Stockbridge - MSU head coach Rick Comley and Michigan head coach Red Berenson couldn’t hammer out a decision on which school would get an extra home game in their season series this year, so they reverted to a problem-solving method that would have made the East Lansing school board proud.
They flipped a coin in a far-off location.
The setting was the tiny village Stockbridge, which is nearly equidistant between Ann Arbor and East Lansing. At stake was hosting privileges for the Feb. 28 meeting between the teams.
To break the stalemate, Stockbridge village President Ken Moffitt flipped a half-dollar size coin with a yellow “M” on one side and a white “S” on the other. And though the coin tumbled onto the green grass of the Township Hall courtyard, the result was clearly maize and blue.
“I’m not upset as long as this isn’t 0-1 on my record,” Comley joked after the flip. “For our fans, I’d love to play at home. But in games of this magnitude, sometimes there’s an advantage to playing on the road - there’s less pressure, your crowd doesn’t get antsy and you can quiet a big crowd quickly by playing well.
“I don’t know if it’s as much as a competitive advantage as a financial advantage to be at home.”
MSU and U-M are paired together in the CCHA’s new “rivalry clusters,” which means they will play four times a season in league play for the foreseeable future. So dropping the coin toss isn’t a total loss for MSU - it just delays the Spartans’ advantage by a year.
MSU will host two games at Munn Ice Arena in the 2003-04 season, while U-M will have one at Yost, plus the annual game at neutral Joe Louis.
“It was a pretty neat way to do things,” MSU athletics director Ron Mason said. “But it’s all going to even out anyway. I’d rather lose a coin toss than lose a game, so maybe we’ll win the games and they can have the coin toss, how’s that?”
Comley said he’s a proponent of playing five games against archrival U-M each season - two home, two away and a nonleague game at Joe Louis. U-M athletics director Bill Martin insinuated that he also would be in favor of that format.
“I’ve proposed it,” Comley said. “We’ll see if it ever happens.”
The outdoor coin toss drew a considerable number of onlookers from the Stockbridge community, with several jersey-wearing fans seeking autographs from Mason, Comley and Berenson.
The event also seemed to turn into a formal excuse for the rival hockey brass to get together informally during the slow midsummer months.
“I told Coach Comley that I could flip the coin over the phone and tell him what happened, but no, he wanted to have a meeting,” Berenson quipped. “It was good to get this settled today and kind of a unique way to do it.”
MSU’s entire schedule is expected to be released soon.
