I always supply empirical evidence to back up my posts :)People may laugh but I think there has been an effort to sex it up.
Team Yukon
And now back to our regularly scheduled thread
Last edited by rdavies; 03-16-2016 at 01:17 PM.
People may laugh but I think there has been an effort possibly benignly insidious (what?) to sex it up. Let's face it the talk of Van 2010 was the "Canadian Cougar" I see the women's game emulating a lot of what golf was doing transitioning way back to Jan Stephenson and of course also modern tennis.
Check out curling now compared to 30 years ago, players are much younger and fitter. There is a great clip of Orest Meleschuk on Youtube back in the early 70s delivering a rock at the World Championships with a smoke in his mouth. And after the end he was either drinking a Pepsi or a beer, none of that hydration science crap for the Big O :) The clip also shows the beginning of the infamous Labonte curse.
And NOW back to our regularly scheduled thread
Last edited by rdavies; 03-16-2016 at 02:07 PM.
AV, curling is one of those sports that gets lost in the GTA but it is big in many parts of the country. I grew up in northeastern Ontario and it is huge there. My parents, now both in their 80s, watch curling fairly religiously as they curled themselves when they were younger. The large ratings don't surprise me at all. I think that there are quite a few similarities that curling and the CFL have in common in this country (re: popularity).
Cameron Dukes + Dan Adeboboye + Kevin Mital + David Ungerer + Damonte Coxie + DaVaris Daniels + Dejon Brissett = Unstoppable Force
There was so much curling talk (with so little relevance to the TFC thread) that I've separated the two. Both are potentially interesting discussions, but they didn't belong together.
FWIW, I like curling. It's accessible but at the same time exotic enough to feel like an Olympics-suitable event, unlike golf. (Maybe I'll change my mind about Olympic golf this summer, but I'm not there yet.)
Oh, I get that Ravi. I do occasionally watch for a bit while channel surfing, but my point was that it isn't exactly "office chatter" material. to get over a million viewers is huge no matter what you are talking about in Canada. I find it hard to believe that the number gets that high without a decent GTA number as well.
It's us vs the rest of the country
Curling has something that few sports have and seems to get lost in discussions about it. And that is, intimacy, or almost reality TV. How many sports use audio to such an extent? Very few that I can think of. Are we able to go into a football huddle and listen to Ricky Ray call the plays? Nope. Do we hear manager John Gibbons talking to his pitcher when he's about to get yanked, nope. You hear that in curling though.
It's also nice to watch something without the ridiculous posturing and in your face crap of a lot of bad Muhammad Ali imitators.
Curl power: Olympic sport is sweeping up fans
Due to Games, ‘shuffleboard on ice’ is drawing fans in bars, Google searches
Mike Celizic TODAY contributor 2/25/2010
For four years at a time, curling is played with great dedication in various countries around the world and no one notices. But during the Olympics, when entire broadcasting days are given over to matches on NBC’s sister networks USA, CNBC and MSNBC, the sport becomes a favorite.
Everybody wants to watch it — even in bars.
“It’s Friday night. Basketball games are on, and people want to watch curling,” said Gust Hookanson, co-owner of the Lion’s Head bar on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “We have people that are requesting televisions — multiple televisions — to watch curling. Not the small sets on the side, but the big flat screens over the bar.”
Hookanson obliges the paying customers; a happy crowd is a profitable crowd. But the phenomenal popularity of curling with the viewing public caught him by surprise.
As people watch, they get out their smartphones to find out what the origin and rules of the game are on Google, Hookanson said. The statistics bear him out: Google reported this week that curling is the most-searched Olympic sport, beating out even women’s figure skating.
Full article
This is all true (and like I said before, I don't really like curling, I just catch a "end" here or there on TV). You hear all the strategy of each team. Someday, I'm waiting for a F-bomb or two to be dropped by a curler because they are so "miked up". Another big thing is that curling is just as popular (the playing and watching) for both sexes.
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