UNO Hockey Once Again An Afterthought In the Local Media This Weekend

UNO split their final series with Minnesota-Duluth this weekend, earning them a home best-of-three series with Denver starting this Thursday night. The die-hard UNO fans know it and can hardly wait for UNO’s first home playoff series since 2011. (The fact that it’s not against Bemidji and their kryponite neutral zone trap is a bonus.)

The rest of the local sports fans? Well, they really had to pay attention to know about it. Granted, there were some really, really big things that happened locally in sports. Creighton’s Doug McDermott tops 3,000 career points in his final basketball game in Omaha. Nebrasketball finishes their incredible February surge with a huge upset of #9 Wisconsin, almost assuring them an NCAA tournament berth.  And the Husker women won the Big Ten women’s basketball tournament.

So I knew that UNO wouldn’t get front page treatment in this morning’s Omaha World-Herald.  The first two pages were devoted to Creighton and Dougie.  Fair enough; he earned it. But UNO was notably missing from page 3, which was the quasi-front page of the Sports section.  Well, the Husker men and women deserved prime treatment.  But there also was a blurb about a Millard West football player committing to Harvard, and a preview of the Nebraska Girls State High School basketball tournament coverage.  Hmmm.

Page 4? Well, lots of sports briefs along with coverage of the Big Ten and Big Eight wrestling tournament.  Still no UNO hockey, though UNO softball gets a mention for getting a split at Colorado State’s tournament.  But we get the World Herald’s wacky sports comedy column, a rehash of a week of Mike’l Severe’s new online call-in show, and the World-Herald’s big reach around as they congratulate themselves for winning a few awards.

Page 5, certainly.  Nope, that’s the start of a four page special pull-out section on the girls state basketball tournament.  And to make it a pullout, it covers the next three pages as well.

So you guessed it… UNO hockey finally shows up on Page NINE of the daily fishwrap.

Nine. I’m not going to argue that UNO deserved coverage ahead of the basketball games…even the Husker women.  It was a Big Ten championship for the Husker ladies, even though UNO hockey draws more fans.  But shouldn’t UNO hockey have been mentioned along side that?

I go back to the Minneapolis comparison. If anything, they’ve got even more on their plate than the World-Herald with the NBA and NHL along side college sports and the Minnesota Twins in spring training.  There’s a way to cover everything and give every sport their due.

It wasn’t just the World-Herald dropping the ball.  On Saturday night, KETV Channel 7 did offer highlights of UNO’s game in Duluth.  We saw UNO’s first goal, and then Duluth scoring the tying goal in the first period.  And then the final score:  UNO 4, Minnesota-Duluth 1.  Ten frigging seconds of highlights.

10 WHOLE SECONDS? RT @Husker_Mike: Channel 7 did find 10 seconds of UNO hockey highlights to show tonight.
— CornNation (@CornNation) March 9, 2014

I guess they tried. Just not very well.