Falcon Faux-pas

Being an advertising person I tend to analyze design material a little more than most and I love to catch bad typos in copy (and no I'm not immune to gaffes!). For example; the recent Images Magazine says that Old Colorado City is located just west of Colorado Springs. To the casual reader that's a "yup". To most locals it's an "ummm, OCC is PART of Colorado Springs". Small, but WRONG.

Why is that remotely interesting? The Air Force Falcons football/hockey schedule was stuck in the Gayzette today and I noticed a fun little error that seems insignificant but is thoroughly embarrassing to whomever designed it. While looking at the date CC plays at the Academy (I was planning on going but it's the day after Thanksgiving and I'll be happily sitting in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln yelling profanities at the visiting team from Boulder) and I noticed the asterisks at the bottom on the hockey side
" *Mountain West Conference Game ". Catch it? AFA plays hockey in the AHA, other sports are Mountain West, as the opposite football page indicates. Obviously the designers (who should know everything about their client) missed an elementary part of their besig and probably used the same template.
AND something I just noticed as I was posting this; the Mountain West 10 year anniversary logo is placed in the photo, whoops!!
Considering there is no such thing as the Mountain West in college hockey and how much the agency gets paid this is pretty embarrasing.

Colorado Is a Big Freakin' Deal

Those of you that know me know that I'm annoyingly proud of the state of Colorado and everything that we have. So I was extremely happy to check out the paper today to see the special section devoted to Colorado being the hotbed of hockey for the weekend. The photo-illustration by Mark Reis was phenomenal. Half of the image is above. Unfortunately, they cut off the burning Nike Bauer skate that is above the Colorado hockey puck, probably so people like me don't put it on their blog (which is ironic because I probably get more traffic and exposure than that paper does and I would give them more visitors, but another matter for another time). The section has some good articles, if you can find them. In true Gazette fashion, each page has a 1/4 page article and the other 3/4 is FULL OF ADS! Gazette, I don't care about Liberty Toyota, but I do care about the "Last Change a Boon" article buried on the upper left. Can you guys at least spare us the ads for a special section? Can you imagine those sweet Broncos posters from the Super Bowl years with a big Heuberger ad at the bottom? You guys actually had something good going on and you ruined it (and having to pay for it is no excuse, this is ridiculous). Kate actually did a good job on this one so I compiled all the article links for you to spare you from all the ads. However, the photo illustration is worth whatever the paper costs so if you feel compelled, go pick one up.

The hotbed of hockey

CC Refocusing

Home team draws a crowd

It's all about the line change

Season starts in full force

Well the 2 "pre-season" exhibition games are over and now the season starts in full force with national powerhouse Minnesota charging into town for the weekend. Should be a good opportunity to see what our Tigers are made of right out of the gate. Regardless of the outcome, this can't be a disaster for the Tigers, even if they are swept. Having an opponent of this caliber the first week will start them out high and prepare them for the rest of the season. Also, being the first weekend, there is plenty of time for the Tigers to come back if disaster strikes and they don't win a game. It will be a great battle and I'm sure there will be plenty of Minnesota fans descending on the Springs this week. I have never had the opportunity to be at one of these games so it should be a blast, great atmosphere and great hockey!
The Tigers won their two warm-up games and the young kids seemed to do pretty well.
You can find the quick recap of the games at the CC hockey page.

Look for a feature this week regarding the recent history between the Tigers and the Gophers. Thanks for your support of this blog and I'm looking forward to hitting the regular season strong!

New blog...sorta

So it looks like the Gazette is trying to jump aboard the blogosphere with their lackluster CC hockey coverage. Go check it out and let's hear some opinions but be warned, there is a lot of white on the page, haha!! I will support and endorse other bloggers, like this one and even our evil DUh fans up north (sorry, they don't get a link!) and I consider my site to be for the fans and with the fans, not just me, but I am totally against the Gazette. I'm not sure if it's because their coverage sux, because they are a corporation, or because I root for fan content. Whatever the case, I now have incentive to get this blog converted over to a full blown website (I'm having problems with templates so it's taking longer) and stomp them! (not just the blog but the site as well) Get some discussion going in the comments section of this post about either how much our media coverage sux or things you want to see to help us fans dominate the CC Tiger web presence!!

50 years of history

Here is a piece from the Gazette that is pretty interesting. It's written by the reporter that I always bug about the timing and relevancy of ther stories. There was a video with it when it first came out on the front page but, in true Gazette fashion, it's been simplified and turned bland when it's put on the CC page. Check it out

Iron Man Zaba

As most of you are aware, Mat Zaba will be playing his 3rd consecutive game tonight. He has been solid in the first two, allowing really only one goal (the OT goal was sloppy and he was hung out to dry). Let's hope that he can keep it up for another week, I'm worried about him wearing down though, it will be interesting to see. If I were MT, I would want to get as many shots as possibly on him to keep him active and try to play on the fatigue. If I were CC, I would keep the puck to the outside and try to get as many shots on the other end. If I'm correct, this will be Zaba's 16th consecutive start, which is insane for a goalie. Let's hope he can hold on for at least another full week and get us to the WCHA Finals!
On a side-ish note. I must be anti-Gazette because I thought the article about honking at Zaba's apartment was really lame. I like the bit about him getting his rest and his pregame ritual, but the whole introduction " If you’re driving along San Miguel Street around noon today, please don’t honk your horn. ". As if I do every other day when I'm on that street??!! That could have been a pretty cool story about his pregame rituals; goalies are known for having all kinds of quirky things about them that are always fun to hear about. But instead we get a PSA, lamo! I just wish we could have better coverage of this team, but of course I'm a little biased b/c I'm used to Husker Football coverage, and that's an animal in itself.

Calling all CC fans

Ok so I've been looking around for videos and pics from the games and have only really come up with my own (which I will be adding at some point later today). As I have said before, The Gazette has a section for photos but there are only a handfull and they are all out of date. Yet, the actual newpaper has a few good pics each weekend, but they don't make it onto the website. Also, the Gazette had a slowly updating article following the game last night, but they didn't update it after the middle of the 2nd period. I had my game results up just after the game ended and yet their didn't updat until long after I went to bed. Along those same lines, it's hard to find a live update of the game online. Besides the radio, there is the ESPN scoreboard but it's not live (but better than all others). Here's my proposition and I need everyone's help. I already started it last night, but let's politely (or maybe not so much if you are completely fed up) start petitioning the Gazette to better their coverage of the games. If they have photos in the paper and a section on the site, why not put the pics online??? They have them, use them!! If there is an article updating the game, why not have someone at The Gazette updating the score in a score board while the reporters are at the game??!! It's not too hard to put up a scoreboard on the website! I left a comment on the game update last night mentioning how slow they are and how much better they could be doing. Not one site really stands out in their coverage of college hockey, most take over a day to update from the night before. The Gazette has a chance to be the leader in this category. Let's email and comment them en masse and see if we can get a result!!!!!
Another possibility is a group of us could start another blog just for game nights. This would probably take quite a few people, one for pics (of both the game and fans), one to be writing the game story, one to be constantly updating a few at a computer about the score, penalties and shots. It sounds like a lot but it can be done. Something to think about over the summer!

SWEEP

Well I was happy to see that the Tigers swept the defending national champions this past weekend. Right there is a good marketing plan for this coming week "Fresh off sweeping the defending National Champion Wisconsin Badgers, watch the Tigers take on 2002 and 2003 national champion Minnesota feb 16th and 17th". I was also very happy to see that the official records showed that the World Arena was a sellout last night! It's nice to see that all the tickets were sold, but I was not at the game so I couldn't tell if everyone that had a ticket actually went to the game, can anyone help out with that? I've seen sellouts where it was obvious not everyone showed up (the purple seats show it off too well). Speaking of that, why the heck did the arena use purple???! I understand that the Tigers aren't the only organization to use the facility but c'mon. Personally I would have chosen black because a) the Tigers have black in their uniforms and b) black goes well with any event (as opposed to yellow). Oh and one more thing, The Gazette didn't even have pics online from the game. A sellout, a win and a sweep of the defending champs and NO PICS!!!

Where are the pics?

Another thing that I just noticed this morning reading over the game was the quality of game pics. The Gazette coverage has a link for pics from the games so I clicked on it so I could see some shots from the game last night. Instead what I got was 14 mid-quality pics and none of which are less than 3 months old. What's the deal with that? Then I went to the CC Tiger Athletics site to see if there's was any better and I was disgusted to see that the December 2nd game against DU was the last time they added pics. This is RIDICULOUS! I personally love game pics because you get to see a freeze-frame of the high speed action and actually see things that you miss in real-time. If I could regularly attend the games, I would love to put up pics from each game but I can't so I'm asking all fans that can go what they think. It would be awesome to start a fansite where we could post fan pics from each game, both pics of the players, the arena and just fans in general. I started a yet unused google group that would be perfect for sharing amongst fans. Let's make CC Tiger hockey the greatest experience in the country, for both those at the games and those who can't make it!