The Centre of the Universe is also the Armpit of Pro Sports
bootlegga @ Tue Jun 21, 2011 9:02 am
$1:
You know how you're having a stupid sports argument and the other guy is totally outwitting you and making you look foolish, so you say something ridiculously juvenile like "your city sucks"? Good news: if you're talking about Toronto, you're right!
According to ESPN, Toronto is the worst city for pro sports in North America in the realm of the Big Four (baseball, basketball, football and hockey).
In its ninth version of the Ultimate Standings (which essentially measure what fans get back from their teams versus what they give), Toronto's three major franchises combined to bring Hogtown to the worst-average score of any city with more than one pro sports team.
(Sacramento is technically the worst, but it only has one team, and they're probably moving somewhere else next year anyway, and this is a Canada blog, so let's bash Toronto some more.)
The lowlights (or highlights, if you're a RoC Toronto-hater):
• the Maple Leafs are the worst team in the National Hockey League in the ranking, and third-worst overall
• the Maple Leafs are last overall for bang for your buck and affordability
• only the Cincinnati Bengals (fan relations, effort and likeability of players, title contention) finished last in more categories than the Leafs
• the Raptors are the third-worst organization in the NBA
• the stadium experience at a Raptors game is apparently 19 spots better than that of a Leafs game - even though they play in the same building
• the Leafs' ownership is 8 spots better than the Raptors (both teams have the same owner in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment)
• the Blue Jays' home experience at the Rogers Centre is ranked as the fourth-worst in baseball, behind only Florida, Tampa and Oakland
• if you're a Toronto sports fan, your best chance at experiencing any sort of title comes via time machine; your best odds, apparently, come from having been alive and a Jays fan in 1993
• the Raptors are 4th-worst in the NBA for title hopes; and the Maple Leafs are ahead of only Winnipeg/Atlanta, Columbus and Florida on the winning scale. (Surprisingly, the Ottawa Senators are rated at #66 - firmly in the middle of the pack - to win a title any time soon)
Before you get too wrapped up in Schadenfreude, Canada's other cities don't fare much better:
• the best feature in all of Canadian professional sports is apparently the ownership group of the Vancouver Canucks
• the best stadium experience is at a Montreal Canadiens game, but the fans are still getting ripped off, since the Canadiens are way down in the Bang for your Buck category;
• the Toronto Raptors' coaching rating is one spot better than the Ottawa Senators, which must be horribly insulting to newly-hired Sens coach Paul McLean, since the Raptors don't even have a coach
• the highlight of being an Oilers fan, according to ESPN, is that there's a good chance you've seen your team win a title (even if it was over 20 years ago).
That last category is likely to draw the most criticism; the ranking basically credits teams for ever having won, and the more recently, the better. Which is why the Vancouver Canucks finished 21 spots behind the Montreal Canadiens, despite the Canucks' having been 60 minutes away from a championship 48 hours ago.
The best franchise in sports, it seems, is the Green Bay Packers; they ranked in the top 10 in six of eight categories. The Tampa Bay Lightning surprised as the top NHL team, thanks to a combination of affordability and on-ice success.
If you're looking for some solace or an excuse to dispel the rankings with a wave of the hand and a hearty "Shut up! My Leafs are awesome! ESPN is dummyheads!", here's one: the Phoenix Coyotes were the most highly-rated team in Arizona - ahead of the perenially-adequate Suns, or the Super-bowl-playing Cardinals. The Coyotes. Who will probably end up in the same place as Sacramento next year. The Coyotes actually finished 28th overall in the rankings, begging the question: should teams without fans be eligible for fan-focused surveys?
No word on whether Vancouver and Montreal will lobby to have "rioting" included as a category to raise their profile for next year's survey.
According to ESPN, Toronto is the worst city for pro sports in North America in the realm of the Big Four (baseball, basketball, football and hockey).
In its ninth version of the Ultimate Standings (which essentially measure what fans get back from their teams versus what they give), Toronto's three major franchises combined to bring Hogtown to the worst-average score of any city with more than one pro sports team.
(Sacramento is technically the worst, but it only has one team, and they're probably moving somewhere else next year anyway, and this is a Canada blog, so let's bash Toronto some more.)
The lowlights (or highlights, if you're a RoC Toronto-hater):
• the Maple Leafs are the worst team in the National Hockey League in the ranking, and third-worst overall
• the Maple Leafs are last overall for bang for your buck and affordability
• only the Cincinnati Bengals (fan relations, effort and likeability of players, title contention) finished last in more categories than the Leafs
• the Raptors are the third-worst organization in the NBA
• the stadium experience at a Raptors game is apparently 19 spots better than that of a Leafs game - even though they play in the same building
• the Leafs' ownership is 8 spots better than the Raptors (both teams have the same owner in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment)
• the Blue Jays' home experience at the Rogers Centre is ranked as the fourth-worst in baseball, behind only Florida, Tampa and Oakland
• if you're a Toronto sports fan, your best chance at experiencing any sort of title comes via time machine; your best odds, apparently, come from having been alive and a Jays fan in 1993
• the Raptors are 4th-worst in the NBA for title hopes; and the Maple Leafs are ahead of only Winnipeg/Atlanta, Columbus and Florida on the winning scale. (Surprisingly, the Ottawa Senators are rated at #66 - firmly in the middle of the pack - to win a title any time soon)
Before you get too wrapped up in Schadenfreude, Canada's other cities don't fare much better:
• the best feature in all of Canadian professional sports is apparently the ownership group of the Vancouver Canucks
• the best stadium experience is at a Montreal Canadiens game, but the fans are still getting ripped off, since the Canadiens are way down in the Bang for your Buck category;
• the Toronto Raptors' coaching rating is one spot better than the Ottawa Senators, which must be horribly insulting to newly-hired Sens coach Paul McLean, since the Raptors don't even have a coach
• the highlight of being an Oilers fan, according to ESPN, is that there's a good chance you've seen your team win a title (even if it was over 20 years ago).
That last category is likely to draw the most criticism; the ranking basically credits teams for ever having won, and the more recently, the better. Which is why the Vancouver Canucks finished 21 spots behind the Montreal Canadiens, despite the Canucks' having been 60 minutes away from a championship 48 hours ago.
The best franchise in sports, it seems, is the Green Bay Packers; they ranked in the top 10 in six of eight categories. The Tampa Bay Lightning surprised as the top NHL team, thanks to a combination of affordability and on-ice success.
If you're looking for some solace or an excuse to dispel the rankings with a wave of the hand and a hearty "Shut up! My Leafs are awesome! ESPN is dummyheads!", here's one: the Phoenix Coyotes were the most highly-rated team in Arizona - ahead of the perenially-adequate Suns, or the Super-bowl-playing Cardinals. The Coyotes. Who will probably end up in the same place as Sacramento next year. The Coyotes actually finished 28th overall in the rankings, begging the question: should teams without fans be eligible for fan-focused surveys?
No word on whether Vancouver and Montreal will lobby to have "rioting" included as a category to raise their profile for next year's survey.
http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/top/blog/can ... =top-wp133
Zipperfish @ Tue Jun 21, 2011 9:17 am
Brian Burke asked to comment:
OnTheIce @ Tue Jun 21, 2011 10:17 am
I want that 30 seconds of my life back. What a bunch of dribble.
bootlegga @ Tue Jun 21, 2011 11:13 am
OnTheIce OnTheIce:
I want that 30 seconds of my life back. What a bunch of dribble.
Now you know how almost everyone here felt while you were posting fluff during the election...
OnTheIce @ Tue Jun 21, 2011 11:50 am
bootlegga bootlegga:
OnTheIce OnTheIce:
I want that 30 seconds of my life back. What a bunch of dribble.
Now you know how almost everyone here felt while you were posting fluff during the election...
Need me to remind you how many partisan posts you made during the election?
Kinda like the pot/kettle argument there boot especially considering you've still been posting anti-Harper stories well after the election is over.
Perhaps we can all be like you boot, run around and bitch about people posting partisan material then posting one yourself.
![[B-o]](./images/smilies/drinkup.gif "Drink up")
Edit: You were also the guy who got offended by my "rotting carcass" comment about the Liberal party so much you neg repped me for it. Don't be so sensitive boots!
bootlegga @ Tue Jun 21, 2011 11:58 am
OnTheIce OnTheIce:
bootlegga bootlegga:
OnTheIce OnTheIce:
I want that 30 seconds of my life back. What a bunch of dribble.
Now you know how almost everyone here felt while you were posting fluff during the election...
Need me to remind you how many partisan posts you made during the election?
Kinda like the pot/kettle argument there boot especially considering you've still been posting anti-Harper stories well after the election is over.
Perhaps we can all be like you boot, run around and bitch about people posting partisan material then posting one yourself.
Edit: You were also the guy who got offended by my "rotting carcass" comment about the Liberal party so much you neg repped me for it. Don't be so sensitive boots!
All I'm going to say is...Holy thin skinned Batman!
OnTheIce @ Tue Jun 21, 2011 12:04 pm
bootlegga bootlegga:
All I'm going to say is...Holy thin skinned Batman!
Says the guy who neg repped me for making poking fun at a political party
You've mastered the pot/kettle thing boots, you can move onto something else now
weaselways @ Tue Jun 21, 2011 1:28 pm
We revel in our teams ineptitude. Our only disappointments are the fact there is only one NHL team in Toronto. We really should have three. We need the same odds as NYC to at least have a chance at a playoff berth. We need an NFL team so that we can whine and complain not only about the Argos not making the playoffs consistantly but a brand new team that will take 40 years to get there. What is there to say about the Jays or the Raps other than if either were elsewhere they'd probably be contenders. What's left oh TFC maybe the most inept of them all and the AHL Marlies just an afterthought. The leaves us with a team swimming against the current, a team that has consistantly been a champion I give you the Toronto Rock. Do we celebrate their sucess? No. Do we recognize them on the street? No. Do we give them a parade and a brass band? No. Why? Because in the view of Torontoians, Lacrosse is not a World Class sport and Toronto is a World Class city. (Being facetious about the World Class city, it has along way to go to get that title)