This is part 3 of the Talking Hoc-key With DJM. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.
Well, first off, congrats on naming all three California NHL teams (Dallas and Phoenix fill out the rest of the Pacific division). If that doesn’t make you a Canadian, it at least makes you a Californian (which, of course, you are, despite my mistakenly saying you were born in CA; in fact, you were born in Japan, but raised in California). Hey, I can name all the NYC area teams, right?
NHL ‘94/’95 for the Sega Genesis was a great game – in fact, it was the third best sports game of that era, behind Madden Football and NBA Live ’95. I don’t think that we played it all day really makes me or my Puerto Rican friends hockey fans, though. Put it like this – we never played a single game of ice hockey growing up, ever. Now while that’s because no one ever skated their way out of the hood before, it’s also because we didn’t care much for hockey. Hell, we even simulated bobsledding once (using a supermarket cart and a big down hill on a closed street), but never once played hockey.
Before we go on, here’s your gratuitous picture of Luc Robitaille:
Well, you throw out some good reasons why Americans don’t like hockey, but let’s discuss them quickly.
Is it because it was not invented by an American? Nope, because Dr. James Naismith, known as the inventor of basketball, was a Canadian physical education teacher. Though the game was invented in America, it was inspired by Duck On A Rock, a Canadian game about bipedal fowls that dunk. Yet America still enjoys basketball, right?
Another commonly suggested myth on why hockey is unpopular (and soccer, too) in America is that it is too low-scoring to be interesting. This is absolutely debunkable; note that baseball isn’t high scoring (in fact, hockey is very close to baseball in scoring now), and that in baseball scores (thanks to home runs and multiple-scoring hits) take place probably less often than they do in hockey. And football, despite its higher scores, doesn’t have that many scores, either. Take Super Bowl XLI – final score 29-17. You had three scores for the Bears, and six for the Colts. That’s the equivalent of a 6-3 game in hockey.
So onto the suggestion that it sucks to watch hockey on TV. Are you on the right track? My friend, you are not only on the right track, you are a British Earl riding a handcar on that track, barreling down the hill in the Bolan Pass (modern-day Pakistan) with unstoppable momentum, powered by four turban-wearing Sikhs.
Seriously, that would be the primary reason why the sport never caught on, though other factors also play a role.
The deal with the popularity of a sport in the US is two-fold; one, how easy is it to play? I don’t mean in terms of rules – soccer has the least amount of rules of any sport in the world - (1) kick ball, (2) don’t use hands – whereas American football requires a PhD to explain to someone who doesn’t know the game. But American football is also easy for any 10-year boy to play with other kids in the neighborhood; simply buy a football, designate a QB, and throw it around. Hockey requires an ice skating rink, and hockey sticks. And ice skates and ice skating ability. Not exactly a go outside into the backyard and play kinda game (like basketball, baseball and football).
On the other hand, American handball can be played anywhere (where there is a wall), and yet I don’t see it on TV. Soccer, too. The other reality is that for those kids, when they become older and paying customers to go watch a sport, whether live or on TV, the key for them is enjoyability of watching the sport. Now, most sports, even baseball, are fun to watch in person.
But watching on TV, that’s the real key. It’s why soccer will eventually become a huge sport in the US. It’s why handball isn’t a big sport, nor lacrosse. It’s why poker suddenly got hot in the past five years. If you can market a sport on TV, you can make it successful.
I used to root for the Devils. When they got good, I tried to watch them during the playoffs. Hockey is not completely unwatchable, but it is tough. Don’t get me wrong, I know a whole country of people that look like us, except paler, loves watching the sport. I play poker with lots of Canadians, and they really love that crap. And here I am, a person that can watch anything, including paintballing on ESPN, yet hockey never interested me.
How can the fix it? By making the puck bigger. Seriously, everything else is there for it to be a huge sport here – white stars; sanctioned fighting; historic rivalries. But I really can’t focus on following a tiny puck (in the wide-screen shot you have to watch hockey with), going around at super high speeds, and at the same time focus on the players, also moving at high speeds. Compare to other sports: in football, the ball is always the main focus at all times; you don’t struggle to follow the action. In basketball the ball is always been handled by one person at a time. Even in baseball, the most comparable example, the ball is thrown really faster towards the batter, but if it is hit into play you know right away what is going on – if it’s hit to a gap, you see fielders running towards the ball, etc. Following the action is not difficult.
So why is baseball still popular? In reality, it, too, is a dying sport here in the US. At one time, during its peak, it was all that mattered. Watching it live is something magical, more so than football (which actually sucks live, compared to watching on TV) and basketball (only good if you are close to the action, and even then TV viewing is still better). Then TV was invented; at first baseball held strong, but remember – people wanted to see baseball because it was the popular sport. Eventually football started getting televised, and soon it overtook baseball in TV popularity (note MNF ratings going back to the 70’s; Super Bowl ratings). Still, even then it took a while for football to take over as the preferred sports of Americans. Various factors come into play – the shortness of the football season, the rareness of being able to watch it, both live (few people get to watch games live) and on TV (games are only once a week). Even with these disadvantages it has passed baseball. So, too, will basketball (if it hasn’t already) and soccer. And paintball.
Followup questions to you:
a) Do you agree or disagree that baseball is a dying sport, like hockey? What about the international aspects of baseball – does that give baseball a chance, or diminish it, in the US?
b) Will soccer ever take off in the US?
c) Will paintball? What the hell is ESPN thinking?
d) What sports are better live than viewed on TV, and vice versa?
e) What is the new hotness in music nowadays?
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