Quote:
Originally Posted by isaidso
Carleton should be playing in front of 5000/fans every single time. Ottawa doesn't deserve that team.
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Sad thing is I don't think many Canadian cities would do much better than Ottawa. I can tell you that at western universities, support for varsity sports other than football is almost nonexistent (and even for football it's far from overwhelming). Men's hockey can get a bit of attention in some centres, men's basketball might get noticed from time to time, but everything else might as well be in a community centre house league for all the attention it gets.
Media coverage is definitely an issue. If you go to a smaller US city with a low-level D-I or even a D-II/D-III team, you will hear about those teams. Conversely, in Canada the university basketball teams get very little media attention (even if they're amazing like Carleton) and are therefore never part of the conversation, even at the local level. When it comes to college basketball, TSN and Sportsnet will still give precedence to a NCAA game that no one in Canada cares about like Villanova vs. Marquette.