Day-after Stanley Cup column

[Dude]

I think hockey works in the Raleigh-Durham area because in a lot of ways the Research Triangle is a Northern town that happens to lie below the Mason-Dixon line. There's a huge difference between the 'country folk' out in the rest of the state and the people in Triangle area. The Triangle is educated and full of people from the North and Midwest. Hell, NASCAR is huge in North Carolina, but doesn't get that much play in the Triangle papers.

Put hockey back on ESPN and the ratings wouldn't be great, but they'd be OK.

Wow, that's a huge brush you're wielding. "The Triangle is educated", "country folk." I'm a Mass. native who worked in N.C. for seven years. Those country folk you speak of aren't quite who you perceive them to be. The natives, even those who grew up in such places as Yanceyville and Murphy, have teeth, went to school and can, oddly enough, spell their own names.

Hockey indeed works in Raleigh because of the transplants, to a certain extent. But my former boss (a native upstate New Yorker) covered the Finals and reports that a lot of native-born southerners have taken to the sport. And before I left eight years ago, it was easy for me to find a rink to go for a skate or even find ice time with 20 other guys. And I lived out with the "country folk."

I have a friend that lived in Chapel Hill for about two years. He told me pretty much the Triangle was ok. But go outside it and you're in Mayberry.

 

[Sam Mills 51]

This is one of the reasons we moved out of Charlotte when I was a kid. (Hurricane Hugo was one of the others.) Things that tend to be from a northern "culture" are rejected.

My family is originally from Pittsburgh. We moved down there when I was in 4th grade because of my dad's work.

In the two years we lived down there, our neighbors on either side of our house talked to us once-combined. I was called "Yankee" more times than I can remember. And calling someone a Yankee was a serious insult there. It wasn't just some teasing, they thought they were being vicious. They still were fighting the Civil War down there.

We moved back after two years.

Now that was 15 years ago, so attitudes and life may have changed down there, but this column doesn't exactly show that.

Southern hospitality is very much a myth.

Dude, as someone from the South - though I've been called a Yankee myself because I have no accent - I'm sorry.

The South is very, very polarized. In some cases, the hospitality is total crap. But I've run into my share of people who would do anything for a complete stranger ... either on the job or just dealing with me as a person.

OTOH, there are still people who are willing to buy a bus ticket to take Yankees "back home." Some are joking, knowing it's a stereotype ... but that stereotype still exists for a reason.

One tends to get more consistent treatment in more metro settings like Charlotte, the Triangle and the Triad. Rarely are you shown extraordinary hospitality, but since you're more likely to run into non-Southerners, at least you're less likely to called and treated like a "Yankee." The hit-and-miss treatment occurs in the outlying areas.

In summary, I've seen parts of the South evolve, while other parts remain every bit the nightmare to outsiders as already noted.

 

[shecky]

This is one of the reasons we moved out of Charlotte when I was a kid. (Hurricane Hugo was one of the others.) Things that tend to be from a northern "culture" are rejected.

My family is originally from Pittsburgh. We moved down there when I was in 4th grade because of my dad's work.

In the two years we lived down there, our neighbors on either side of our house talked to us once-combined. I was called "Yankee" more times than I can remember. And calling someone a Yankee was a serious insult there. It wasn't just some teasing, they thought they were being vicious. They still were fighting the Civil War down there.

We moved back after two years.

Now that was 15 years ago, so attitudes and life may have changed down there, but this column doesn't exactly show that.

Southern hospitality is very much a myth.

Southern hospitality is a myth to an extent. I moved to NC about the time you moved out. My elderly neighbor there lived her entire life in the same house. She couldn't have accepted me with more open arms. She treated me like I was one of her grandsons. She asked me to do odd jobs around her house. In return, she gave me more than enough of the best cornbread I've ever had. For the most part, being down there was one of the best things I did. I only got riled up when folks called me Yankee because I'm a native Bostonian and thus genetically programmed to hate anything Yankee-related.

While I often say that Southerners will lie to you while smiling to make it seem sweet, there are regional prejudices everywhere. Us New Englanders are rather provincial ourselves.

 

[JR]

I've been to NC and other parts of the south a couple of times but just on business. All the people I met were extraordinarily friendly--way too friendly for a morose Canadian however. :)

Since I wasn't exactly a northerner but a weird foreigner (they thought I had a British accent) maybe they were just treating me like an exotic pet.

 

[Dude]

This is one of the reasons we moved out of Charlotte when I was a kid. (Hurricane Hugo was one of the others.) Things that tend to be from a northern "culture" are rejected.

My family is originally from Pittsburgh. We moved down there when I was in 4th grade because of my dad's work.

In the two years we lived down there, our neighbors on either side of our house talked to us once-combined. I was called "Yankee" more times than I can remember. And calling someone a Yankee was a serious insult there. It wasn't just some teasing, they thought they were being vicious. They still were fighting the Civil War down there.

We moved back after two years.

Now that was 15 years ago, so attitudes and life may have changed down there, but this column doesn't exactly show that.

Southern hospitality is very much a myth.

Dude, as someone from the South - though I've been called a Yankee myself because I have no accent - I'm sorry.

The South is very, very polarized. In some cases, the hospitality is total crap. But I've run into my share of people who would do anything for a complete stranger ... either on the job or just dealing with me as a person.

OTOH, there are still people who are willing to buy a bus ticket to take Yankees "back home." Some are joking, knowing it's a stereotype ... but that stereotype still exists for a reason.

One tends to get more consistent treatment in more metro settings like Charlotte, the Triangle and the Triad. Rarely are you shown extraordinary hospitality, but since you're more likely to run into non-Southerners, at least you're less likely to called and treated like a "Yankee." The hit-and-miss treatment occurs in the outlying areas.

In summary, I've seen parts of the South evolve, while other parts remain every bit the nightmare to outsiders as already noted.

I mean it wasn't like we had NO friends down there. It's not like everyone down there was a ass-backwards idiot. But the friends I did have were some-times called Yankee-lovers for hanging out with me.

 

[shecky]

I think hockey works in the Raleigh-Durham area because in a lot of ways the Research Triangle is a Northern town that happens to lie below the Mason-Dixon line. There's a huge difference between the 'country folk' out in the rest of the state and the people in Triangle area. The Triangle is educated and full of people from the North and Midwest. Hell, NASCAR is huge in North Carolina, but doesn't get that much play in the Triangle papers.

Put hockey back on ESPN and the ratings wouldn't be great, but they'd be OK.

Wow, that's a huge brush you're wielding. "The Triangle is educated", "country folk." I'm a Mass. native who worked in N.C. for seven years. Those country folk you speak of aren't quite who you perceive them to be. The natives, even those who grew up in such places as Yanceyville and Murphy, have teeth, went to school and can, oddly enough, spell their own names.

Hockey indeed works in Raleigh because of the transplants, to a certain extent. But my former boss (a native upstate New Yorker) covered the Finals and reports that a lot of native-born southerners have taken to the sport. And before I left eight years ago, it was easy for me to find a rink to go for a skate or even find ice time with 20 other guys. And I lived out with the "country folk."

I have a friend that lived in Chapel Hill for about two years. He told me pretty much the Triangle was ok. But go outside it and you're in Mayberry.

Two years isn't long enough to form a representative opinion. I lived in Rocky Mount, Raleigh, Greensboro and Burlington. People on the outskirts of Rocky Mount, which has some really backwater places surrounding it, couldn't have been nicer. Even if I never pronounced an 'R.'

 

[lono]

At the risk of getting back on topic, Sorenson's column is a classic example why people hate the media and think it's populated by pompous, arrogant assholes who only want to print bad news and denigrate the good things people accomplish.

In general, Sorenson is an excellent columnist, but as some have noted, he made himself look like a fool with this one.

 

[Jake_Taylor]

I think hockey works in the Raleigh-Durham area because in a lot of ways the Research Triangle is a Northern town that happens to lie below the Mason-Dixon line. There's a huge difference between the 'country folk' out in the rest of the state and the people in Triangle area. The Triangle is educated and full of people from the North and Midwest. Hell, NASCAR is huge in North Carolina, but doesn't get that much play in the Triangle papers.

Put hockey back on ESPN and the ratings wouldn't be great, but they'd be OK.

Wow, that's a huge brush you're wielding. "The Triangle is educated", "country folk." I'm a Mass. native who worked in N.C. for seven years. Those country folk you speak of aren't quite who you perceive them to be. The natives, even those who grew up in such places as Yanceyville and Murphy, have teeth, went to school and can, oddly enough, spell their own names.

Hockey indeed works in Raleigh because of the transplants, to a certain extent. But my former boss (a native upstate New Yorker) covered the Finals and reports that a lot of native-born southerners have taken to the sport. And before I left eight years ago, it was easy for me to find a rink to go for a skate or even find ice time with 20 other guys. And I lived out with the "country folk."

Yeah shecky, that was obviously a generalization but I never said North Carolinians outside of the Triangle didn't have teeth or didn't go to school. But the Research Triangle area is a very highly educated area with lots of people in high-level medical, pharmicutical and computer fields. Trust me I've had plenty of experience in places such as Yanceyville and Lumberton and while I met plenty of nice people you can also see where the Southern stereotypes come from. I think most people would be very surprised how much different the culture is in the RBC Center area than just 30 or 40 miles away in Roxboro or Mebane.

 

[shecky]

I think hockey works in the Raleigh-Durham area because in a lot of ways the Research Triangle is a Northern town that happens to lie below the Mason-Dixon line. There's a huge difference between the 'country folk' out in the rest of the state and the people in Triangle area. The Triangle is educated and full of people from the North and Midwest. Hell, NASCAR is huge in North Carolina, but doesn't get that much play in the Triangle papers.

Put hockey back on ESPN and the ratings wouldn't be great, but they'd be OK.

Wow, that's a huge brush you're wielding. "The Triangle is educated", "country folk." I'm a Mass. native who worked in N.C. for seven years. Those country folk you speak of aren't quite who you perceive them to be. The natives, even those who grew up in such places as Yanceyville and Murphy, have teeth, went to school and can, oddly enough, spell their own names.

Hockey indeed works in Raleigh because of the transplants, to a certain extent. But my former boss (a native upstate New Yorker) covered the Finals and reports that a lot of native-born southerners have taken to the sport. And before I left eight years ago, it was easy for me to find a rink to go for a skate or even find ice time with 20 other guys. And I lived out with the "country folk."

Yeah shecky, that was obviously a generalization but I never said North Carolinians outside of the Triangle didn't have teeth or didn't go to school. But the Research Triangle area is a very highly educated area with lots of people in high-level medical, pharmicutical and computer fields. Trust me I've had plenty of experience in places such as Yanceyville and Lumberton and while I met plenty of nice people you can also see where the Southern stereotypes come from. I think most people would be very surprised how much different the culture is in the RBC Center area than just 30 or 40 miles away in Roxboro or Mebane.

Point taken and spot on.

I always found RTP to be a bit too uppity for my tastes. I was a transplant, but it always annoyed me that other transplants wanted to take RTP and turn it into some copy of a northern metropolis. It's far more interesting to assimilate into another culture than to change it to your liking. BTW, I love those Mebanites.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Let me get this straight.

A Charlotte newspaper columnist writes about all the Carolina sporting events that were more important than the Hurricanes winning the Stanley Cup. Nowhere in the article are the words "Super Bowl" mentioned.

Brilliant column, douchebag.

 

[KJIM]

Yeah, I have that SI article in my own file. I don't, however, recall when it's from. I thought it was before the lockout. As I stated, there was a brief time before the 1993 (?) lockout -- post-Gretzky-to-LA -- that hockey was gaining ground.

It lasted what, a year or two, before that lockout killed any momentum, and hasn't rebounded.

Only when Gretzky was in LA did hockey gain any popularity in the U.S., and it didn't really last long enough to catapult the league into "Big Four" status. I've always tried to convince myself it was there, but the more I see now (as a Florida transplant living in Detroit - and I did move here for hockey) it's always been a niche sport.

Just because gangs wear LA Kings colors doesn't mean they're fans of the game.

 

[JR]

I think this article appeared just after the Rangers '94 Cup win.

 

[Appgrad05]

I think hockey works in the Raleigh-Durham area because in a lot of ways the Research Triangle is a Northern town that happens to lie below the Mason-Dixon line. There's a huge difference between the 'country folk' out in the rest of the state and the people in Triangle area. The Triangle is educated and full of people from the North and Midwest. Hell, NASCAR is huge in North Carolina, but doesn't get that much play in the Triangle papers.

Put hockey back on ESPN and the ratings wouldn't be great, but they'd be OK.

Wow, that's a huge brush you're wielding. "The Triangle is educated", "country folk." I'm a Mass. native who worked in N.C. for seven years. Those country folk you speak of aren't quite who you perceive them to be. The natives, even those who grew up in such places as Yanceyville and Murphy, have teeth, went to school and can, oddly enough, spell their own names.

Hockey indeed works in Raleigh because of the transplants, to a certain extent. But my former boss (a native upstate New Yorker) covered the Finals and reports that a lot of native-born southerners have taken to the sport. And before I left eight years ago, it was easy for me to find a rink to go for a skate or even find ice time with 20 other guys. And I lived out with the "country folk."

I have a friend that lived in Chapel Hill for about two years. He told me pretty much the Triangle was ok. But go outside it and you're in Mayberry.

Two years isn't long enough to form a representative opinion. I lived in Rocky Mount, Raleigh, Greensboro and Burlington. People on the outskirts of Rocky Mount, which has some really backwater places surrounding it, couldn't have been nicer. Even if I never pronounced an 'R.'

Speaking on the Mount, hockey is actually gaining popularity. The local bars were packed when the games were on OLN (it's only available on digital cable, which most do not have in a community that is extremely poor).
Hell, the outdoors writer is now a hockey nut. Calls me every week to ask me questions and bull**** about the Hurricanes.

 

[sportschick]

During Game 6, the entire sports staff was gathered around the TV watching. Such things rarely happen in my shop. And it certainly didn't last night during the NBA game.

 

[JR]

From William Houston's Globe column today. (Houston is the sports media critic for the rag).


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Game 7 audience

The CBC saved the best for last, drawing 4.739 million viewers for the seventh game of the Stanley Cup final on Monday.

That ranks as the network's fourth largest audience for a hockey game dating back to the introduction of Nielsen People Meters in 1989. The record is 4.957 million for the seventh game of the 1994 final between the Vancouver Canucks and New York Rangers.

The Monday figure includes the audience for the Stanley Cup presentation and interviews, as well as the game.

From the dropping of the puck to the game-ending whistle, the audience was 5.553 million, peaking at 6.253 million between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. EDT. The 3.042 million audience average for this year's final is down from the 2004 final between the Calgary Flames and Tampa Bay Lightning. The seventh game of that series drew 4.862 million and the average over seven games was 3.735 million. Still, the 2006 average over seven games ranks as the CBC's third best for a Cup final since 1989.

NBC's telecast of Game 7 earned a 3.3 overnight rating (percentage of U.S. households watching), a 21-per-cent drop from ABC's 4.2 for Game 7 of the 2004 final. NBC had an average rating of 2.3 for its five telecasts of the final, down 12 per cent from ABC's 2004 average. Some NBC affiliates didn't air Game 7 live. The network's Seattle station aired a tape-delay, and in Salt Lake City the game wasn't carried at all.

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Guess there aren't a lot of Mormon hockey fans. :)

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

This is where hockey's US devotees start behaving the way people say that soccer's US devotees behave. It is wildly popular in two areas -- New England and the industrial Great Lakes. Elsewhere, it's a niche sport run by dumbasses that's fallen behind golf and NASCAR in the naitionall pecking order.  I love the game, but that's simply a fact. No amount of appeals based on the drama of Cup overtime games is going to change that. Back when that SI cover ran, the NHL got a lot of hype out of the Rangers. It'd have been a different story if it had been Vancouver and NJ in the Finals, as it nearly was.
The NBA is a worldwide entertainment engine. Hockey is battling its way off the Big Fish Channel.

 

[Jake_Taylor]

Hockey is battling its way off the Big Fish Channel.

OK here's a question. Will it be better for hockey if it gets a new deal and gets off OLN as soon as possible or can they ride out a couple of bad years TV wise and hope OLN Versus becomes a force in cable sports TV?

 

[JR]

This is where hockey's US devotees start behaving the way people say that soccer's US devotees behave. It is wildly popular in two areas -- New England and the industrial Great Lakes. Elsewhere, it's a niche sport run by dumbasses that's fallen behind golf and NASCAR in the naitionall pecking order.  I love the game, but that's simply a fact. No amount of appeals based on the drama of Cup overtime games is going to change that. Back when that SI cover ran, the NHL got a lot of hype out of the Rangers. It'd have been a different story if it had been Vancouver and NJ in the Finals, as it nearly was.
The NBA is a worldwide entertainment engine. Hockey is battling its way off the Big Fish Channel.

Don't disagree with anything you say.

Fact is, as has been pointed out several times, hockey has been broadcast on U.S. networks for over 40 years. It wasn't popular in the 60's, 70's, 80's or 90's and why anyone would think that's EVER going to change now is beyond me. It's always been a niche sport and always will be unless Bubba in Podunk, Arkansas starts playing in a weekly beer league.

Heard Bettman interviewed on the FAN590 yesterday and despite the fact that he's still a weasel and put hockey in places it should never be, he's a realist. All hockey can do is make sure it keeps the fans it's got and try to build on that.

Hell, 20 years ago they had a saying about Black Hawks fans: there's only 20,000 of them in Chicago but they all go to the games.

 

[KJIM]

OK here's a question. Will it be better for hockey if it gets a new deal and gets off OLN as soon as possible or can they ride out a couple of bad years TV wise and hope OLN Versus becomes a force in cable sports TV?

If Versus became available in all markets (like mine), I think it's in hockey's best interest. It's the biggest fish -- figuratively speaking -- for the network and it's in their best interest to help the sport survive on TV. On any of the ESPN varieties, hockey takes an unfortunately-well-deserved back seat to everything else.

But the real promotion of hockey is its appeal as a niche sport -- regional cable.

 

[JR]

OK here's a question. Will it be better for hockey if it gets a new deal and gets off OLN as soon as possible or can they ride out a couple of bad years TV wise and hope OLN Versus becomes a force in cable sports TV?

If Versus became available in all markets (like mine), I think it's in hockey's best interest. It's the biggest fish -- figuratively speaking -- for the network and it's in their best interest to help the sport survive on TV. On any of the ESPN varieties, hockey takes an unfortunately-well-deserved back seat to everything else.

But the real promotion of hockey is its appeal as a niche sport -- regional cable.

Yeah, don't the local broadcasts on Fox Sports do OK?