In which I declare Hofstra is wearing Bad Idea Jeans if it’s going to play tonight’s pivotal ECC game as scheduled

Now that I have a new car, I feel better driving my old one to Hofstra in a blizzard. BAD IDEA JEANS!

Huge game scheduled for tonight at the Arena, where Hofstra and Drexel will likely determine the winner of the mythical East Coast Conference championship. Whomever comes out on top will take sole possession of first place in the ECC at 4-1 and have only a game remaining against Delaware, which means the victor can basically clear space in the rafters for the championship banner that does not exist.

Too bad almost no one will see this mammoth monstrous mythical battle if it is played as scheduled, since we’re supposed to get a mammoth monstrous massive blizzard (you think you can alliterate, Litos? Top that!). The forecast calls for at least a foot of snow on Long Island, with the heaviest snow arriving in the afternoon to early evening hours. Winds may gust up to 40 miles per hour at the peak of the storm.

This one will be so big and so bad that Hofstra has already cancelled classes for today (as have most schools on the Island). So why, according to the press release sent out Tuesday to promote the Hofstra-Drexel game, is it “…expected to be played as scheduled, despite the winter weather forecast for the New York area on Wednesday?”

Let me make one thing clear: Calling for a snow-related postponement goes against just about everything I hold near and dear. I grew up in northwest Connecticut, where we got socked with heavy snow just about every winter. I hear about blizzards and I laugh, because if you were in New England for the Blizzard of ’93, you know most people—with the possible exception of those living in the mid-Atlantic circa Saturday—haven’t seen a real blizzard yet.

The concept of driving in the snow usually doesn’t intimidate me in the least, even after years and years of watching my dear beloved late Mom order the family cars off the road at the sight of the first flake. Instead of inheriting her caution, I came to view driving in the snow as fun. Most of the Nervous Nellies are off the road, which actually makes things easier. Just be careful, don’t slam the brakes if you start to slide and you’ll be fine.

And as recently as Saturday—when snow was forecast to sock the area in the hours before the Flying Dutchmen-Northeastern game—I scoffed at the idea of a postponement. Eight inches is nothing. Leave a couple hours early, take your time and enjoy the game.

The total snowfall today isn’t expected to be much heavier than what was expected Saturday. But the timing and power of it sounds ominous.

Personally, I’m a bit reluctant to get behind the wheel in blizzard conditions because the one car we own that is best-equipped to handle the snow—my ancient Chevy Lumina—began hemorrhaging antifreeze on the way to Connecticut Monday. I fear if we take my car, it’ll break down and my wife and I will star in a roadside version of Alive.

The other car is brand new and belongs to my wife, who has already declared that if the snow is as bad as predicted, I’m going to have to ski my way to Hempstead.

And if it’s bad enough to cancel classes, then why is the game still on as scheduled? Why not do the right thing, postpone it 24 hours and ensure that anyone who wants to see the game can do so without traveling through a blizzard to do so?

I know the situation is more complicated than I can imagine. Drexel has already spent money for lodging on Long Island, so a postponement will create a hefty additional expense for the Dragons’ athletic department. This wasn’t a problem when the Hofstra-Rider wrestling match scheduled for today was postponed as the Flying Dutchmen were traveling to and from Rider in one day.

To stay over another night on Long Island will cost Drexel players another day of classes as well. Re-scheduling the game for Thursday is problematic because both teams are playing Saturday—Hofstra at UNC-Wilmington, Drexel at home against Delaware.

In the CAA, precedent has been set for both playing the game as scheduled and postponing it. The James Madison at Towson and UNC Wilmington at Delaware games scheduled for Saturday were postponed until Monday due to the mid-Atlantic blizzard while the Old Dominion at VCU and George Mason at Drexel games went on as scheduled despite the horrible weather. In addition, the Drexel at William & Mary game was postponed from Jan. 30 to Jan. 31 by snow.

Nor is playing the game Thursday going to magically result in the super-rare mid-week sellout. But there will surely be more people there tomorrow than tonight, and the players deserve to be accompanied by sounds other than the ones generated by their sneakers.

As for the other wrinkles created by a postponement: Hey, everyone had to play a Saturday-Monday-Wednesday combo at the start of January. Teams can play two regular season games in three days again when circumstances dictate it.

Not to oversimplify things, but college basketball players study and take tests on the road all the time. What’s another day of mobile class work in the grand scheme? And if the snow is as bad as expected, the Dragons may be stuck on Long Island anyway tonight.

Most of all, a school that climbs an uphill battle every year to get and retain fans should do whatever it can to ensure as many of those folks can actually get to the game. If the weather reports are correct—and they’re never wrong!—then traveling to Hofstra at 5 or 6 p.m. will be risky at best and stupid at worst. Why ask your 750 season ticket holders, plus however many regular walk-up patrons you draw, to risk life and limb to get there?

Plus, if you have a season ticket to Hofstra basketball, you are probably old enough to remember the ECC, or at least the NAC, and how a home game against Drexel—one of the few schools that Hofstra can identify as a historic rival—is always one to circle on the calendar.

Hofstra has never been any good at building relationships with its most loyal supporters, and I can guarantee you the school will further strain those ties if it goes on with this game tonight in whiteout conditions. But a postponement could finally reward those whose loyalty to the program stretches back decades, those who continue to support Hofstra basketball even as the downtrodden economy stretches our checkbooks.

No one’s asking Hofstra to postpone the game right now. Make sure the reports are for real and that the worst of it is indeed arriving in the afternoon and evening hours. And then do the right thing, Hofstra, and postpone the game.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

MSG & The Holiday Festival ain’t what it used to be, no matter what the ticket prices say

The only place MSG remains the mecca is in black-and-white photographs.

If you’re like me (once again, I’m very sorry), then you’ve received phone calls and emails this week from the Hofstra ticket office reminding you that tickets are on sale now for the Holiday Festival (if the tournament sponsor wants a mention, it can pay me too!) today and Monday.

All of which confirms something I’ve long suspected: Tom Pecora is the only person excited about the Flying Dutchmen playing in the Holiday Festival.

“It’s always great to play in Madison Square Garden,” Pecora said after the Dutchmen beat New Hampshire last Saturday. “You’ve heard me say it before: I go in there, I still get goose bumps.”

If you’re of a certain age—like, say, between Beach and Pecora—you can understand why Pecora is nostalgic. He remembers the days when MSG was truly The Mecca of Basketball, when it housed an annual NBA title contender in the Knicks and a Big East powerhouse in St. John’s, and when our view of the basketball universe was shaped by the Game of the Week on TV.

To watch basketball on TV in the ‘80s was to think the sport was only played in a handful of arenas. And MSG was one of these places where magic happened, a destination which was rarely attainable for commoners and one that required great effort and sacrifice to reach. I remember going to my first NBA game—Knicks vs. Hawks in the winter of 1983-84—and what a major deal it was.

We drove from our home in northwest Connecticut to a bus station an hour or so to the south, boarded a bus to Grand Central Station, then boarded a subway to MSG. Then we sat somewhere in the nosebleeds and watched someone (I think it was the Hawks) win at the buzzer. Then we got on the subway to the bus station and drove home, getting back to the middle of nowhere around 4 am. It was a HUGE deal to a 10-year-old, who spent all of Monday’s Language Arts class talking about it.

But the decline of MSG’s basketball occupants and the realities of modern times—namely greed and overexposure—have conspired to turn MSG into just another building and a game there into just another date on the calendar.

For most of this decade, MSG has been where good basketball goes to die. The Knicks are in the midst of their ninth straight losing season, during which they have played a grand total of three playoff games—the fewest of any NBA team in that span other than the Charlotte Bobcats, who didn’t exist until 2005.

Under the “leadership” of Mike Jarvis, St. John’s not only became irrelevant nationally but locally as well, where Pecora and Hofstra began poaching the best high school players and pounding the Red Storm on the court (that’s right, I’m talking trash). NCAA violations under Jarvis’ watch led the St. John’s losing 47 wins between 2000 and 2004 and the Red Storm didn’t advance to the Big East Tournament four times in the five years between 2003-04 and 2007-08. Their appearance in the CBI last year marked the program’s first postseason trip since 2002-03.

But even if the Knicks and Red Storm—the latter of whom appear to be crawling their way back to respectability during an 8-1 start—remained vibrant through the ‘00s, the explosion of basketball on the small screen would have made their home less prestigious.

Today’s college basketball players cannot remember a time when they weren’t able to travel the country’s professional and collegiate arenas via remote control, seven nights a week from November through June. There’s so much variety from which to choose that, at some point, there’s no difference between MSG and Gonzaga’s McCarthey Athletic Center and whichever corporate-named arena happens to be hosting an NBA game on ESPN.

The Holiday Festival, meanwhile, was once the premier in-season college basketball tournament, but now it’s just one of several to be held at MSG—and by far the most secondary. At least four tournaments have already taken place at MSG, including the semifinals and finals of the Preseason NIT. Had the Flying Dutchmen beaten UConn in Storrs to advance to the NIT semifinals, they would have appeared on ESPN or ESPN2 the day before and the day after Thanksgiving.

This weekend’s Holiday Festival takes place right before Christmas, instead of immediately after it, and the Hofstra-St. John’s game will be played smack dab in the middle of the Jets game Sunday. The championship game will start shortly after the Giants’ Monday Night Football game and will be televised on—we are not making this up—CSPAN2. Filibuster this!

All of which leads us to the biggest problem facing the Holiday Festival: The shamelessly expensive tickets. As Long Islanders, we are used to Cablevision (which owns MSG) being painfully out of touch with the common man it tries to screw 24/7/365 (upon typing that, I expect my wireless and my cable to go out at any moment).

But this is a new low for Cablevision. The Holiday Festival is operated as an afterthought and airs its championship game on an eighth-tier channel and MSG is going to charge…$50 and $60 per doubleheader ticket?! The weekend before Christmas? With the economy in the crapper? To see two local teams who don’t fill up their own home gyms? Let’s not forget Hofstra drew triple digits to both its NIT home games, where tickets were $10 and $15 per doubleheader. Why would anyone pay four or five times and then dig deeper into the wallet to cover the cost of transportation and food? Even before the Blizzard of Doom?

It’s too bad, because this weekend could have been a nice opportunity to tap into the still-vast nostalgia engendered by MSG by making prices affordable and hoping the Baby Boomers (or, gasp, Generation Xers) could take their children to the game and maybe pass on the fondness for the ol’ building to those who might not otherwise realize or appreciate its history. I’m pretty sure Cablevision could still afford its electric bills if the tickets were $30 and $20.

“It’s an exciting time of the year to be in the city and it’s a really good tournament—probably as good a tournament as it’s ever been in terms of great balance and four good teams with ourselves, Davidson, Cornell and St. John’s,” Pecora said. “It’ll be a great challenge. It’ll be fun.”

It will be. Too bad the Garden assured, even before it had the excuse of poor weather, that nobody will be there to see it.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.