Don't forget the chest-trap ;) You might like one of the other football variations, e.g. Gaelic, Aussie Rules, or their Hybrid form – all limbs are in play, no headers ...
Posted on 06/20/2014 8:05:16 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
The US has brought more fans to Brazil than any other country and this may be a genuine tipping point....
A recent ESPN poll found that among Americans aged 12-17, football was now neck and neck with baseball in terms of popularity, and well ahead of ice hockey. A Washington Times survey found that almost a third of Americans planned to watch at least some of the tournament. The New York Times has splashed the World Cup over its front page several times in recent weeks. Beneath the surface, the last four years have seen the emergence of magazines such as Howler and Eight By Eight, covering the game with the same depth and detail as any European publication.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
[groan] Hey, if it helps sell more Cialis, right?
Absolutely. Any hockey minor league that doesn’t have ideas of how to leverage and grow their audience to possibly someday supplant the NHL and then even the NFL is just waiting to go out of business. If you run a business would you prefer it to be thousands of dollars profitable, millions of dollars profitable, or billions of dollars profitable? If you aren’t dedicating yourself to moving up that chain your shareholders should find somebody else. The NFL is billions of dollars profitable, and I know from reading and watching many interviews with Goodell that he’s aiming at trillions, because that’s his job.
I think you have lost the focus of your argument. Minor League hockey will never supplant the NHL, no matter how many magic wands are waved, no matter how many Fortune 500 CEOs are recruited, and no matter how desperately you wish it to be so in order for your argument to make sense.
As a long time hockey fan I HATE the shootouts in hockey, it’s artificial to settle a sport through a method that really isn’t the sport. It’s like settling a baseball game with a home run derby, or a football game with a PPK competition. I don’t even like them dropping to 4 on 4. They should either accept ties, or go to the playoff format.
The NFL’s only made one tweak to OT, and it kind of sucks. The funny part is the “problem” they were trying to solve (first possession OT wins happening so often) basically evaporated without the rule actually doing anything, teams just started scoring less often on the first OT possession.
Oops, I misread my story
http://www.soccertimes.com/worldcup/2005/nov02.htm
missed that Univision was in the mix for the $425 million.
We compare to the NFL because they’re the top of the heap, they’re the guys making all the right moves. The goal of business is to be the top of the heap, and right now that’s the NFL. It’s the yard stick.
IOW, you got nothin’. Soccer is un-American and all you have in response is some prattle.
Not at all. Minor league could easily supplant the NHL, they’re position isn’t that secure. The WHL gave them a serious run for their money for a long time, and as it faded the WHA challenged it. Right now the KHL is stealing players from it, it probably won’t challenge for a North American audience, but taking players hurts the product. And remember they LEASE the Stanley Cup, if they mismanage the business enough the Cup could go to a different league, there was talk of that during the lost season. Really that season could have killed the league, they lost ESPN, AHL gained a lot of popularity. If the Outdoor Life Network hadn’t decided on a major change in name and focus, which started with giving the NHL a contract, I don’t know where they would have been. The only other TV taker they had was a no money down revenue sharing deal with NBC that was only 40 games, 20 regular season and 20 post. The NHL was shockingly close to the “where are they now” section of People Magazine only 10 years ago. They’ve got a nice sexy contract with NBC/Universal now, but they had some nice contracts in the late 80s and early 90s and unwound all of it in about 10 years, there’s nothing saying they can’t screw it up again.
Like I said, I find the entertainment business quite fascination. A lot of sports leagues aren’t nearly as stable as they look to the casual viewer.
Don't forget the chest-trap ;) You might like one of the other football variations, e.g. Gaelic, Aussie Rules, or their Hybrid form – all limbs are in play, no headers ...
Please. Read my comments on this thread before you troll it.
“Who is the “archer” in baseball?”
Might put a little danger and excitment into the game! You can either tag him out with the ball, OR if he gets hit by the archer that is standing no farther than 2.5 feet from the dugout. But only allowed for first outs in each inning.
Sorry, did you write something memorable that I missed?
Interestingly, soccer tends to avoid the conflict (somewhat) through the concepts of promotion and relegation (incidentally, one would imagine that those are American concepts, and not un-American at all).
That being said, I’ve learned to appreciate soccer as a sport due to my son playing in a club travel team. We went to JAX to watch the US play Nigeria a couple of weeks ago and it was a size good crowd. A friend of mine owns a sports bar in town and said last Monday night when the US played was one of the biggest crowds he has ever had – definitively the largest Monday crowd.
I’ve witnessed the sport grow first hand – and although American soccer is currently a little ruff & tumble, the kids coming up are getting much better. I look forward to what Americans can ‘add’ to the sport.
Not if 04-05 walkout ends differently. If OLN hadn’t made the decision to change from the the Tour De France/ fishing network to a full time sports network the NHL comes out of that strike going a year and a half without a single game televised nationally, and the only national TV contract they have will show less than 1% of the regular season and 25% of the playoffs, depending on how NBC wanted to use those 20 games there was even the chance the Cup could be hoisted not on TV. In that situation they almost certainly lose the Cup. So then the most well known trophy in the sport goes to some other league, how could you not call that league the major?
Not all the major sports have support from the government. In fact really just the NFL and MLB do. And baseball as a whole is bleeding audience, MLB could easily lose its standing as a major league (ironic that) without even getting replaced by another baseball league.
Soccer probably gets more government sanctioned support than American leagues. You never see the NFL get somebody fast tracked on citizenship. And the amount of money Brazil spent to host the WC would rebuild every single stadium in the NFL with a couple billion to spare.
I see baseball players get preferential immigration treatment all the time, but we are getting into the weeds, and there is no point in arguing about trivial differences.
I'm not as certain as you that the '04 NHL walkout was as potentially catastrophic. That simply is a difference of opinion. I do remember the hand-wringing about it, though, at the time.
As men become more effeminate.
In and of itself the walkout wasn’t catastrophic. Then ESPN opted out. Having already lost Fox broadcast they weren’t going to land on Fox cable, or if they were it would have been for pocket change. And understand they were in bad shape before the walkout, it was before then that they’d lost Fox and ABC and landed on NBC for a revenue sharing only deal. There were bad things happening in the revenue picture before the walkout, a lot of which necessitated the walkout, but then that went so poorly, and ESPN bailed. What’s amazing is how much VS decided to pay them, they really had the NHL over the barrel and offered more than ESPN had walked away from, plus tons of hockey related programs to try to build the sport (of course that wound being showing the terrible movie Youngblood twice a week). Now that the NHL is sitting with a $200 million a year 10 year cable and broadcast contract I don’t think you can really understate how much that VS contract changed the situation for the league.
It’s important to keep in mind nothing is set in stone when it comes to the popularity of sports in America. The MLB and boxing used to own this country, remember boxing? Yeah, neither do I. All of the major leagues we have now used to not be, all the major sports we have now used to not be. They’re as big as they are now because somebody pushed them in that direction and they caught the public interest and then they were pushed more. Soccer could become huge here, I don’t see it, but 10 years ago I didn’t see the NHL being this stable or the MLB bleeding this bad.
“As men become more effeminate.”
If soccer was so popular, they’d have their own Lingerie League by now!
It’s all the Mexicans in this country.
Darn Mexicans . . . chanting U-S-A! whenever they get a chance. Just trying to trick us. They’re sneaky.
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