College Hockey Upate:  In an unheard of timeline, 2021 College Hockey Update Twenty-First Annual Pool Winner Chuck Speare was handed his Trophy Sweatshirt on Saturday, April 17th, only one week to the day after the NCAA Championship Game.  Considering that some of the past pool winners were not handed their Trophy Sweatshirt for as long as two full years afterwards (including 2019 winner Mike Michela, who just got his about four weeks ago), this was quite a breakthrough.

For some, but not all, the reaction from the people of San Jose, CA., the current hometown of Chuck Speare, might be viewed as unexpected as well.  Once the news got out on Saturday that Chuck had already been handed his sweatshirt, the city immediately announced a parade to honor him the very next day, Sunday, April 18th (yesterday) at 1:00pm.  A crowd estimated at 75,000 showed up for the parade and festivities, and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said, “Clearly we moved too quickly for such a huge honor.  I know how coveted the College Hockey Update Pool Winner Sweatshirt is, and for it to be coming here to San Jose, well, let’s just say that if we had given people another couple of days notice, we would’ve had more like 400,000 here for this.”

Chuck took it all in stride, saying “Sure I know we could have had hundreds of thousands of people here, but Sam did what he thought was best.  I think it was a nice idea, and I was amazed at how he just wanted to hang around the sweatshirt.  He asked me about five times if he could just touch it, and, of course, I said he could all five times.  It’s obvious he wants one of his own real bad.”

As regards future plans, Chuck said, “It took me eighteen years to repeat as a winner.  I didn’t do anything differently this year, and I won’t change my approach as to how I make my picks going forward.  But as you can see, I have to shoot for the moon — I have a city of over a million people counting on me.”

That’s all for now.  Stay tuned, and go Terriers!

— Tom