Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Nest Fest Is This WEekend
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Boston Bruins Win Stanley Cup, Vancouver Promptly Begins The End of the World
The Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup in Game 7 against the Vancouver Canucks. Congratulations? I don't know, I guess I'm kind of torn. Not just because it apparently started the zombie apocalypse in Vancouver, but because I in general hate Boston sports teams. I'm a Jets fan so obviously the Patriots are out. I hate the Red Sox mostly because they pretend they aren't as evil as the Yankees, yet they spend $50 million just to talk to a guy, not to mention Papelbon's state of perpetual constipation. Tie that in with that fact that how you can respect any fan base that blames their winning woes on a curse. No, you choked. The Celtics: can't stand Paul Pierce and then they had to add Garnett, but I think I get the Bruins. Cam Neely for some reason was one of my favorite players as a kid. Sea Bass, his Foundation, can't go wrong with that guy. Also my first floor hockey stick was a B's one that my parents got me as a birthday present, that led me to dominate matches at hotels during hockey tournaments for years to follow. But it also seems like the Bruins are the Boston team that actually defines what Boston sports wants to be, especially with what Tom Brady has been up to...
More Excuses for Wisconsin Not Having a Team-
Finally we have some real detractors and now I've realized how necessary they are because they actually make you go out research your arguments. Not to mention they bring more excuses that I originally hadn't thought of so thanks. More fuel to the fire. Figured I'd write this all out so I have a place to send people in case any of these issues come up again.
The success of some southern teams pretty much negates all these arguments anyway, because compared to Wisconsin what did they have before to base anything on? But I digress, here are some comments and messages I've received that the rebuttal just makes a case for getting a team even stronger.
Too close to Minneapolis and Chicago, the market is too saturated
Hockey is the 4th or 5th most popular sport in WI
Admirals can't even sell 5,000 tickets
Can't use badgers as example for hockey passion because without students it doesn't matter
Badger Hockey Loses Money
Badgers get bad TV Ratings and have a bad TV deal
More people show up for MN high school games than Admirals games
MN has far more passion for hockey than WI
Milwaukee doesn't care about hockey, then don't have enough rinks
Compared to the Admirals, NHL tickets would be too expensive and no one would go
Wisconsin's media is too fractured
Not enough statewide tradition
First, I don't even know why people bring MN into the fray when discussing WI. If the NHL were to base planting a team on passion compared to MN then no city in the US would have one. As much of a rival as MN is, I can respect that they hold hockey far above just about everyone in the contiguous US and probably the other 2 states(even though Wisconsin's U18 continually holds their own and beats them).
Their high school state tournament is unlike any other. They sell out the Xcel Energy Center to the tune of 18,000 fans every year. I couldn't find anything about regular season hockey games, but I'm sure the big schools probably draw a couple thousand at least considering big high schools have that many kids. Again though, how many high school games are there in Texas or California that rival Minnesota?
Let's start with a couple easy ones (they all are).
"The Admirals can't even sell 5,000 tickets". To be fair I also thought the number was around 5000. However this past season the Ad's averaged about 5800 fans good for 11th out of the 30 teams in the AHL. They actually averaged just above 6000 last year which was good for 8th. Not sure the reason for the drop, I thought it may have been that the Packers made it further in the playoffs this year but there weren't any Ad's home games during their Super Bowl run. The average is better than Toronto, Hamilton, and Connecticut. Hamilton is another frontrunner for a franchise.
"Hockey is 4th or 5th most popular sport in WI" - I don't know what the 4th sport would be. NASCAR? Golf? Is there a major sport coming up that I'm not aware of in Wisconsin. Lumberjack competitions? Hands down Packers occupy #1, but then I see a free for all for number 2, as far as professional sports go, but does that really matter? Hockey is probably 4th most popular in Boston, 4th or 5th most popular in Chicago. The only sport it would have to contend with on a regular nightly basis is basketball. As much as I love the Bucks, I think a hockey team would be more popular from the stand point of attendance and TV Ratings. According to the RSN ratings Bucks average 13,000 households which sadly is in the bottom 6 of the NBA.
"The Badgers lose money, don't get TV ratings, wouldn't sell out without students, etc, etc" - Oh my. Doing a little bit of digging found out the Badger Men generate about $5 mil in revenue at a cost $4 million, and the women $575,000 at a cost of $2.5 million. So yes, overall there is a loss but from what I hear college athletics is a little funny when it comes to accounting and what can be written off as expense or added as revenue. The women's program loses money, not much in the Badger Athletics as a whole. Maybe it costs money to win 4 National Championships and create the best program in the country.
I wasn't able to find anything on TV ratings on a nightly basis and I agree the contract probably isn't great. In Madison I think the only way to watch it live is on PBS. But there is this little thing called the Big 10, they have their network, and the Badgers are helping to create the league for hockey in 2012 which will be shown on the network. The conference should exponentially help TV ratings and revenue around the area with familiar matchups to people in the area. Are more people going to watch Wisconsin vs. Michigan than a Wisconsin vs. Bemidji St on a channel that is more easily accessible, probably. No offense to Bemidji, it's just not as familiar to people that follow the Big Ten in all the other sports. I have a reason to hate Michigan, OSU, Illinois all the time, Colorado College just on the nights they play UW.
The student tickets represent 2,700 out of the 15,300 tickets for hockey. It is a similar percentage to football. But why not count students? Would students not go to NHL games? Even so 15,300 - 2,700 = 12,600, still more people that go to the Phoenix Coyotes game.
Expensive NHL Tickets - The Admirals charge between $16-23 for a ticket. How much more are NHL tickets? Not much apparently. The St. Louis Blues charge between $20 - $68 for a majority of their tickets and the Nashville Predators range between $19-$43 for most of their seats. Both markets similar sizes and scopes to a Milwaukee, and both pretty reasonable for going to an NHL game. As long as a team would be equivalent to Bucks or Brewers prices it shouldn't be a problem.
Not Enough Statewide tradition - The Admirals have been around for 40+ years, the Badgers have been playing for almost 50 years straight (the varsity sport started in 1921 but they discontinued it from 1935-1963), and Lake Superior has been playing organized hockey since the 1920's and offer one of the best high school programs dominating the state tourney when it started in the 1970's. 41,000 fans filled Lambeau field in February to watch the Ohio State and Wisconsin play in a winter classic (more than the amount at Ford Field for the National Championship in 2010). There are probably more examples, but that covers the state pretty well.
UPDATE: I had some time to kill so I made this map. Since 2000, each red dot is a school that has won the State Championship. How is that display not only for State wide tradition, but State wide quality.
Wisconsin Media Too Fractured - Not sure what this meant. I guess Green Bay has a station, Madison has one, Milwaukee does, and Eau Claire (?). But how often are games televised on local channels anymore. It's all FS Midwest. All the NHL needs to know is that their bottom 3 TV markets (FL, PHX, ATL) have a combined viewership of 18,000 households. I think Wisconsin does that without any teams here. In 2006 though the Frozen Four game between Wisconsin and Maine averaged just above 1 million households, an 11% increase over the year before that and a new record for the time. For the Gold Medal game between US and Canada last year, Milwaukee (who apparently doesn't care about hockey and doesn't have enough rinks) was the 5th highest city of viewership in the US (site) above cities such as Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Philly.
Milwaukee Ice Rinks - This is all within a 3 mile radius, but it includes the Petit, Bradley, Red Arrow, Jacobus, Humboldt, Wilson Rec Center and just outside of the radius is Lake Park. I may have missed some, or included one that shouldn't be, but I'm not that familiar with the area, let me know. Blue is indoor, Red outdoor. Anyway, this guy vehemently believes there is no outdoor rink in the entire Milwaukee Metro area, the map below barely covers the city let alone all of the suburbs. What are they on?
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Wisconsin Bars
The year was 2005. It was my first trip to Vegas. We were taking the red eye back that night so we pretty much just had a day to kill, with no place to stay. My brother, who lives there, is taking us around that week and decides this would be the best time to go to this place known as Rum Runner, (I call it Rum Runner's, not sure if that's cosher). It's a few miles off the strip. As omen to what entire day became, later on into the night my brother decides it would be a great idea to take us to an authentic mexican food cart type cuisine. It was excellent but not the best idea to mix a uniquely spiced pulled pork and a half gallon of horchata before a 4 hour flight at midnight. Not to get too far off topic, on the way to it he mentions it is a Wisconsin bar, I have no idea what this means but when we walk in we find out quickly. Packer and Badger banners plastered everywhere and memorabilia strewn about. I even see signs of the Brewers and Bucks, maybe Marquette, my memory is fuzzy. There are few bars in Wisconsin that are decked out this much, but I guess when you have to convince guests of where they are, and what kind of bar it is, you over-do it. There is not one thing that didn't remind me of a main street bar in Verona apart from the open space inside. My brother said the place is usually full with Packer fans on Sundays. Needless to say they have good specials before noon. It's a good thing when we move, we take our bars with us.
The initial thought of this came this past weekend where I was down in Chicago. We watched the Badgers lose to Penn State in what is on out of about a half dozen Wisconsin bars I know of in the Chicago, just in the area we were staying. But when you think about it, where else is this the norm? I'm not aware of Chicago bars in Milwaukee or Madison, Detroit Bars in Columbus, or a Dodgers bar in Philli? I suppose there are a few cases of this especially with major franchises like a Steeler bar in LA or a Red Sox bar in Seattle. But not to mention the idea of a big rivals bar in a downtown location give me a flashes of street mob justice. With the Wisconsin ones there seems to be enough people in the area to support it for a long term though.
Where are some other Wisconsin bars located? Is this common with other franchises, or does it add to the notion of how we travel with sports and spirits?
Monday, May 23, 2011
Wisconsin Born NHL'ers
One of the statistics I was going to pull as a major case for professional hockey was the amount of players that Wisconsin has sent to the NHL. This was originally based on just the assumption that we produced dozens of them. However, when I looked it up and saw it was only 25, I was a tad disappointed considering that 39 players in the NBA were born here. I left it at that, but I failed to put it into context of the rest of the country, so here it is:
| State | # of Players |
|---|---|
| Alabama | 2 |
| Alaska | 11 |
| Arizona | 1 |
| Arkansas | 0 |
| California | 24 |
| Colorado | 7 |
| Connecticut | 25 |
| Delaware | 1 |
| DC | 2 |
| Florida | 3 |
| Georgia | 3 |
| Hawaii | 0 |
| Idaho | 2 |
| Illinois | 44 |
| Indiana | 7 |
| Iowa | 1 |
| Kansas | 0 |
| Kentucky | 0 |
| Louisiana | 0 |
| Maine | 5 |
| Maryland | 4 |
| Mass. | 166 |
| Michigan | 122 |
| Minnesota | 206 |
| Mississippi | 0 |
| Missouri | 7 |
| Montana | 0 |
| Nebraska | 2 |
| Nevada | 0 |
| New Hamp. | 7 |
| New Jersey | 10 |
| New Mexico | 0 |
| New York | 85 |
| North Carolina | 1 |
| North Dakota | 13 |
| Ohio | 20 |
| Oklahoma | 3 |
| Oregon | 5 |
| Pennsylvania | 24 |
| Rhode Island | 18 |
| So. Carolina | 0 |
| South Dakota | 0 |
| Tennessee | 0 |
| Texas | 3 |
| Utah | 2 |
| Vermont | 2 |
| Virginia | 4 |
| Washington | 9 |
| West Virginia | 0 |
| Wisconsin | 25 |
| Wyoming | 0 |
| Total | 876 |
All these figures are from Hockey Reference (site). Obviously it doesn’t cover transplants. If someone was born in Lithuania and moved to New York when they were 2 it wouldn't count for NY, which could work for either side. It is also only NHL, and not one of the many semi-pro teams that one could play for. Some of these are just hard to believe for the 0 states: Kansas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Tenessee, Nevada, really none of those states ever produced an NHL hockey player (ever?). The other aspect this points out is just how big of an international sport hockey really is, that in the history of the league less than 900 players were born in the US.
Wisconsin ranks sixth, tied with Connecticut with 25. Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York are the only states ahead of us. Also 11 of the 25 were born after 1980, so it will be something on the rise since it wasn't until the late 1970's that highly organized hockey really came into fruition in our state. It was during these years that UW became a national college powerhouse, the Madison Capitol Jr team was formed, and high schools started adding teams as a varsity sport. I don't really see this as a big bragging point since just about every state around here can crap on us, but considering that we are one of the top states for NHL'ers lends to the notion of how much passion is brewing for the sport as kids grow up with it.
NHL Camera System
All the rage right now is the talk about the Phoenix Coyotes and everything Gary Bettman is trying to do to keep them there. Something about bonds expiring, lawsuits, I don't know. One of the big reasons for keeping them there is that the Phoenix/Glendale/Tempe/etc area is reportedly the 14th largest American TV market and you would be giving that up to move the team to Winnipeg which is the 8th largest in Canada (or 110th or something in America numbers). The problem is it doesn't matter how big something is, if it's not being used then it's pointless. According to this, LA and Anaheim are in the bottom 5 for TV ratings, but have one of the biggest markets in North America, maybe they get away with that by charging $100 a ticket. Hockey is one of the greatest sports to watch live but for some reason it hasn't translated well to watching at home.
On that note, I can't figure out why NFL is so watchable. On paper it should be horrendous. Commercials every few minutes, most snaps go absolutely nowhere, constant replays, annoying banter but there I am for 9 hours a Sunday watching it even when I am getting updates on my laptop for fantasy. Part of it can be attributed to that circus I discussed used to surround each play, which the NHL should look at adopted but to a much lesser extent. There are a million things people could be doing at any given moment, give them a good reason to stay tuned in, or else why am I wasting my 2 hours watching this.
Aficionados will tell you it is selling out the sport to try to cater to TV audiences (aka casual fans). Look what Fox did with the joke that is the glowing puck to try to ramp up viewers and help them keep track of what was going on.
(would this make George Lucas cream in his pants?)
It was at least something to help though. If the sport is to prosper in this day and age it needs to hit that virtual audience, and when your best market is Pittsburgh at 105,000 homes that's saying it needs another "glowing puck" type jump start but this time maybe think of something successful, and not just for the advantage of a new idea but incorporating things that actually work in the real world.
One simple way to do this is change the camera angle setup. Something relatively small that even the purists could approve that would revolutionize the way it is watched from home. Right now you have a fixed camera at mid point panning back and forth with a couple quick cuts every once in awhile in one of the corners. The cuts do nothing for me but disorient since they only last a split second, and the fixed position keeps the viewer removed from the action in other areas. Have you ever seen an exciting hockey movie where it was just filmed from one spot the entire time?
Well how does this differ from actually being there in that spot where the camera is if it is so good to watch live? The biggest difference is field of view controlled by you. Not only do you have a wider field actually being there but you are drawn to things that get your attention: Line changes, off puck hits, coaches yelling, women, score board shenanigans, Boston music blaring, etc, so you are constantly entertained by at least something in your chosen field of view. Right now watching from home is like having so-so tickets, wearing a dog cone on your head and having someone control your neck for you. It tries to emulate what basketball does, but the problem with that is the players and puck are in constant motion around a much larger area of play.
Why not put a camera right above the ice. Invest in that zip line technology the NFL uses on kickoffs and sometimes replays, or have it follow a track from the ceiling/scoreboard. Make it reminiscent of one of the greatest hockey video games ever.
I know I could watch that game for hours and sometimes had to if there were 3 of us playing with time at full length periods. But think about every virtual hockey experience you have enjoyed, hasn't it always been from an angle right above the action looking vertically? You have bubble hockey, that magnet hockey game, and console hockey. Horizontal games like Ice Hockey and Blades of Steel still were looking at it from above but they still pale in comparison to NHL 94 and 95.
Why hasn't the NHL at least tried something like this, the idea, the setup as been around for 20 years? You get to see the puck, you get to see all the movements by the goalie, and you get to see plays developing. Create an experience for the fan at home that you wouldn't get in the arena, shouldn't that be the goal?
Football/Basketball/Soccer, et al, get a pass on this since they move at slower paces, with larger tools of scoring so it's a little easier to film it from the side. But with something as fast as hockey you need a system that can focus on where the puck is with good contrast but also keep you in tuned to what else is going on.
You could even just stick a camera on a guy suspended from the rafters, that might be additional entertainment. See how it looks in a couple extended cut shots mixed in with what you are already doing. If people don't like it stop it, it wouldn't cost that much to do. It's just an idea. Maybe the complete whiteness of ice wouldn't look good on TV, would it be good for 3D?
I could also be pulling this for this because my parents season tickets for UW hockey when I was growing up were right at one end of the coliseum, the very top row, so that is how I had to always watch the game. But it always made it entertaining.
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