Skulsky episode of 2015 Presidents' Week Series on TSN1040

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sj-roc
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Audio links for Skulsky's appearance:

10:30-11am portion, starts at 23:30 of this 55:30 file and run through the end:

http://www.tsn.ca/radio/vancouver-1040- ... 1-1.343573

11am-12noon portion, through the entirety of this one:

http://www.tsn.ca/radio/vancouver-1040- ... 2-1.343594

Wally Buono's appearance is on two other podcasts:

12noon-1pm portion, through the entirety of this one:

http://www.tsn.ca/radio/vancouver-1040- ... 3-1.343628

1-1:30pm portion, runs from start through to about 16:40:

http://www.tsn.ca/radio/vancouver-1040- ... 4-1.343667
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
TheLionKing
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Thanks for the summary sj-roc. Much appreciated. Very disappointed that the Lions won't be wearing the gun metal grey jerseys. Another 3rd jersey in the works ?? Seems again like a cash grab.
TheLionKing
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Neil in Burnaby: Onfield branding is bothersome. DS: I’m not crazy about it either. And we’re not allowed to put ads on our turf.


:thup: :thup:
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skulksy basically all but said the very successful bronze elementary school program they ran last year (very successfully i might add - free child bronze with adult purchase), will be up and running in the fall. The f'd up by not doing it again in June. That will fill bronze seats.
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sj-roc
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TheLionKing wrote:
Neil in Burnaby: Onfield branding is bothersome. DS: I’m not crazy about it either. And we’re not allowed to put ads on our turf.


:thup: :thup:
I suspect this might have something to do with having to change over between soccer and football so often and having to scrub those painted-on ads off the turf each time, which probably degrades it condition, although this policy predates the Whitecaps' presence in the building. It's been many years now since regular season games @BCP had any ads on the turf — they were already stopped even before the new roof went on. We still have the standup ads that flank each team's bench along the sideline (a Lions receiver during the 2010-2011 Tempire period sustained a throat injury from colliding with one at an awkward angle), and LED ad boards behind each team bench, but I believe most teams also now have these other forms of advertising anyway. We also have the ribbon board on the entire circumference of the upper deck for advertising. I notice they usually co-ordinate this ribbon board with what's on the field level LED boards.

I've noticed one exception to having on-field ads on the turf comes when there are playoff games and especially Grey Cups; the field gets covered for those games. Those are external to the Lions' lease and handled through the league's head office.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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TheLionKing wrote:Thanks for the summary sj-roc. Much appreciated. Very disappointed that the Lions won't be wearing the gun metal grey jerseys. Another 3rd jersey in the works ?? Seems again like a cash grab.
News flash. That's what 3rd jerseys or alternate jerseys are all about; selling more merchandise. Occasionally a 3rd jersey becomes a team's permanent jersey but no matter what league they usually have a shelf life of around 3 years then it's off to the mothballs with them in favour of a new alternate jersey that the uber-fan simply cannot resist adding to their wardrobe. Skulsky did say they no longer have any of the gun metal jersey's having sold them in last year's locker room sale. I don't have one, nor do I have a replica, but I do have Jabar Westerman's gun metal helmet in my collection. :wink:
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sj-roc
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Hambone wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:Thanks for the summary sj-roc. Much appreciated. Very disappointed that the Lions won't be wearing the gun metal grey jerseys. Another 3rd jersey in the works ?? Seems again like a cash grab.
News flash. That's what 3rd jerseys or alternate jerseys are all about; selling more merchandise. Occasionally a 3rd jersey becomes a team's permanent jersey but no matter what league they usually have a shelf life of around 3 years then it's off to the mothballs with them in favour of a new alternate jersey that the uber-fan simply cannot resist adding to their wardrobe. Skulsky did say they no longer have any of the gun metal jersey's having sold them in last year's locker room sale. I don't have one, nor do I have a replica, but I do have Jabar Westerman's gun metal helmet in my collection. :wink:
Yep. In fact we've had several alternative jerseys since the start of the Ackles II era in 2002. In 2003, when we were still wearing the mostly-black-with-white-numbers-and-orange-trim jersey of the late 1990s, we brought in a 50th season edition of the jersey, with the 50th season crest on it near the left shoulder. Note the helmets are the silver/grey coloured ones of the late 1990s era:

Image

In 2009 we used two different throwback alternatives as described in this bclions.com article:

Image
[EDIT: actually only the Simon jersey here is a throwback. The Miles one was an ex nihilo alternative jersey with no attempt at making it retro, and of a vintage earlier than 2009, introduced at the latest in 2006, possibly earlier, as I recall we wore those in the GC we won that year.]

There was also this one whose timeline I don't remember for certain but I'm thinking Tempire years of 2010 and 2011; you can see the crest at the bottom of the v-neck indicating its alternative status:

Image

Then we have the recently-discontinued gun metal grey numbers, and another one to be unveiled presumably sometime next year. So that's six alternative jerseys from 2003 to 2016, a 14-season stretch, which averages to less than the three year lifespan Hambone mentioned, and this may not even be an exhaustive enumeration for all I know. Even the current default orange home jerseys aren't quite the same ones that were brought in during the Ackles II era as I recall at some point they removed the piping trim around the shoulder level. I think the whole league had new jerseys that year as they may have switched suppliers and decided while they were at it to change uniforms as well, however slightly, for every team in the league.

Here's the version without the piping, and the current CCS cresting:

Image

And here is the older one with the extra piping and cresting from previous sponsors:

Image
Last edited by sj-roc on Mon Aug 10, 2015 8:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Qman wrote:skulksy basically all but said the very successful bronze elementary school program they ran last year (very successfully i might add - free child bronze with adult purchase), will be up and running in the fall. The f'd up by not doing it again in June. That will fill bronze seats.

They really need to do whatever they need to between June and September next year to get bums in the seats. I am getting really tired of hearing this "poor attendance" crap in the media - it was highlighted ALL DAY LONG on TSN1040's sports breaks (followed by sound bytes from Skulsky explaining/defending it).

Sports fans - especially in this market - don't want to be associated with something that's not popular or has no buzz - so if "poor attendance" is the talking point around your brand, people will stay away from it like a big, steaming turd. On the other hand, when the media darling Whitecaps tarp the *poop* out of BC Place and basically get the same number of people attending, they have "passionate fans" who "sell out" BC Place to create this amazing "atmosphere."



DH :cool:
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sj-roc
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David wrote:
Qman wrote:skulksy basically all but said the very successful bronze elementary school program they ran last year (very successfully i might add - free child bronze with adult purchase), will be up and running in the fall. The f'd up by not doing it again in June. That will fill bronze seats.

They really need to do whatever they need to between June and September next year to get bums in the seats. I am getting really tired of hearing this "poor attendance" crap in the media - it was highlighted ALL DAY LONG on TSN1040's sports breaks (followed by sound bytes from Skulsky explaining/defending it).

Sports fans - especially in this market - don't want to be associated with something that's not popular or has no buzz - so if "poor attendance" is the talking point around your brand, people will stay away from it like a big, steaming turd. On the other hand, when the media darling Whitecaps tarp the *poop* out of BC Place and basically get the same number of people attending, they have "passionate fans" who "sell out" BC Place to create this amazing "atmosphere."



DH :cool:
David, you're probably already aware of all this, but I'm going to throw this out there anyway...

The difference in perception for the two teams comes from — as much as any other factor — how they got to where they are now. The Whitecaps built their crowd basically from scratch starting the year BCP reopened with the new roof. They're still on an ascendancy arc. The Lions on the other hand not that long ago — the memory of it would be reasonably fresh for most observers — routinely drew well into the 30k's but have slipped from these heights. They're on a descendancy arc and have been for a few years now, and have yet to shake it off.

A famous football example of what I'm trying to say comes from the 1968 Harvard/Yale game. Yale led 29-13 with just one minute to play. Yet Harvard stormed back with 16 points in the scant amount of time left and the game ended in a 29-29 draw. The headline for the game story in the Harvard student newspaper the next day read "Harvard beats Yale, 29-29". The headline of course makes no literal sense but it reflects the situation whereby Harvard fans were elated and felt as though they won the game by virtue of the improbable comeback just to tie the affair, whereas Yale fans at the end were choked at having squandered a 16pt lead. Right now we're Yale and the Caps are Harvard.

There's sort of an "anchoring effect" going on. For the Caps, being a fairly new team (at least as an MLS entity) there's not much of an "anchor", no point of reference as to how one should judge the size of the crowds at a Caps game and how it correlates to market acceptance of the team. The only real anchor is the one the team themselves provided: capping capacity at 21k. Sellouts at this capacity have been quite common, and that becomes the narrative. Don't think for a second the Caps aren't aware of this.

They're also very aware that if they start to de-tarp, then they also change the anchor. The old 21k anchor would have no meaning from that point; it would go up to wherever they set it, and even if they put the tarps back on, people aren't readily going to shift their anchor back to that 21k. If they were to de-tarp the whole lower bowl to go up to 27.5k like the Lions now have, and the crowds failed to grow accordingly, the narrative would shift from "sellouts" to "why aren't the Caps selling out anymore?" and this is why they're in no hurry to do so. The Caps are all about controlling the narrative, by controlling the anchor (On his appearance during last year's Presidents' Week series, Lenarduzzi said he was perfectly content to leave capacity at 21k even through 2020.). As a younger team with less history on which to be judged, this self-established anchor is an advantage they wield over the Lions...

... who on the other hand DO have that anchor of relatively recent and relatively common crowds of 30k and beyond. Their current crowds of barely 20k are being judged on that standard. I don't think it has as much to do with the Caps being "media darlings" as one might think, it's more the other way around. They weren't media darlings from the get-go; they became so by carefully managing perceptions and expectations, even in the face of fan and media protest that they should expand capacity when the Beckhams and their ilk come to town. If they gave in, it would just make people realise how low the crowds truly are the rest of the time.

I read a book 2-3yrs ago that describes this psychological effect and it even gave the Harvard/Yale football example but darned if I recall the title exactly. It's either one of Malcolm Gladwell's writings, Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" or one of the Heath brothers' volumes (either "Made To Stick" or "Switch"). I read all of these around the same time and they all cover some overlapping ground which has conflated their contents in my mind. The book summed it up as (approximate quote) "While it matters where you are, how you got there is just as important."
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc wrote:
David wrote:
Qman wrote:skulksy basically all but said the very successful bronze elementary school program they ran last year (very successfully i might add - free child bronze with adult purchase), will be up and running in the fall. The f'd up by not doing it again in June. That will fill bronze seats.

They really need to do whatever they need to between June and September next year to get bums in the seats. I am getting really tired of hearing this "poor attendance" crap in the media - it was highlighted ALL DAY LONG on TSN1040's sports breaks (followed by sound bytes from Skulsky explaining/defending it).

Sports fans - especially in this market - don't want to be associated with something that's not popular or has no buzz - so if "poor attendance" is the talking point around your brand, people will stay away from it like a big, steaming turd. On the other hand, when the media darling Whitecaps tarp the *poop* out of BC Place and basically get the same number of people attending, they have "passionate fans" who "sell out" BC Place to create this amazing "atmosphere."



DH :cool:
David, you're probably already aware of all this, but I'm going to throw this out there anyway...

The difference in perception for the two teams comes from — as much as any other factor — how they got to where they are now. The Whitecaps built their crowd basically from scratch starting the year BCP reopened with the new roof. They're still on an ascendancy arc. The Lions on the other hand not that long ago — the memory of it would be reasonably fresh for most observers — routinely drew well into the 30k's but have slipped from these heights. They're on a descendancy arc and have been for a few years now, and have yet to shake it off.

A famous football example of what I'm trying to say comes from the 1968 Harvard/Yale game. Yale led 29-13 with just one minute to play. Yet Harvard stormed back with 16 points in the scant amount of time left and the game ended in a 29-29 draw. The headline for the game story in the Harvard student newspaper the next day read "Harvard beats Yale, 29-29". The headline of course makes no literal sense but it reflects the situation whereby Harvard fans were elated and felt as though they won the game by virtue of the improbable comeback just to tie the affair, whereas Yale fans at the end were choked at having squandered a 16pt lead. Right now we're Yale and the Caps are Harvard.

There's sort of an "anchoring effect" going on. For the Caps, being a fairly new team (at least as an MLS entity) there's not much of an "anchor", no point of reference as to how one should judge the size of the crowds at a Caps game and how it correlates to market acceptance of the team. The only real anchor is the one the team themselves provided: capping capacity at 21k. Sellouts at this capacity have been quite common, and that becomes the narrative. Don't think for a second the Caps aren't aware of this.

They're also very aware that if they start to de-tarp, then they also change the anchor. The old 21k anchor would have no meaning from that point; it would go up to wherever they set it, and even if they put the tarps back on, people aren't readily going to shift their anchor back to that 21k. If they were to de-tarp the whole lower bowl to go up to 27.5k like the Lions now have, and the crowds failed to grow accordingly, the narrative would shift from "sellouts" to "why aren't the Caps selling out anymore?" and this is why they're in no hurry to do so. The Caps are all about controlling the narrative, by controlling the anchor (On his appearance during last year's Presidents' Week series, Lenarduzzi said he was perfectly content to leave capacity at 21k even through 2020.). As a younger team with less history on which to be judged, this self-established anchor is an advantage they wield over the Lions...

... who on the other hand DO have that anchor of relatively recent and relatively common crowds of 30k and beyond. Their current crowds of barely 20k are being judged on that standard. I don't think it has as much to do with the Caps being "media darlings" as one might think, it's more the other way around. They weren't media darlings from the get-go; they became so by carefully managing perceptions and expectations, even in the face of fan and media protest that they should expand capacity when the Beckhams and their ilk come to town. If they gave in, it would just make people realise how low the crowds truly are the rest of the time.

I read a book 2-3yrs ago that describes this psychological effect and it even gave the Harvard/Yale football example but darned if I recall the title exactly. It's either one of Malcolm Gladwell's writings, Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" or one of the Heath brothers' volumes (either "Made To Stick" or "Switch"). I read all of these around the same time and they all cover some overlapping ground which has conflated their contents in my mind. The book summed it up as (approximate quote) "While it matters where you are, how you got there is just as important."

Excellent right up , very well spoken But I think we are coming from were the lions had the upper deck open giving more people an option to sit were the sightlines are the best in the stadium to down below were there as not as good , or you go to the lower bowl endzone were those are the worst seats in all of sports. Very bad move by the lions to do this they could have cut off a lot more sections in a different way to lower capacity . that is the problem they are having know.
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Thanks to sj-roc for the detailed summaries. I just heard the final segment with Skulsky and the first hour with Buono. I didn't hear much new from either of them but I'm glad to hear there will be some type of family ticket offer this fall and some halftime entertainment. I hope the popular Remembrance Day tribute to veterans is back for the Nov. 9 game too.

Here is LU's summary of the Skulsky appearance, along with some of his own comments and some previously unpublished Skulsky quotes:
Lions boss Skulsky opens up to radio audience

As for the demise of the gun-metal grey third jerseys (or, as I prefer to call them, black on black), I'm elated. I've hated them from the outset. The purpose of a uniform is to identify the team and player. Third jerseys can be hard for casual fans to recognize, in any sport or league. Just watch a televised game with a team wearing an unfamiliar jersey and see how long it takes to figure out who you're watching. The much bigger problem with the Lions' thirds was their stealth design. The black on black (sorry, gun-metal grey) numbers were almost impossible to make out from my seat in the second row of B.C. Place or from most live-action shots on my 52-inch HDTV. If I can't tell who I'm watching, it ruins my ability to understand and enjoy the game.

I would not object to a throwback black jersey with white numbering similar to the primary colours worn by the Lions at many successful points in their history, including the 1964 and 2006 Grey Cups.
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B.C.FAN wrote:Thanks to sj-roc for the detailed summaries. I just heard the final segment with Skulsky and the first hour with Buono. I didn't hear much new from either of them but I'm glad to hear there will be some type of family ticket offer this fall and some halftime entertainment. I hope the popular Remembrance Day tribute to veterans is back for the Nov. 9 game too.

Here is LU's summary of the Skulsky appearance, along with some of his own comments and some previously unpublished Skulsky quotes:
Lions boss Skulsky opens up to radio audience

As for the demise of the gun-metal grey third jerseys (or, as I prefer to call them, black on black), I'm elated. I've hated them from the outset. The purpose of a uniform is to identify the team and player. Third jerseys can be hard for casual fans to recognize, in any sport or league. Just watch a televised game with a team wearing an unfamiliar jersey and see how long it takes to figure out who you're watching. The much bigger problem with the Lions' thirds was their stealth design. The black on black (sorry, gun-metal grey) numbers were almost impossible to make out from my seat in the second row of B.C. Place or from most live-action shots on my 52-inch HDTV. If I can't tell who I'm watching, it ruins my ability to understand and enjoy the game.

I would not object to a throwback black jersey with white numbering similar to the primary colours worn by the Lions at many successful points in their history, including the 1964 and 2006 Grey Cups.
Thanks BCF. I was neither here nor there on the GMG's, EXCEPT for that. Nothing worse that not being able to see numbers. When the contrast is sensible I can even make out the names of some players from the stands sometimes if they're not too exotic or the player's hair isn't too long, so that compounds the frustration. They didn't really achieve this with the GMG's. They said that the 2014 edition was adjusted to overcome this problem of the 2013 version but they didn't look any better to me in person.

DS made the point about not playing well in them recently. I can't think offhand of any other examples but I believe we wore them for the GWN Ssk home game last year that we lost.

X2 on the salute to veterans halftime show.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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too bad, the gunmetals had a very strong impact on the exact demographic the Lions (and really any organization) should be targeting
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I’m all wired up. That’s a trait me and Wally have. We really don’t want to be around other people. That’s my time. Between 4pm until halftime we’re doing all the right things to recognize people. Afterwards it’s my time.

“I approached Jeff (Tedford) on this, I would never, never do this if I was in the way.”
He actually said that!!!! Laughable and who knows executives on the sidelines "all wired up". No wonder the team is done at half time. It must be "their time" too if it's the President's time...lol.
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The demise of the gun metal grey jersey is very very disappointing, and shows that the team doesn't listen to their consumers. Sure some traditionalists here didn't like it, but what matters are the massive amounts of demand and interest there was for these jerseys in the public. These jerseys were red hot, and the team really screwed up a huge opportunity by not featuring them more.
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