1. a tweet from Weldie and 2. me not taking the survey initially, I can say this with a 99% confidence level. I know that this is not actually what a confidence level means, but statistics is a made up pseudo-science.

I’ll leave you with the 3 words I wrote in the comment box, the most important thing they could do to improve their social media, their coverage of the sport, and their adherence to the NCAA’s mission of inclusivity:

COVER WOMEN’S HOCKEY.