I whole heartedly agree with the bolded above. Outside the NHL/AHL, USports hockey is the next best hockey in the country, except perhaps during Memorial Cup. A majority of the USports hockey players are former CHLers. There is certainly no disrespect to the CHL in any way, it does produce a majority of the World's top talent, but as I say USports are CHL graduates who are bigger/stronger/faster and more experienced... Saying that, it doesn't necessarily just sit with the media for not covering USports, I'd lay blame on the schools themselves. I cannot understand why the schools don't market their product at all. Especially to students of the schools. It is an entertaining product, and with a shorter season, there are lots of rivalries.

Just like I was expecting you to find something about the game to knock because of your insecurities. :haha:

USports hockey is dead space because it's the end of the line for a lot of the players' developmental progress. People would, presumably, want to watch NCAA hockey over USports hockey because NCAA players are more likely to go on to play in the NHL (and are younger on the whole). Unless you're selling some sort of developmental path for these players to major sports it's a tough sell. CHL is an easy sell for Sportsnet because a lot of them are going to be future NHLers in 3-5 years. There's also plenty of Canadians in NCAA hockey...

theScore years ago poured a ton of money and effort into USports football with very limited success. Carleton and uOttawa have tremendous basketball programs but get essentially zero coverage in-and-around Ottawa for the casual sports fan. etc. etc.

You can go to most USports events and sit amongst a handful of people. Just not appealing for most people for whatever reason. :shrug:

NCAA programs are better than CIS programs. Some scores from this year's preseason:


In the 15-16 season in 45 games the NCAA teams went 34-10-1. [Source]

No insecurities, I just find it sad and pathetic that you and your buddy have to denigrate things in our own country to raise the profile of foreign sports. You did your usual come out of the woodwork troll and I had my usual reaction, same old same old.

No broadcaster has put any sort of long term money or development into USports, probably since CBC used to show basketball in the 70s. I'll be interested to see what you can Google for that especially if you think the Score was any type of money.

NCAA hockey would be out of sight and out of mind if Canadian sports networks weren't publicizing them over USports, why? No production costs, and a beholding to shareholders and profit. But these companies also have to listen to stakeholders. If a sizeable women's contingent went to Rogers and said you don't employ enough women sportscasters you can be damn sure there'd be a stampede of hiring.

How is it when something has a little TLC and some bucks thrown at it that good things often result. ie Laval football

I'm naive, I just can't see how some can support another country's culture over there own or worse work to help kill their own.

Do you think there's been no money put into it because it has no eyeballs to begin with? It comes down to the Universities packing arenas and stadiums first - nobody is going to show a product with venues that are 90% empty. There needs to be demand in the local area before a national broadcaster even considers picking it up.

TheScore attempted to make a focus of USports football and it went nowhere. It's a chicken-and-egg scenario. It takes interest to develop a sport but it takes development in a sport to generate interest.

It's not an either/or situation like you're painting. Just because someone watches the NFL doesn't automatically make them a CFL-hater, and just because someone watches NCAA doesn't automatically making them a USports-hater. You're attributing feelings to people and making assumptions about other users, IMO. For the likes of TSN/SN it's easier for them to pick up broadcasts from the US than it is to send production teams to places in Canada. If people were clamouring for USports on TV I assume they'd be applying pressure on them to show them on TV.

If USports had any broad appeal you can bet that TSN/SN would be all over it, and you would bet they would be filling stands. Neither is happening.

Canadians were clamouring for NCAA hockey? Neither USports or NCAA had any broad appeal, neither did the NFL until the full CTV network started showing games and year by year increased promotion.

I agree with your first few sentences but if you think a high profile and large attendances have to be the prerequisite for televised success, I suggest you Google a little thing called Pot Black and the impact it had on its sport.

I've never understood the disinterest in USports (with the exception of a few tiny pockets) by Canadians. I've been attending for 20+ years and it's no further along than it was when I first started watching. I doubt university hockey will ever take off because the CHL (and NCAA) is the stepping stone to professional hockey.

The continued disinterest in university football is bizarre considering football owes its existence to these schools. Interest was decent right up to the 1950s and then it fell off a cliff. Laval has shown that it can become more than it was. I suppose we just don't have the population base to support it elsewhere. We have no jurisdictions (Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Nebraska, etc.) with millions of people devoid of pro football.

University basketball probably has the best chance of gaining traction. Basketball is booming and the talent level at Canadian schools is far higher than it used to be. It doesn't hurt that schools like Duke are venturing north each year to play our schools. Canadians who have never thought of watching Canadian university basketball attended that Duke series in large numbers. Ryerson, Toronto, and McGill all lost by double digits but they didn't embarrass themselves either. I think it surprised a lot of people who watched those games.

Canada used to have no AAU basketball at all. Now we have many of them and more are sprouting up every year. It shows that it can be done from Canada. These programs are very competitive with their US counterparts. Going up against US AAU basketball programs is one thing but going up against NCAA D1 basketball is another. Can programs like Carleton and Ryerson get there?

Yes, it's been proven.

The Carleton Ravens consistently hold their own against the Syracuse Orange, for example. I believe they've even beaten them on occasion.

This is not to say that Carleton would make the NCAA Final Four, but they're not at the level of a couple of teenagers from the hood playing 21 on an asphalt court, which is how Canadian USport teams are often portrayed and treated.

This is only partly true. The CHL is the most attended sports league in Canada by a longshot, and how much coverage do they get in the national media? Do they even post CHL scores on the ticker on TSN SportsCentre? I don't believe so. And they never get a mention during the sportscast unless it's the Memorial Cup. I may be mistaken but even the Memorial Cup national media coverage seems to have slipped a bit in recent years.

On a broader level, we all like to see ourselves as masters of our own domain in terms of our cultural preferences (including sports) but the truth there is a little bit or a lot of "lemming" in all of us.

What we're interested in is hugely related to conditioning, marketing and peer pressure.

Your average kid in Corner Brook, Nfld. who's never played basketball except in phys ed class doesn't have an intergenerational family history with NCAA March Madness. It's clearly been *sold* to him and millions of other Canadians as a sports property they should absolutely be paying attention to.

They do, occasionally, IIRC. SN does obviously because they have CHL rights. What does TSN gain by promoting a lower-level product owned and broadcast by SN, outside of maybe contributing to their own NHL/World Juniors coverage?

They might be the most attended but only because there's 50+ teams of varying size split amongst three leagues. All other leagues are operating below ten Canadian teams. Obviously this is a caveat.

SN shows occasional CHL highlights, not the mention the games on Saturdays that they broadcast. As a Francophile you should also be aware of the Q's TV coverage in Quebec.

If you aren't paying full attention the CHL Top Prospects game is on SN tonight, broadcasting from Red Deer.

That's the business of sport in a nutshell, though. He's only even aware of March Madness because of media forces discussing it or showing it. You can make this argument pro or con just about anything if you wanted to, but at the end of the day something online/TSN sold him March Madness, just like how I learned cricket through watching a week's worth of IPL when I was sick via (new, at the time) SportsnetWorld. :shrug: I can watch just about any sport imaginable through the internet if I want to and that's something that SN/TSN can't control and something that people forty years ago couldn't do.

I agree that the CHL should have way more coverage than it otherwise gets in Canada but if you're looking for SN/TSN to be the leaders in developing sports in Canada you're looking in the wrong direction. Their motives are strictly financial, and there's more to be made off of NCAA/NFL/whatever. This isn't just a TV avenue like it was forty years ago - SN/TSN can't control trends on Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat but they can control how their viewers view them through a Canadian/broadcasting lens. They show what they think is popular to maximize viewership. That's it. If that means it's football then it's football, if that means it's Mexican bull dancing then it's that. If they want to stay relevant then eventually it'll be eSports or whatever other trend arrives in the next decade.

Couldn't have been said better.

Remember this from four years ago: "in an exhibition game last August, the Carleton Ravens lost in overtime to the now number one ranked US college team Syracuse (who ironically have a Canadian youth NT freshman starting for them). In that same tournament the Ravens beat perennial MM team Wisconsin

That was the same Wisconsin team that lost by one point in the MM semi final. And for our folks still living the myth both NCAA teams played their best players.

Interesting to see that Wisconsin missed the NCAA final by one point and articles are popping up with them crediting the whippin' they got from Carleton as a change for their season.

Now that's an interesting point and one I agree with. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

I mean in the sense where Canadians don't have to leave Canada if they want a shot at the NBA. It's still unheard of to go from U Sports to the NBA. U Sports would need to match the NCAA in talent, coaching, and visibility by NBA scouts for that to happen. It's a very tall order.

I don't think ten years ago people would have thought players could go from USports to the NFL but every year someone seems to be doing it.

As for basketball...

Canadian coach turning heads in NBA circles

His aspirations in the game are large, stating that his two goals are to coach in the NBA, and for Canada at the Olympics. “Even when I’m working with the junior national team, I get a sense of pride when I pull that maple leaf on my chest. It means as much to me— if not more— than anything I’m doing [at Summer League]. In fact everything I’m doing here I’m trying to represent Canada.”

“Success breeds success,” Morrison says. “Canada has great coaches—not just great players. As the players have success people down south will start to wonder who are training these guys. As guys like me have success hopefully I can help inspire the guys coming up behind me. If we keep knocking on the door we can break it down together”.

I am not a francophile, I am a francophone :) but sure.

Yes, the Q in spite of being the weakest of the three CHL leagues gets the best media coverage of all three. Especially from RDS which has a dedicated reporter Stéphane Leroux who is on Sports30 (equivalent to SportsCentre) regularly with highlights and scores, and also appears on magazine-type shows alongside guys who talk Habs and the NHL.

Eh, I wasn't 100% sure whether you were or not and wasn't going to be presumptive.

RDS also has a weekly show on the Quebec Midget AAA league IIRC.

-------------

In CPL news:

Peter Schaad @PeteSchaad
I’ve heard rumblings from a few avenues that the CPL may be on the verge of a rather significant broadcast/media rights deal. If true, what a fantastic achievement for the League & CSB leadership. The chain reaction from that kind of deal would be immense. #CanPL

Schaad covers the Whitecaps for TSN so there's likely something to it. I've been under the assumption that Sportsnet will be going after the CPL after losing EPL and for featuring CPL in articles lately so we'll see. TSN still has rights to the Canadian MLS teams so running those and CPL could work, I suppose, but the rights make more sense with Sportsnet.

Does RDS talk much about the six Maritime based teams in the QMJHL,or do they limit their coverage exclusively to the 12 Quebec based teams.

BTW, I think they should change the name of the league to the Quebec and Maritime Junior Hockey League - they wouldn't even have to change the league acronym!! :)