i feel like i can criticize basketball, soccer, football, or baseball because i am a fan of these sports. you know i watch all their championships. i often blog about them positively, as in these posts:

because i say nice things about these sports, too, i feel like i can critique them fairly when such criticism is warranted. what was the last time you posted anything good about hockey?

As you know (and as do the three or four other people who actually have read this blog since it started), we’ve had this “sports disagreement” for years. I think at this point our respective positions are…

Your position: Hockey is the best sport EVER! (variants include: hockey players are tougher, hockey is harder to play, hockey players are smarter, hockey players don’t go to jail, etc.)

My position: One sport isn’t better than another, it’s a question of preference.

As for the two posts you mention in your recent comment:

Look, when you posted in April of this year asserting that “hockey is a real mans sport”, I tried not to take the bait and just chided you about hockey being unpopular. A couple weeks later, you posted about Robert Horry’s hockey-like bodycheck. Before commenting on the fact that Horry’s foul wasn’t that dirty, I mentioned it was good to see you blogging about a sport other than hockey.

I apologize if you find this annoying.

When I find something annoying, like your incessant need to seek validation that hockey is superior, I just try to respond with “witty rejoinders” (as Mike would say). For me, pointing out hockey is not popular is easy, effortless, and apparently stirs the pot more than trying to argue silly points about which sport is “better” (or harder, more manly, less criminal, etc).

Unfortunately, it has obviously stirred the pot way too much and upset you more than I ever expected.

I will stop. I will not comment about the NHL any more.

Again, my apologies.

you get grumpy about hockey’s unpopularity.

yes, let’s hearken back to my angst filled response to one of doug and richard’s most recent attacks on the game i love, back at the end of april:

doug: Huh? The NHL is having playoffs right now? I must have missed that on SportsCenter between the updates on dog mushing and Olympic curling.

richard: Well, I have not been on the blog for a rather long time. ….But has hockey gained any popularity since that time? I mean, south of the Arctic Circle?

me: i don’t think hockey is any more popular than when you left. however, the players continue to be much more manly than the players of most other sports, especially baseball and shuffleboard.

note a few things about that response: no frothing at the mouth, no rabidness or anger, and frankly, i didn’t even dispute that hockey had not gained in popularity in two years time. i also let the tired phrase, “south of the arctic circle” slide.

so i think i am pretty mellow about it. nevertheless, i resent your constant harping on an issue that isn’t even relevant to a discussion of hockey’s merits, let alone relevant in the other threads where you’ve brought it up (i’m thinking of the spurs-suns post, where i talked about a foul i didn’t like, and you pointed out how the NHL playoffs are unpopular or the post where i pointed out hockey players are tough as nails while baseball players seem about as tough as shuffleboard-playing retirees, and you pointed out how…..surprise: the NHL playoffs are unpopular!).

funny that like every league that has a lockout-marred season, they NHL lost fans after 2004 or whenever they were locked out. just like baseball in the early 90s, just like basketball in the late 90s, etc.

and, interestingly, the NBA has seen a ratings drop in recent years, too. despite a lack of lockouts. their first 38 playoff games this year averaged only about a million more viewers apiece than did the NHL’s stanley cup finals games this year.

OMG! only about 1% of americans have tuned into the NBA playoffs so far this year! basketball is unpopular!

you want to talk about the NHL because it is based in the USA, just like boca is based in argentina. great. i would like to talk about the MLS, which is also based in the USA, and compare it the NHL, which, as we have already established, in based in the USA.

would you and richard enjoy chiding me about the unpopularity of the MLS for awhile? if so, i will welcome the switch. maybe you could agree to alternate — one week you make fun of MLS ratings, one week NHL ratings. then maybe we can all join together and make fun of the NBA’s nielsen ratings struggles, or eurodisney’s paltry gate receipts.

and you extrapolate from this that hockey is unpopular everywhere “south of the arctic circle.” this annoys me.

No, I extrapolate that you get grumpy about hockey’s unpopularity.

And I think you’ve proven that point rather effectively.

Boca Juniors is a soccer club from Argentina. Hence, I would expect them to have some modicum of popularity in Argentina, not here.

The NHL is a hockey league based in the US. Likewise, it stands to reason that they would have some popularity here in the US, not Argentina.

and you extrapolate from this that hockey is unpopular everywhere “south of the arctic circle.” this annoys me. how about i compare the popularity of, say, basketball in argentina to football here in the US?

if you compare per game viewership, per game salary, or yearly television contract money, you will surely find that basketball is “wildly” unpopular in argentina. then i will conclude that basketball is wildly unpopular outside of only one country on earth, the USA (which country, apparently should feel bad about itself for everything).

i am bothered by your constant ridiculing of hockey’s popularity problems. you have claimed so often: “hockey is unpopular” that i would not be surprised if you asked to have it engraved on your tombstone. you say you do this in response to my claims that hockey is exciting to watch and requires more skill to play than other sports. yet denouncing hockey has become an obsession for you. you throw it out in somewhat offhand comments with the consistency of a six year-old asking “are we there yet?” from the back seat of the family minivan, but when i respond with justifiable frustration, you accuse me of overreacting.

I never brought up soccer in the US, you did.

The picture above is from an Argentine newspaper. The title of the blog post is in Spanish. The linked article is from Argentina. No one is trying to say that Boca is wildly popular here in the US.

If you want to compare apples to apples…

Boca Juniors is a soccer club from Argentina. Hence, I would expect them to have some modicum of popularity in Argentina, not here.

The NHL is a hockey league based in the US. Likewise, it stands to reason that they would have some popularity here in the US, not Argentina.

Apparently the fact that the latter isn’t true bothers American hockey fans.

Why it bothers hockey fans so much, I have no idea.

Your cleverness knows no ends.

doug, don’t compare apples and oranges. soccer is popular in argentina. hockey is popular in canada. neither commands as much support in the US. yet you want to compare argentina’s TV market for soccer with the USA’s TV market for hockey.

if you want to compare the TV deals in their respective countries, i’d wager that the NHL’s $68 million dollar deal with CBC (canada)…

Nice.

Just to remind you: the NHL is based in New York City (in the US, last time I checked…unless “New York” is English for “Montreal”). Twenty-four out of the thirty teams are based in the US. The NHL is a US league, and yet so unpopular here that they show the first two games of their final playoff series on a network that most people have never heard of.

I think that my original comment was right-on, although to be fair, I should have changed “jealousy” to “outright grumpiness”:

I will excuse your insults to Boca Juniors, if only because they can be attributed to your jealousy that there were more people in the fog and rain at the soccer stadium watching Boca than there were tuned into the Outdoor Life Network watching the Flying V win the Stanley Cup.

To recap…

Doug: Boca is awesome!

Travis: Boca is gay!

Doug: It’s alright Travis, you’re probably grumpy because the NHL didn’t get much coverage.

Travis: What the &*$%# are you talking about!?!? The NHL is sooo popular! They were on NBC! Ever heard of it? Boca couldn’t even get on the Outdoor Life Network! Ha! (and, soccer players in the fog make me think of gay dudes at the gym)

Doug: My bad, the NHL was on NBC…for free, under a similar deal that arena football has. Funny, in their home country, Boca didn’t have to agree to a similar deal. (and you’re right, nothing quite as homo erotic as three soccer players cheering in the fog)

Travis: Now, wait a minute. You’re not playing fair! You don’t understand that hockey is sooo popular in Canada. I know it’s really unpopular here in the US. Ignore what I said about NBC before. Ignore what I said about the Ducks and OLN. Well, maybe not really unpopular. Ignore that I just said hockey was unpopular in the US. I mean, seriously, more people would have watched the Stanley Cup if the TV schedule was different, the unemployment rate was higher, etc etc. So, please, stop comparing the popularity of an Argentine soccer team in Argentina to US hockey league in the the US. It’s just not fair!

I agree. It is not fair. And frankly, I don’t really care that the Stanley Cup is watched by less than 1% of Americans or that Boca is spectacularly popular in Argentina.

Obviously, as I noted before, you do care.

As do thousands of hockey fans.

You look at forums where someone mentions that hockey is unpopular and it’s as though dozens of folks have conniption fits; simultaneously feeling the need to assert hockey’s popularity, argue that it is superior, and lament its unpopularity.

So, you are not alone.

stupid Argentines keep playing soccer. Those ignorants!

actually, john, i fault americans for not liking soccer. it is a great sport, i enjoy playing it, and i enjoy watching it. maybe you didn’t understand what i wrote.

But the best one is the obesity… common thing here

and hispanic immigrants to the US have an obesity rate much higher than the national average.

Hispanic children have by far the highest rate of pediatric obesity in the city. Almost one-third of Hispanic children between the ages of 6 and 11 are obese, compared with 16 percent of white children and 23 percent of black children. [source] see also this source

i guess the argentines who immigrate here just don’t know what to do when the economy actually works and they get to eat three meals a day!

BTW: Hernan was correct in this one

my numbers, obtained via the aforementioned google, say 4.8 and 10.2. hernan’s numbers say 4.8 and 8.7. either way, it’s about double.

You know what would be a great idea? To build a tall, huge wall around this area so Americans won’t have to feel bad about themselves

when your country stops asking for millions of dollars of aid funded by american taxpayers, then you might have a little credibility when you insult us.

Ignoring the south is not an isolated matter, look hockey, soccer, tennis, black people, Latinos, Chinese, Iraq, discrimination, education system… all of it, ignored. But the best one is the obesity… common thing here… but it’s kind of offensive to point that out…so let’s pretend it not really happening. Let’s…ignore it.

But it’s ok, stupid Argentines keep playing soccer. Those ignorants!

BTW: Hernan was correct in this one https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2129.html