Sykotyk

7 hours ago, adsarebad said:

LA Angels, Arizona,  and Houston's CC unis are 10 times better than the blinding Red Sox CC uni.

 

Nobody associates and connects  Boston to it's  marathon race.

New York has a marathon, so do many other cities ......

From Wikipedia:

"The Boston Marathon began on 19 April 1897, and was inspired by the success of the first marathon competition in the 1896 Summer Olympics. It is the world's oldest run annual marathon, and ranks as one of the world's most prestigious road racing events" 

So yeah, I think Boston can lay claim to marathons. 

4 hours ago, Dynasty said:

Is Spire City really that prominently used within the Frederick area or is Brandoise just reaching for creativity again? I'm asking because I currently live about an hour away from there and have even visited the area on several occasions. Of all of these times, I have never seen a reference to the name.

Not really sure, but I'm not a fan of city nicknames being used in place of more common locations. City, State, Valley, Bay, Lake, Region, etc. So many names are reused (I'll admit Spire City seems unique) that something like "Queen City Monarchs" would have you questioning where they're from.

Trash City Rocket Pandas has about as much meaning as their correct name.

On 6/28/2023 at 6:35 PM, Wackyriderfan14 said:

The teams generally decide what pants to wear. It’s not New Era telling them they have to go mono

Funny thing came up with an interview with Joe Thomas years ago around his retirement. The big guys on the team always wanted to wear the dark pants and not white pants. So, when left up to the team, players have a large block who will probably always favor the dark pants. And if you ever saw the nearly seethrough white pants stretch, you can understand why the bigger players would prefer the darker colors.

White pants were just more common because you could just bleach them and they'd be clean. Modern washing doesn't have as many issues. Especially these fabrics

6 hours ago, LMU said:

Let's take a live look at Bristol, CT today:

 

 

Looks like the guillotine fell on at the very least:

Steve Young

Suzy Kolber

Jeff Van Gundy

Jalen Rose

Keyshawn Johnson

Todd McShay

Matt Hasselbeck

Ashley Brewer

Max Kellerman

LaPhonso Ellis

Joon Lee

 

And this isn't including the nontenders of Chris Chelios, Rob Ninkovich, and Neil Everett.

Thing about it is that ESPN has always cycled through talent when they started to get too pricey. Their finances are tied up in huge rights fees to air games. Who talks about them during the game or the hours of dead time matters very little. People are still watching Lakers-Warriors regardless who is calling it.

Honestly, ESPN's campus in Connecticut may be their downfall. In the 80s, Bristol was a fairly 'rural' area far from NYC that was cheap. Now, anywhere in CT is expensive to live in. That affects their costs for every employee they have.  Both talent and operations. They can only go so cheap and get new people when they let others go.

And with consolidation, there's a huge number of out-of-work TV sports operations people. They Disney deal put a lot of them out of work at the regional sports nets and they're all clamoring for work.

Given that the game is two weeks after the semifinals, it's predetermined location and they're wanting a big show of it, it makes sense for now to keep it in a dome. Later on after a few years they can move it and risk an outdoor venue. 

For TV, I think the 23 title game was handled like a major event and not just another game. A rainy, sloppy, lightly attended neutral site game could kill any interest other than the train wreck factor

Wonder how much the Pirates could've gotten from the fox affiliate in town? 

3 hours ago, GDAWG said:

Birmingham, with an actual home stadium vs. Pittsburgh, who doesn't have an actual stadium.

 

I can see the USFL pushing for Acrisure Stadium for the Maulers next year if it's not Canton.

As far as I'm aware, Acrisure is available. You just have to be willing to pay. And it won't be cheap. Being grass is also a problem with field prep. If they did get a lease they could afford the cost to paint the field any more than the white outline will probably be too much. 

1 hour ago, 4_tattoos said:

Attendance for the Stallions/Breakers game looks decent.

From what I've seen, they had a deal with a few TV/radio channels to have discounted tickets for the South Final. Looks like it worked.

Should have two mascots. One brown and 'alive', the other gray and in robes like the logo.

4 hours ago, GDAWG said:

 

it doesn't help matters when Canton is closer to Cleveland than Pittsburgh and that those who are diehard football fans in Canton are either Browns fans or Bengals fans.  Those fans would have probably embraced the Maulers more in Canton if the Maulers had kept the Orange and Purple rather than Black and Yellow.  They could overlook the Pittsburgh name in the Maulers if they had kept their colors from 2022.  If you are fan of the Brown or Bengals living in Canton, what reason do you have to go to a Maulers game at the local stadium when they remind you of one of your rivals, the Steelers?

Just a minor note, since the Browns relocation in 1995 there was an influx of Steelers fans (combined with them being successful while the new Browns struggled for decades) that has led to the Steelers being a very popular team in Canton, Akron, Youngstown, etc. Maybe not the most followed team in a particular locale, but it's definitely more than a blip. Honestly, Columbus has been a confluence of all three teams. And honestly Bengals fans don't exist too far up I-71 from Columbus. You might see more Bengals fans up the I-75 corridor toward places like Findlay, Lima, Wapakoneta, etc.

4 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

I'll cut it down to this part of your post.

 

Being a fan of an NFL team doesn't mean you'll be a fan of a team in another league, regardless of the team's colors.

 

I love me some alt football, but sometimes y'all need to step back and read what you're saying from the perspective of a person who isn't one of us.

I explained this to someone else.

Cantonites that are Steelers fans are Steelers fans. They're not fans of Pittsburgh. In fact, they probably despise Pittsburgh in almost every other aspect and very rarely do you see Pirates fans anywhere in Ohio except maybe right along the Ohio River (East Liverpool, Steubenville, Martins Ferry, Bellaire, Shadyside, etc). Penguins had a little more following years ago because Ohio never had an NHL team and paired with the Pens being successful. But I can say that Pens fandom in and around northeast Ohio is definitely diminishing and only had a blip increase when Crosby had the back-to-back titles and it's waning again. If only the Blue Jackets had success. They'd easily take over.

Back to Canton though. They'll come out for the Steelers. Not for the Dollar General-brand Steelers.

2 hours ago, dont care said:

This is an awful comparison. A cycle isn’t the best thing that you can do on the field like a royal flush is. Are you really trying to say a cycle is better than 4 home runs?

Was going by odds of having it happen. It's on-par with Perfect Games and No-Hitters when comparing cycles and natural/unnatural cycles. If it were easy to game, the numbers would be much different. Or even to the point that no one would even care about it.

If the argument against a cycle is used, than a triple play is equally as uninteresting as it's a fluke. Many are from players running on a pitch and getting tagged out on a blooper to shortstop, or just bad baserunning.

There's been 733 triple plays in MLB history. Only 13 have been unassisted. Yet somehow that's always a highlight reel play. When that takes perfect conditions to happen: two on, no outs. A cycle can happen with any runners, any outs, any count, and still only happened 343 times.

7 hours ago, BBTV said:

 

baseball isn’t poker. That’s not even remotely a similar comparison. 

It's in terms of odds of happening. There's a reason why it's the better hand. 

Is a rarity. The fact 318 no hitters in MLB history and 343 cycles. 

23 perfect games to 18 natural cycles. 10 unnatural cycles. 

If you don't understand that rarity is intriguing in its own right you won't understand most sports statistic accomplishments. 

I saw Tulowitzki's cycle in Colorado and it was hugely cheered by fans. 

8 hours ago, 4_tattoos said:

Is Canton close enough to Columbus where they could claim having a connection to the Columbus Crew being the reason for the color change?

Canton is 94.6 miles from Acrisure Stadium. Canton is 129.1 miles from Lower.com Field in Columbus.

So, other than being Ohio, no the black/yellow is not at associated with Crew. In fact, the Crew had an uphill battle going with that color scheme since day one. Sure, there's a lot of Steeler bandwagon fans in Columbus and transplants (from out of state and eastern Ohio that is heavily Steeler area), but that put a lot of Browns/Bengals fans disinterested in ever visibly supporting the Crew day-to-day. It really is an odd decision by MLS/Lamar Hunt back in the 90s to go that route for colors.

As for the USFL switching to an Ohio or Canton branded name was just too late in the game. They were stuck with the Pittsburgh name and the already planned Pittsburgh rebrand. Pittsburgh has no other stadiums.

There's Acrisure (65k or so), PNC (35k baseball that is probably a definite no), and then... a few high school stadium sin the 10-14k range nearby. North Allegheny HS, Woodland Hills HS,... then some nice ones such as Pine-Richland, Mt Lebanon, Upper St. Clair, etc. But all far too small. The few colleges in and around Pittsburgh (Duquesne, Carnegie-Mellon, Robert Morris) have very tiny stadiums. In the 1k-4k range.

The only really big stadium closer to Pittsburgh that could work isn't also in PA. WVU in Morgantown is 75.2 miles from Acrisure. Slippery Rock University is 51.2 miles north of Pittsburgh. Seats about 14k. But a huge track, almost all bleachers, and in a town roughly bigger than the university.

Canton only got the hub because their relationship with the league hosting the playoffs in 2022. If they knew going in that there WASN'T going to be games in Pittsburgh,  I doubt Canton is anywhere close to hosting a hub. Detroit gets all 4, or they go all-in getting a PHI/NJ hub setup in eastern PA. They just gambled on Pittsburgh and lost.

5 hours ago, BBTV said:

Serious question - why does anyone care about a cycle?

If you're playing poker, getting 5 diamonds is good. Getting a 10, J, Q, K, and A of diamonds is far better.

See the difference?

51 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

So they changed to black and gold expecting to play in Pittsburgh.

 

Then they decided to rebrand to some other name (but they're still going to be in Pittsburgh, and they're relying on historical USFL names).

 

Then they aren't playing in Pittsburgh.

 

This timeline has me confused. If the rebrand were planned after Pittsburgh wasn't available, that would make more sense to me. They could even call them the Denver Gold and keep those colors. Heck - unless the team name includes a color, they could likely stay black and yellow.

No. The black and yellow maulers rebrand was planned before they gave up on Pittsburgh. Going to Canton was so late they couldnt rebrand again. So they just stuck with Pittsburgh and tried to make it work

19 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Any reason they mimicked the Pittsburgh colors if they were going to rebrand them? That doesn't make sense to me.

Rebrand was planned before they gave up on playing in Pittsburgh. 

Was told that the league wanted to rebrand Pittsburgh but was just too late before the season after already planning the color switch. 

On 6/21/2023 at 2:45 PM, officeglenn said:

 

I hope they use the original team names and if they go with cities and not just the nicknames.

21 hours ago, Dilbert said:

FC Cincinnati with their 10th home win to start the season. A 3-0 victory over Toronto in which they were without 6 of their starters (injury or international duty), saw 3 MLS debuts with Bret Halsey (an FCC2 player signed specifically for this game to help cover the absences), Gerardo Valenzuela, and Stiven Jimenez (a 15 year old, who last weekend on the teams bye secured his learners permit). Meanwhile, Nashville falls at Montreal tonight so FCC gains back the three points Nashville picked up over their win last weekend. Also in attendance tonight were 11 Cincinnati Reds players, fresh off this afternoons 11th straight win. What a time for sports in Cincy.

Three games delayed due to weather and one postponed entirely.

Two shocks of the night were Chicago winning at Portland, and RSL won surprisingly easily at STL.  LAG had a shot at a win, but blew it late. Austin winning big was a surprise. 3-0 and it never felt like it was even that close. LAFC with the first minute goal that held up to win 1-0 over Seattle. Though they had a handball called back for a second goal late.

Cincinnati has clearly established themselves as the king of the mountain. Only a matter if they slip up later in the season, or a fluke playoff loss. But if they give up the Supporters Shield that would be a shock. The West playoffs are wide open.

13 hours ago, GhostOfNormMacdonald said:

I can confirm that Sun Devil hockey games are rockin'. As good of atmosphere as Gopher, Bulldog, and Mavs games I went to back in MN @Burmy

Never been to a college hockey game. But have to imagine like any other collegiate game I've been to in other sports that the atmosphere is much livelier than a pro game.

3 hours ago, DCarp1231 said:

Would’ve loved if Pittsburgh picked up Frederick in the whole MiLB shuffle. Could’ve reworked the identity to be treasure keys to be in-line with the parent club.

 

I believe some reasoning behind Baltimore not keep Frederick was due to “ease of travel” which is completely bogus when you realize Frederick is 40-45 minutes away from Baltimore compared to retained Delmarva which is roughly 2.5 hours away.

Think holding on to Delmarva is more important when they have Philly and Washington to contend with nearby. Meanwhile, western Maryland is either already lost to Pittsburgh or ardently 'anti DC' and sticking with Orioles anyways through state allegiance.

2 hours ago, VampyrRabbit said:

Weren't the Twins one of the two teams on the chopping block along with the Expos when contraction was being discussed due to the Metrodome falling apart?

And they were pretty well penciled into that spot, too. Seemed like such a reach given the support Minnesota had given the team since their arrival. There seemed to be far more stark failures. But the Sunshine State teams weren't going to be touched.

MLB is running out of available markets that have the finances to support a MLB team's 81 game schedule at MLB prices. They mostly have resorted to pretending that the team can be contracted to get a new stadium. Now that LV is viable as a team and actively persuing a team, they found their new boogie-man. Like LA was for the NFL for decades.

12 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:

So the best record a team in the North division will finish with is 5-5. If Michigan wins, multiple tiebreakers will determine who is the division champ between them and Pittsburgh. Not like it matters since the game is in Canton. 

1 Pittsburgh 4-6

2 MIchigan 4-6

3 Philadelphia 4-6

4 New Jersey 3-7

evenly balanced trashed.

22 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

They have one more year left on their lease. so are they going to break that at the end of this season?

Raiders waited out their lease.  Or, rather, waited for their new stadium to be built. The main argument seemed to be they didn't want to unveil themselves in Las Vegas at Sam Boyd Stadium for a few years, and there was really nowhere else to go.

Chargers went to StubHub Center since staying in San Diego was basically impossible. And they were limited where they could play (not at the Coliseum, the Rose Bowl has restrictions on dates, and neither baseball stadium could/would even be considered as viable).

Plus, there's the 'aura' of the Raiders that their fans would follow them to Las Vegas, even if via television. So, sticking out two unproductive years in Oakland wasn't exactly a negative like it would've been for the Chargers.

The A's though... we saw how bad the support will be when they just THOUGHT they weren't going to play in Oakland. If they sign a deal and construction starts in Vegas... they could count attendance with three digits at some games. The fans would simply shun them. Baseball relies much more on the ticket buyer than other sports. Part of having 81 home games. They'd fare better playing at LV Ballpark for a year or two at exorbitant MLB adjusted rates in the 10k stadium than to even consider playing in Oakland another year. As for the lease having a year left. There's got to be a financial out clause, and I have to imagine they'd pay whatever fee was necessary and recoup the money in Vegas at the small stadium for two years.

8 minutes ago, habsfan1 said:

  

A lot of teams got traded amongst other cities, back in those days. Most of those trends were from decades ago. There could be a variety of reasons as to why it was more advantagious to just keep the same team/look in a new city. Technology wasn't the same, compared to today.

 

The ones I remember mostly are the moves from the 90s and the 2000s. All of the NHL teams fully rebranded. The OKC Thunder spared the Sonics their identity and New Orleans got their own brand, after Charlotte got their original team back. Aside from a few odd exceptions, my expectations are full rebrands for new franchises.

 

Really, it was the 90s that saw the pushback. That 90s building boom of stadiums and arenas saw fans start to revolt. Browns and Sonics especially. Houston tried, but in a city that big with a team that had been on a downward spiral but couldn't live out to see Fisher do anything with them, couldn't get the groundswell support.

Ohio even passed a law about moving teams. Which is why the Crew got saved.

But in the 80s you saw relocations like the Colts, Cardinals, Flames, Rockies, Clippers, and Kings.

Only the Rockies changed names, and that was primarily because the New Jersey Rockies would've only worked if they played near Philly. The rest just kept their name. Some were ambiguious names, like Kings or Cardinals. Some had a regional tie like Clippers but worked for their relocated city. Flames kinda works with Calgary but could've been something else.

The 90s saw things like the North Stars move to Dallas, and then around the same time or after the Browns every team got a new name. Avalanche was an obvious as Nordiques wasn't going to translate well to Colorado. But Whalers and Jets both got rebranded. NBA didn't have any late 90s relocations, but a few in the early 00s. Vancouver still is a headscratcher that they didn't get a new name but there was apathy about a Canadian team given the economy at the time. After what happened you saw the Sonics get a new name, it seemed such a shocker that the Hornets took their name to New Orleans. Which had a huge backlash. They righted it after the Bobcats fiasco, but that was still such a bad reading of the room. It took the Sonics AFTER the Hornets to finally get the NBA to basically force it through. One of the few times a team changed their name for reasons OTHER than weaponry or bigotry.

Browns, obviously, got a new name and was one of the first 'modern' teams to get their team back with the same name (this happened much more often previous especially in baseball with things like the Senators barely missing a beat).

After the Hornets, the only real team(s) that moved without changing their name has been the Nets, Chargers, Rams, and Raiders. Two returned to a city they had already been to. Raiders moved to their third city in their third relocation after stopping at one stop twice. And the Nets have bounced around all over the NYC metro area under various location names (NY Nets, NJ Nets, Brooklyn Nets). Yeah, the NJ based fans might have an issue, but it's not like they moved to Kansas City. Hard to call that a huge issue. This is much more "Baltimore Bullets move to DC"