"I think there are a lot of shysters in Florida."
Posted on 01/12/2017 12:17:54 PM PST by C19fan
It’s the GMs job, but the coach has to live with the results, and work with them, too. The lack of continuity from one year to the next makes it almost impossible to build chemistry on a team.
I think that's also another factor in the falling NFL TV ratings.
Tom Coughlin, Pete Carroll, Jim Harbaugh & Barry Switzer.
Right. I’ve been saying that for years.
Nate Silver does not crunch numbers. He doesn't do it well. He was lucky once getting like 49 out 50 states. He missed everything this year -- NBA, NCAA, Election. He wrote a 2015 article how Trump would never be President.
An AFL franchise cost $25,000 to start.
He wrote a 2015 article how Trump would never be President.
He also ate his words well before the election, and while he did not have Trump as a favorite, gave him much better odds than any of the other mainstream pundits. He has also continued analysis after the election on why the prognosis fell short.
I think his analysis is more along the lines of calculating hockey fervour in an area via google searches, multiplying a resulting percentage by the population of the area, and coming up with a realistic potential fan base.
That said, your way of recommending things also seem sound. Living just shy of Ontario’s “Near North” region, it doesn’t suprise me much that Thunder Bay As the song says, “What’s a Canadian farm boy to do?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUb0C0iI_GE
He crunched a whole lot of numbers in that article, and it looks pretty good to me.
The only flaw with an analysis of "hockey fervor" is that it overlooks what had been part of the NHL's strategy since the early 1990s in developing a national TV audience. Once you have television involved, business decisions based on TV ratings drive sports enterprises to use a whole different set of parameters to measure their business prospects. In the case of the mid-1990s move of the Winnipeg Jets, the NHL decided that a Phoenix metro area with 25,000 hockey fans among 2.7 million people was more valuable than a Winnipeg market with 400,000 hockey fans among 600,000 people. With TV audiences and potential TV audiences (i.e., "casual fans") in the mix, the decision to relocate the Jets to Arizona was based on the denominators in those fractions (2.7 million vs. 600,000), not the numerators (25,000 vs. 400,000).
May this model prove as profitable in Vegas as it has in Phoenix.
If it were up to me, hockey would resign itself to a second-tier status as a regional sport, with 12-16 franchises in the northeastern U.S., Midwest, and Canada.
In rough order of priority, I would break the teams into two groups as listed below. The first group of 12 would be the "definite" NHL teams, while the second group of 8 all seem to be viable NHL markets but may not be able to maintain a strong fan base in losing seasons.
Group #1
1. Toronto
2. Montreal
3. New York
4. Detroit
5. Boston
6. Chicago
7. Philadelphia
8. Vancouver
9. Edmonton
10. Calgary
11. Minnesota
12. Buffalo (may belong in the Bottom 8 due to the metro area size, but this can be combined with Hamilton into a single franchise)
Group #2
13. Los Angeles (could be in the Top 12 except for their remote geographic location)
14. Washington
15. Pittsburgh
16. Ottawa
17. Winnipeg
18. St. Louis
19. Denver
20. Hamilton (in place of Buffalo) or Quebec City
If we were to go with a 16-team league with all of Group #1 and four of the top five teams in Group #2 (let's leave Los Angeles out of the mix for the sake of this discussion and go with Winnipeg instead), this consolidated NHL could have four divisions of four teams each:
Northeast ("the AMTRAK Division")
New York
Boston
Philadelphia
Washington
Canada East ("the Founders Division")
Toronto
Montreal
Buffalo/Hamilton
Ottawa
Central ("the Rust Belt Division")
Detroit
Chicago
Minnesota
Pittsburgh
Canada West ("the Frontier Division")
Vancouver
Edmonton
Calgary
Winnipeg
As a San Diego resident for over 25 years (and not necessarily a football fan - prefer baseball), and I noticed something happening after San Diego built a brand new stadium for the San Diego Padres. The Padres fan base is a great deal larger than the football fans.
But, what I wanted to point out is that I have always noticed a snarky-sniping tone from staff and players, as well as fans whenever anybody mentions the Padres stadium.
The Chargers first plan called for building the new football stadium adjacent to the Padres Stadium; and would call for destroying a recent new business - brewing beer. And, the plans to build a new bus storage area - with a larger maintenance area. But, this seemed to be the only place the Chargers wanted to re-locate (from Mission Valley).
The City and County officials tried to steer them to another location; didn’t work. There is already a stadium on Mission Valley where the Chargers would have been playing this season (while their new stadium was built. However, the citizens of San Diego would not vote for an increased hotel tax in order to pay for the stadium.
And .. the whole time I’m watching the back and forth with (especially our Mayor), I kept noticing that the owner of the Chargers NEVER SMILED. I kept getting the impression that he EXPECTED THE CITY/COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO TO BUILD THEM A NEW STADIUM (without any major cost to the Chargers) ..??
And, the more I thought about that, the more I kept saying, well, if the Chargers were winning a lot more games and even winning playoff games on a regular basis; maybe then, the City and County would have been willing to foot more of the bill.
Nobody has to agree with me, I’m just stating my opinion.
All I know is John of John and Ken is excited. He grew up loving the Chargers. I’m kind of blank about it, but I do wonder if there will be a deal to get season tickets like the Rams had.
Would you switch to an 8-team playoff foremat
I’’m in Ottawa’s catchment—I’d put the team in Quebec City Instead. I’d also stick with Buffalo, but consider moving the Red Wings South to Windsor. Get them out of the 3rd world.
Right, the Colorado Rockies, who had started out as the Kansas City Scouts and then moved to Colorado and on to New Jersey, where they became the Devils.
The baseball team took the Rockies name, meaning that when Denver returned to the NHL (the former Quebec Nordiques), they became the Avalanche.
Before that, they had the Mohawks.
Interesting that neither Cincinnati nor Cleveland has NHL hockey, but Columbus does.
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