Re: Hollywood. I think that was Mark’s point.

Re: Michael Moore. We agree to disagree. :^) In my opinion, he certainly can be irritating, but he’s also thought-provoking.

I remember when Einstein Bros. was just a nice little 6-location Kansas City outfit called Bagel & Bagel. Am I selling out to the man if I continue to eat their bagels?

And let’s not start on Chipotle……so good, but I feel so unclean after giving my money to the health-destroying McDonalds Corp….

Why don’t you go back and read my post and let me know when you find the place where I said the Stanley Cup Finals are going to be full of boring, unwatchable hockey? Or where the people who do watch would be better off watching Everybody Loves Raymond reruns? I’ll wait here forever, because you’ll never find it.

What I said what that I’m certain the NHL, which as every hockey fan knows is in a bit of a bind right now, what with the lockout looming and threatening the entire 2004-2005 season, probably wishes it had teams in bigger markets playing in the finals, because that would most likely mean higher ratings. The games will be fine, and nobody needs to tell me that St. Louis and Iginla have been toiling in obscurity for years, along with most of the rest of their teammates.

Much as we’d like to believe that sports are above concerns of the marketplace, they’re not. Will it be great hockey? It probably will. Will lots of people be watching? I strongly doubt it. Are you going to let what some guy with a $5 website says about TV ratings affect your enjoyment of the Stanley Cup Finals? I hope not.

I don’t want every sport to be baseball or basketball, where the Lakers and Yankees are assumed to have a divine right to the finals every year (or at least 3 out of 4). All I said was that, all else being equal, the NHL would probably be a little happier with some bigger markets involved, and I defy you to prove otherwise.

New York and LA are provincial markets full of front-running fans. Their true-believer credentials are weak. Their sports media are spoiled toddlers. Their athletes are preening fops. And they drive pro sports in the US these days. If it were up to me, it wouldn’t be that way. But that’s what the advertisers like, and they’re the ones who bring us the sporting events we all love–whether we like it or not. They want eyeballs. They want the biggest piece of the biggest pie. Calgary doesn’t register to them. Tampa barely does. And the ad buyers are sitting in New York thinking, “Who’s going to watch these games full of nobody anybody’s heard of?”

You know and I know that they’re wrong, and that they don’t understand the sport. But they pay the bills. And so it goes.