I.- In the US, there are four major sports; football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Out of the four, hockey gets the least amount of respect. The fact that hockey is neglected deeply disturbs me especially as an ex-hockey player and deeply devoted Chicago Blackhawks fan, and it also upsets other hockey fans around the country.

TRANSITION.- Lets start at the top with the, National Hockey League, NHL.

II.- The NHL has a television deal with ESPN and ABC so that the two companies share the Stanley Cup Finals, the NHL’s championship series.

TRANSION.- Please allow yourself to understand that ESPN is also owned by NBC, allowing the large company to control coverage of the games.

III.- The major problem with television deal is that ESPN is a paid for cable station, which means that you can only watch the finals games on ESPN if you have cable.

A.- Since the NBC network is in control of the games, hockey

1.- The World Series of Major League Baseball, MLB, is on FOX or NBC, the National Basketball Association, NBA, Finals are on NBC, and the National Football League's, NFL, Super Bowl is on FOX, CBS, or ABC.

C.- The majority of Southern or Western Colleges don't even have a hockey team, some schools have intermural type teams of just have students that get together and create their own street leagues.

TRANSITION.- Hockey starts to get the downfall due to the effects of television programming, the NHL is the only sport that has its championship game or series on cable television where only a specific audience as access to it as opposed to the entire nation.

3.- The newscasts’ also fail to deliver the appropriate information about the sports, the only time that they will talk about hockey first is if the local team had a big win, is in the playoffs, or when a decent player is seriously injured..

CONCLUSION.- The aspect of hockey getting the short end of the stick can be summed up in a couple of ways. Ice hockey clearly gets shafted and pushed aside when it comes to deciding between hockey

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