CTV talk back TO poll on now, Fav TO sports team.

[Will]

Your comment is uncalled for, OV. The attitude of some Toronto FC fans vis-a-vis the Argos may be atrocious, but the attitude of some here is arguably just as bad. Nobody is saying you have to cheer for any team you don't want to, but I frankly don't understand why some people on here feel the need to put down other sports. Does defending the CFL require putting down other sports?

[OV Argo]

The guy jumped on my post (back-door - attaching it to arogholic's thoughts), spun it his way / put words in my mouth: saying I claimed "anyone that follows any team or league outside of the CFL must be a sheep or a lemming" - I said no such thing. But it is typical of some of these forum posters to use that little tactic to try to belittle the opinions of others they just can't bear to here. Instead of countering with a reasoned argument - like - "why no, the CFL gets lots of respect and average sports fans easily would be inclined to follow the Argos, and here's why i think so ...", he tries to twist my words. Or maybe he just needs reading comprehension help?

I guess - Paul or 87 - you're OK with that though, and good for you. I think T-Bone can defend himself, he did reply, but maybe he needs your help too. And I guess his twisting of my words was called for ?

[T-Bone]

The guy jumped on my post (back-door - attaching it to arogholic's thoughts), spun it his way / put words in my mouth: saying I claimed "anyone that follows any team or league outside of the CFL must be a sheep or a lemming" - I said no such thing.

Ok, I apologize for that. It was aimed more at 1argoholic, which is why I quoted him.

But it is typical of some of these forum posters to use that little tactic to try to belittle the opinions of others they just can't bear to here. Instead of countering with a reasoned argument - like - "why no, the CFL gets lots of respect and average sports fans easily would be inclined to follow the Argos, and here's why i think so ...", he tries to twist my words. Or maybe he just needs reading comprehension help?

I understood your argument but like I said I think it's more complicated than just:

very little coverage, often negative or derisive and sometimes even ignored all together - no dedicated CFL football publications (other than the league's own guide) - no fan magazines or fawning TV jock sniffers babbling about every detail of the league, day in day out; little merchandise or info to be seen in the stores or newstands, etc. = very POOR coverage, little hype, little respect.

Again - joe average sports fan lemming - taken along for the ride.

Also reducing people to mindless drones by calling them "joe average sports fan lemming" or "sheep" doesn't enhance your position. In my opinion that is narrow minded thinking, people are more complex than that. Than again I could be wrong though as I know nothing about Canadian football.

[paulwoods13]

Nice to see other folks who think like I do. I always refer to the follower sports fans as sheep.

Does no one other than T-Bone see the irony in these two sentences being written back to back?

The guy jumped on my post (back-door - attaching it to arogholic's thoughts), spun it his way / put words in my mouth: saying I claimed "anyone that follows any team or league outside of the CFL must be a sheep or a lemming" - I said no such thing. But it is typical of some of these forum posters to use that little tactic to try to belittle the opinions of others they just can't bear to here. Instead of countering with a reasoned argument - like - "why no, the CFL gets lots of respect and average sports fans easily would be inclined to follow the Argos, and here's why i think so ...", he tries to twist my words. Or maybe he just needs reading comprehension help?

I guess - Paul or 87 - you're OK with that though, and good for you. I think T-Bone can defend himself, he did reply, but maybe he needs your help too. And I guess his twisting of my words was called for ?

OV, IMO you are both taking it too personally and reading things into it that are not there. He was not even responding to your post, altho he did use a word you had used ("lemming," which most people would view as an insult). You responded with "you know nothing about Canadian football . . . " which is certifiably untrue and incredibly insulting to a fellow Argo fan, the vast majority of whose posts are thoughtful and thought-provoking. You complain about lemmings etc. in the media parroting an anti-CFL line, but when someone pushes back fairly mildly, he is accused of knowing nothing about the CFL. Aside from being highly ironic, that does not contribute to a climate of free expression and debate.

[Invader]

Back to CTV's poll. I think by any estimation the 20% vote for the Argos as the most favourite Toronto team is reassuring (especially with them being "out of the news" for the past 5 months or so.) The result is even more surprising with the poll being buried at the bottom of a Blue Jay's news story, trumpeting their biggest day of the season.

Like I wrote previously, what if the poll was accompanying an Argos news story on their biggest day of the season? The Argos vote would be even higher, probably @ 30% or more...and much higher than the Jays who's season would be long forgotten.

If the truth be told, the Leafs and Argos are the two most popular teams in Toronto. Always has been, always will. You can take all the statistics and on-line polls you want, but football and hockey are the sports Canadian fans like the most...with basketball, soccer, baseball, ect, just part-time time-wasters until the real sports come to play!

I believe we also over-rate the impact of the media on the way people feel. They might be able to sell us Tide instead of Cheer but not make us like basketball or baseball.

We also should remember that on-line polls are for entertainment purposes only and are not necessarily accurate or authentic. It is not uncommon for media outlets to "boost" the number of respondents (sometimes by 10X or more) to prove how popular they are. The results can also be manipulated and altered to suit the purposes of the publication (like the famous Toronto Star "switcherooo" poll during 2008 Super Bowl week. They asked which league do you like the best: NFL or CFL? They had tens of thousands of respondents, with the CFL/NFL about even the first 2 days. Then the CFL edged out in front to 55, 60 then finally 65% by SB Saturday, with the NFL at 35%. Some posters on the 13th Man forum had periodically screen-saved the poll over that week. But when the Star revealed the results on SB Sunday, the NFL was listed at 65% with the CFL at 35%! That was the complete reverse of the final results from the day before. Some fans emailed the Star questioning these results. The Star emailed back claiming they published the actual poll results, the NFL won. But when they were confronted with the screen-saves which showed the real poll results, the Star backtracked and claimed they were holding a contemporaneous NFL/CFL poll in their news section and when they "combined" the results the NFL somehow shot way out in front. Of course, that was a complete lie, there was no sports poll in their news section but that could not be proven. Not sure why the Star decided to boost the NFL in that manner, perhaps to gain favour with Rogers and their new Bills series? In any event it goes to show you can't rely on the authenticity of on-line polls (unless they're conducted by a sanctioned polling agency).

[ArgoGabe22]

you know nothing about Canadian football

If the criteria to be an Argo fan is to have knowledge of Canadian football, then an Argos home game would be practically empty. I hear tons of clueless comments around me all the time at games at the Dome.

[Neely2005]

Back to CTV's poll. I think by any estimation the 20% vote for the Argos as the most favourite Toronto team is reassuring (especially with them being "out of the news" for the past 5 months or so.) The result is even more surprising with the poll being buried at the bottom of a Blue Jay's news story, trumpeting their biggest day of the season.

Like I wrote previously, what if the poll was accompanying an Argos news story on their biggest day of the season? The Argos vote would be even higher, probably @ 30% or more...and much higher than the Jays who's season would be long forgotten.

If the truth be told, the Leafs and Argos are the two most popular teams in Toronto. Always has been, always will. You can take all the statistics and on-line polls you want, but football and hockey are the sports Canadian fans like the most...with basketball, soccer, baseball, ect, just part-time time-wasters until the real sports come to play!

I believe we also over-rate the impact of the media on the way people feel. They might be able to sell us Tide instead of Cheer but not make us like basketball or baseball.

We also should remember that on-line polls are for entertainment purposes only and are not necessarily accurate or authentic. It is not uncommon for media outlets to "boost" the number of respondents (sometimes by 10X or more) to prove how popular they are. The results can also be manipulated and altered to suit the purposes of the publication (like the famous Toronto Star "switcherooo" poll during 2008 Super Bowl week. They asked which league do you like the best: NFL or CFL? They had tens of thousands of respondents, with the CFL/NFL about even the first 2 days. Then the CFL edged out in front to 55, 60 then finally 65% by SB Saturday, with the NFL at 35%. Some posters on the 13th Man forum had periodically screen-saved the poll over that week. But when the Star revealed the results on SB Sunday, the NFL was listed at 65% with the CFL at 35%! That was the complete reverse of the final results from the day before. Some fans emailed the Star questioning these results. The Star emailed back claiming they published the actual poll results, the NFL won. But when they were confronted with the screen-saves which showed the real poll results, the Star backtracked and claimed they were holding a contemporaneous NFL/CFL poll in their news section and when they "combined" the results the NFL somehow shot way out in front. Of course, that was a complete lie, there was no sports poll in their news section but that could not be proven. Not sure why the Star decided to boost the NFL in that manner, perhaps to gain favour with Rogers and their new Bills series? In any event it goes to show you can't rely on the authenticity of on-line polls (unless they're conducted by a sanctioned polling agency).

Given that the Raptors are in the playoffs I'm actually surprised that they're not higher in the poll.

The Toronto / Red Star trying to manipulate a story to get a certain result? Shocking! :-)

[Tau Ceti]

Nice to see other folks who think like I do. I always refer to the follower sports fans as sheep.

Does no one other than T-Bone see the irony in these two sentences being written back to back?

I also noticed but couldn't decide if it was deliberate or intentional. A post worth framing in either case.

If the truth be told, the Leafs and Argos are the two most popular teams in Toronto. Always has been, always will. You can take all the statistics and on-line polls you want, but football and hockey are the sports Canadian fans like the most...with basketball, soccer, baseball, ect, just part-time time-wasters until the real sports come to play!

Support for the CFL and NFL in combination likely outweighs MLB in Toronto. But to suggest that the Argos alone are more popular than the Blue Jays is unsupportable.

[Neely2005]

I also noticed but couldn't decide if it was deliberate or intentional. A post worth framing in either case.



Support for the CFL and NFL in combination likely outweighs MLB in Toronto. But to suggest that the Argos alone are more popular than the Blue Jays is unsupportable.

Actually you could make that argument.

CFL ratings up due to Southern Ontario:

http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/eh-...183017606.html

At an average of 703,000 viewers a game, the CFL stands second only to hockey as this country's most-watched sport. They're ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays' 540,000, a comparable number since the Jays generally play six games a week while the CFL offers up four.


Combined ratings on TSN and French-language RDS averaged 758,000 viewers per game, an increase of 3.6 per cent over 2012. The RDS numbers are down a tad, but considering how far the Montreal Alouettes have fallen there's no real surprise there.


But while overall ratings increases give the league something to crow about, that's not the real big news. The big news is that they're being driven by the most unlikely source of all: Southern Ontario. Ratings for games involving the Toronto Argonauts were up 26 per cent from last year while audiences for Hamilton (Guelph) Tiger-Cats games rose 14 per cent.
Ratings for all CFL games were up 18 per cent from last year in Southern Ontario and the Hamilton-Toronto clash on Thanksgiving Day drew the league's fourth-largest TV audience of the season with 956,000 viewers.

[LLB997]

gonna chime In here for a sec. Ithink Argoholics opinions are reactionary if anything. If the masses threw some respect his way in regards to what he follows I am sure he would return the respect. And calling the majority of Toronto sports followers sheep who lap up what the media shoves own their throat is not far off.

Also not a fan of any poster telling another to leave and follow the footy forum. We need all the fans here and Tbone definitely knows his CFL from what I've read. Tbone is a valued poster on this forum. Lets stick together folks.

ps- tbone. I call your team the nonames in jest due to the fact they have umm no name (fc?) .
its not a reflection on you at all
cheers

[AngeloV]

Given that the Raptors are in the playoffs I'm actually surprised that they're not higher in the poll.

The Toronto / Red Star trying to manipulate a story to get a certain result? Shocking! :-)

Of course, since it was attached to a Blue Jays article, is it not reasonable to think many Raptor fans that aren't into baseball would never have seen this poll? Again, these type of polls are useless.

[Tau Ceti]

CFL ratings up due to Southern Ontario:

That must be the billionth time those stats have been quoted round here. In and of themselves, they're great, and I'm not trying to be a naysayer. But please compare apples to apples. The CFL as a whole and across Canada is more popular than Blue Jays? Sure. The Argos by themselves in Toronto? C'mon. The Blue Jays per game attendance average last year was 9,500 fans better over 81 games compared to just 9 Argos matches. In absolute terms, 2.5 million paid to see the Jays compared to 200,000 for the Argos. I don't know how you can argue the latter is the more popular team. The primary difference is casual fans. If you wanted to suggest hardcore Argos support is not far off the Jays, I'd give qualified agreement (hence results in polls such as this one) but the Jays (and Leafs and even Raptors) are orders of magnitude better at drawing in casual fan spending.

[Invader]

Support for the CFL and NFL in combination likely outweighs MLB in Toronto. But to suggest that the Argos alone are more popular than the Blue Jays is unsupportable.

You are correct Tau Ceti, I was including the CFL and NFL as football and the NHL as hockey.

According to the recent Angus Reid Pro Sports Poll of those who follow a sport "very closely" or "fairly closely:"

Canada:
NHL: 46%
Pro Football: 33%
MLB: 20%
MLS: 9%
NBA: 8%

Ontario:
NHL: 44%
Pro Football: 32%
MLB: 27%
MLS: 7%
NBA: 10%

Toronto:
NHL: 48%
Pro Football: 35%
MLB: 32%
MLS: 9%
NBA: 13%

What these numbers don't tell us is why these people are "following" a particular league. If Canada is anything like the U.S, then gambling/pools are the major interest in the NFL (with 50% of fans following the NFL mainly due to gambling in some surveys). Gambling is much less prevalent in the 8-team CFL, with the majority of fans probably following the CFL because of the actual game.

Across Canada 26% follow the CFL while 21% follow the NFL, for whatever reason.

Also bear in mind the Toronto "breakout" has a relatively small sample size with a substantial range of variability. So a 22% and 30% score, for example, might be reversed if the poll was repeated, 19 times out of 20.

http://www.reginaldbibby.com/images/...ov_21_2013.pdf

[AngeloV]

That must be the billionth time those stats have been quoted round here. In and of themselves, they're great, and I'm not trying to be a naysayer. But please compare apples to apples. The CFL as a whole and across Canada is more popular than Blue Jays? Sure. The Argos by themselves in Toronto? C'mon. The Blue Jays per game attendance average last year was 9,500 fans better over 81 games compared to just 9 Argos matches. In absolute terms, 2.5 million paid to see the Jays compared to 200,000 for the Argos. I don't know how you can argue the latter is the more popular team. The primary difference is casual fans. If you wanted to suggest hardcore Argos support is not far off the Jays, I'd give qualified agreement (hence results in polls such as this one) but the Jays (and Leafs and even Raptors) are orders of magnitude better at drawing in casual fan spending.

I have to agree with you. In my opinion, if the Argos were as popular as the other teams in the city as far as "cool" factor, we would likely never have had any discussions of Argos fans hating on the other sports teams in the city. Admittedly, it definitely led to me taking less and less interest in the other teams in this city (excluding the Leafs).

[Neely2005]

That must be the billionth time those stats have been quoted round here. In and of themselves, they're great, and I'm not trying to be a naysayer. But please compare apples to apples. The CFL as a whole and across Canada is more popular than Blue Jays? Sure. The Argos by themselves in Toronto? C'mon. The Blue Jays per game attendance average last year was 9,500 fans better over 81 games compared to just 9 Argos matches. In absolute terms, 2.5 million paid to see the Jays compared to 200,000 for the Argos. I don't know how you can argue the latter is the more popular team. The primary difference is casual fans. If you wanted to suggest hardcore Argos support is not far off the Jays, I'd give qualified agreement (hence results in polls such as this one) but the Jays (and Leafs and even Raptors) are orders of magnitude better at drawing in casual fan spending.

The Blue Jays definitely get better attendance but the Ratings are a different story:

"What a difference a year makes.
Way back in 2013, the Toronto Blue Jays started the season as favourites not only to get back to the playoffs for the first time in 20 years but to bring Canada its third World Series. Fans and media alike wondered why the season was even being played.
As students of history will recall, things didn't quite work out that way.
But the anticipation was something we hadn't seen in two decades with TV ratings shooting through the roof. In fact, Opening Day itself drew an average audience of 1.4 million -- a record for Sportsnet and the kind of numbers baseball hadn't seen in, well, 20 years.
Flash forward to 2014 and things aren't looking quite so rosy. Nobody is expecting the current version of the Jays to win anything -- the same people who picked them for first last season have them last this time around -- and that certainly was reflected in the Opening Day audience of 391,000 on Sportsnet."

https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/eh...210515088.html

[OV Argo]

gonna chime In here for a sec. Ithink Argoholics opinions are reactionary if anything. If the masses threw some respect his way in regards to what he follows I am sure he would return the respect. And calling the majority of Toronto sports followers sheep who lap up what the media shoves own their throat is not far off.

Also not a fan of any poster telling another to leave and follow the footy forum. We need all the fans here and Tbone definitely knows his CFL from what I've read. Tbone is a valued poster on this forum. Lets stick together folks.

ps- tbone. I call your team the nonames in jest due to the fact they have umm no name (fc?) .
its not a reflection on you at all
cheers

Who referred to the "majority" of Toronto sports fans as sheep or lemmings? - I certainly did not and I don't see that from argoholic either. SO - if you are unsure of a poster's intent/opinion - just ask for further clarification and DO NOT put words in other poster's mouths or assume you understand their opinion.

For the record - IMO - all sports fans are entitled to their fave sport or team to support; and there are no inherently superior sports - football, hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball, tiddly-winks, golf, mud wrestling, strip poker, etc. - they're all good and people should be free to cheer for whatever; and some people really do enjoy multiple sports & teams = swell, fine & dandy.

However - IMO - there are plenty of "joe average sports fans" I'll call them, without much connection or attachment to a given sport - they didn't play it or follow it growing up, they don't know that much about it; and a lot of those types - in finding a sport to follow even casually, are led to a certain sport or team by media reports, hype, marketing, water cooler babble at work, etc. - and i have no problem calling a lot of those types sheep or lemming like - especially the ones that are inclined to look down their noses at or bad mouth the CFL and Canadian football because they were told/sold it isn't cool or "major league" or "world class" by the wannabe experts in the media. Yep, sorry, there are some sheep & lemmings out there. And that some are surprised or aghast that SOME CFL fans, ON A CFL forum, would be pointing out said lemming like behavior, after putting up with years if not decades of CFL cut-downs, dis-respect and ignorance, and are inclined to defend Canadian football - I just don't know what to make of that - yeah, just shocking? But whatever - to each his own.

[Tau Ceti]

You are correct Tau Ceti, I was including the CFL and NFL as football and the NHL as hockey.

According to the recent Angus Reid Pro Sports Poll of those who follow a sport "very closely" or "fairly closely:"
...
What these numbers don't tell us is why these people are "following" a particular league. If Canada is anything like the U.S, then gambling/pools are the major interest in the NFL (with 50% of fans following the NFL mainly due to gambling in some surveys). Gambling is much less prevalent in the 8-team CFL, with the majority of fans probably following the CFL because of the actual game.

Thank you for those numbers Invader. I was looking at the same tonight. Google "Pro Sports Interest in Canada" and you get three pdf's with lots of interesting stuff. I don't know if I agree that fan interest can be properly qualified as less pure because it's based on gambling or not but I take your point. I think NFL interest in Canada is broad demographically but shallow at the level of the individual fan.

If the Argos were as popular as the other teams in the city as far as "cool" factor, we would likely never have had any discussions of Argos fans hating on the other sports teams in the city.

Fully agree.

The Blue Jays definitely get better attendance but the Ratings are a different story:

Blue Jays ratings are perfectly fine. They'll finish between 400,000 and 600,000 depending on how the team does. A ton of MLB teams would kill for their situation. And again, Blue Jays ratings -- based on 162 games -- are about comparable to the CFL in its entirety not the Argos alone.

[LLB997]

Who referred to the "majority" of Toronto sports fans as sheep or lemmings? - I certainly did not and I don't see that from argoholic either. SO - if you are unsure of a poster's intent/opinion - just ask for further clarification and DO NOT put words in other poster's mouths or assume you understand their opinion..

argoholic post on pg 3 - Nice to see other folks who think like I do. I always refer to the follower sports fans as sheep."

OV, cool story bro

[Neely2005]

Blue Jays ratings are perfectly fine. They'll finish between 400,000 and 600,000 depending on how the team does. A ton of MLB teams would kill for their situation. And again, Blue Jays ratings -- based on 162 games -- are about comparable to the CFL in its entirety not the Argos alone.

I agree that it makes sense to compare the Blue Jays to the CFL as a whole. It's the only way that you can get to a similar number of games played per season. Plus the Blue Jays are the only MLB team in Canada so they get support from across the entire country. It's not perfect but it still shows that the CFL beats the Blue Jays in TV ratings.

[T-Bone]

ps- tbone. I call your team the nonames in jest due to the fact they have umm no name (fc?) .
its not a reflection on you at all
cheers

Thank you, but I see it as disrespectful to the team. Adding FC (Football Club) to the end of a city name is traditional in soccer around the world. The name of the team is Toronto FC or TFC for short. I'm also not a fan of people calling the Raptors, Craptors, etc. If someone doesn't like something that's fine but I don't see the point of putting it down constantly.

Who referred to the "majority" of Toronto sports fans as sheep or lemmings? - I certainly did not and I don't see that from argoholic either. SO - if you are unsure of a poster's intent/opinion - just ask for further clarification and DO NOT put words in other poster's mouths or assume you understand their opinion.

To clarify, do you mean like you did here?

For the record - IMO - all sports fans are entitled to their fave sport or team to support; and there are no inherently superior sports - football, hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball, tiddly-winks, golf, mud wrestling, strip poker, etc. - they're all good and people should be free to cheer for whatever; and some people really do enjoy multiple sports & teams = swell, fine & dandy.

Thank you for clarifying.

However - IMO - there are plenty of "joe average sports fans" I'll call them, without much connection or attachment to a given sport - they didn't play it or follow it growing up, they don't know that much about it; and a lot of those types - in finding a sport to follow even casually, are led to a certain sport or team by media reports, hype, marketing, water cooler babble at work, etc. - and i have no problem calling a lot of those types sheep or lemming like - especially the ones that are inclined to look down their noses at or bad mouth the CFL and Canadian football because they were told/sold it isn't cool or "major league" or "world class" by the wannabe experts in the media. Yep, sorry, there are some sheep & lemmings out there. And that some are surprised or aghast that SOME CFL fans, ON A CFL forum, would be pointing out said lemming like behavior, after putting up with years if not decades of CFL cut-downs, dis-respect and ignorance, and are inclined to defend Canadian football - I just don't know what to make of that - yeah, just shocking? But whatever - to each his own.

You're entitled to your opinion just as I am mine and in my opinion it's ironic when people complain about something that they themselves do.



Back to the topic at hand:

If the truth be told, the Leafs and Argos are the two most popular teams in Toronto. Always has been, always will. You can take all the statistics and on-line polls you want, but football and hockey are the sports Canadian fans like the most...with basketball, soccer, baseball, ect, just part-time time-wasters until the real sports come to play!

A bold statement but I think you need to define the criteria for "most popular team in Toronto" as popular is a subjective measurement. You said it yourself that online polls are "not necessarily accurate" which is one of the reasons I said way back when:

Ultimately this poll means very little.