ELynah Forum

General Category => Hockey => Topic started by: ebilmes on January 26, 2009, 12:24:36 AM

Title: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: ebilmes on January 26, 2009, 12:24:36 AM
I know "the polls don't matter," but...

Last April I posted the results of a campus poll conducted by the Cornell Progressive which found that hockey was the most popular men's varsity sport.

http://elf.elynah.com/read.php?7,130731,130731#msg-130731

Quote
Which Cornell men's varsity sport is your favorite to watch?

Hockey         37%
Basketball     18
Lacrosse       6
Football       6

Other          7
None           26

+/- 5.3%, N=348, 3/27-30

Our new poll finds almost identical results:

Which Cornell men's varsity sport is your favorite to watch?  

Hockey        38%
Basketball    16
Football      5
Lacrosse      4

Other         6
None          31

± 4.3%, N=494, 1/15-19


Despite a stronger hockey season, there has been no significant increase in popularity for the team.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: ugarte on January 26, 2009, 11:31:15 AM
CornellFan silently weeps...
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Josh '99 on January 26, 2009, 11:47:05 AM
Can you realistically expect hockey to get much more of a "market share" than it already has?  I mean, 38% of the undergrad population is more than enough to fill Lynah (all of it, not just the student section).
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Trotsky on January 26, 2009, 01:10:37 PM
Nothing has significantly changed over the span of the past year.  it would be great if they continued taking the poll every year, same time, with good methodology, and we could see the results ebb and flow with losing, championships, etc.  It would be interesting to have the breakdown from, say, 1969.

The "favorite" metric is a problem, though.  It would be much better to ask individually "how closely do you follow" a given sport.  That way, if, say, both hockey and football were very popular among the same people, it would not be artificially portrayed as zero sum.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: mnagowski on January 26, 2009, 01:29:11 PM
How do you know that CornellFan didn't stuff the ballot box?
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: hypotenuse on January 26, 2009, 03:28:15 PM
As someone who was on campus 1969-73, I doubt the poll results would have been much different then, at least as to hockey. Football, with Ed Marinaro, would have been second, with Richie Moran's lacrosse team. Basketball would have been subsumed in"other". On the other hand, if "hatred of Nixon" had been a varsity sport, it might have challenged hockey.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Trotsky on January 26, 2009, 04:23:58 PM
[quote hypotenuse]if "hatred of Nixon" had been a varsity sport[/quote]

Columbia might have finally been okay at something.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: David Harding on January 27, 2009, 12:29:07 AM
[quote hypotenuse]As someone who was on campus 1969-73, I doubt the poll results would have been much different then, at least as to hockey. Football, with Ed Marinaro, would have been second, with Richie Moran's lacrosse team. Basketball would have been subsumed in"other". On the other hand, if "hatred of Nixon" had been a varsity sport, it might have challenged hockey.[/quote]Having enrolled in 1968, I developed the impression that "taking over buildings" ranked high on the list of sports.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: ugarte on January 27, 2009, 04:15:50 PM
[quote David Harding]Having enrolled in 1968, I developed the impression that "taking over buildings" ranked high on the list of sports.[/quote]
Our taking over buildings teams have sucked for decades. I thought that getting some of the stars of the team to be University trustees would spark interest in revitalizing the program but no dice.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Willy '06 on January 27, 2009, 05:46:07 PM
Maybe if we restart the taking over buildings team, there won't be an issue  about the F-word at Lynah anymore.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: French Rage on January 27, 2009, 05:46:16 PM
[quote ugarte][quote David Harding]Having enrolled in 1968, I developed the impression that "taking over buildings" ranked high on the list of sports.[/quote]
Our taking over buildings teams have sucked for decades. I thought that getting some of the stars of the team to be University trustees would spark interest in revitalizing the program but no dice.[/quote]

They tried to restart the team in 2004 but it members came off as whiney and douchey.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: dbilmes on January 27, 2009, 06:37:13 PM
It's too bad that lacrosse doesn't get more student support. Back in the glory days of the '70s, it would have been right up there with hockey.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Josh '99 on January 27, 2009, 09:18:26 PM
[quote Willy '06]Maybe if we restart the taking over buildings team, there won't be an issue  about the F-word at Lynah anymore.[/quote]Maybe you could organize a group to take over Teagle and demand that Andy be fired?  :-D
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Swampy on January 27, 2009, 10:42:30 PM
[quote hypotenuse]As someone who was on campus 1969-73, I doubt the poll results would have been much different then, at least as to hockey. Football, with Ed Marinaro, would have been second, with Richie Moran's lacrosse team. Basketball would have been subsumed in"other". On the other hand, if "hatred of Nixon" had been a varsity sport, it might have challenged hockey.[/quote]

Sort of like "hatred of Bush" today, huh?
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: mnagowski on January 28, 2009, 10:15:52 AM
QuoteThey tried to restart the team in 2004 but it members came off as whiney and douchey.

The spring of 2005 was a pretty exciting time to be on campus. A disco ball on top of the clock tower, a trip to the NCAAs, a hilarious and petty takeover of Day Hall, and a sudden resignation of the President.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Rita on January 28, 2009, 11:56:22 AM
[quote mnagowski]
QuoteThey tried to restart the team in 2004 but it members came off as whiney and douchey.

The spring of 2005 was a pretty exciting time to be on campus. A disco ball on top of the clock tower, a trip to the NCAAs, a hilarious and petty takeover of Day Hall, and a sudden resignation of the President.[/quote]

Disco ball? Did it have strobe lights?

That may top the pumpkin that was on the tower for a long time (http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/99/6.10.99/pumpkin_update.html) in the fall 1997/winter 1998.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: mnagowski on January 28, 2009, 12:32:53 PM
(http://www.librarianavengers.org/weblog/images/disco.jpg)
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Josh '99 on January 28, 2009, 02:02:36 PM
[quote Rita][quote mnagowski]
QuoteThey tried to restart the team in 2004 but it members came off as whiney and douchey.

The spring of 2005 was a pretty exciting time to be on campus. A disco ball on top of the clock tower, a trip to the NCAAs, a hilarious and petty takeover of Day Hall, and a sudden resignation of the President.[/quote]

Disco ball? Did it have strobe lights?

That may top the pumpkin that was on the tower for a long time (http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/99/6.10.99/pumpkin_update.html) in the fall 1997/winter 1998.[/quote]Am I the only one who was on campus at the time who didn't give a rat's ass about a stupid pumpkin on the tower?
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Dafatone on January 28, 2009, 02:26:05 PM
I was on campus for the disco ball, and honestly never even knew it was there.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: BMac on January 28, 2009, 07:46:32 PM
I call bull, Datafone, unless you're one of those majors that doesn't go anywhere near ho plaza or west campus. (I'm an engineer, but I lived on West at the time).

There was an enormous, giantic, colossal crane in the middle of Ho Plaza there for a week trying to take down the ball. The Daily Sun said that the whole thing cost tens of thousands of dollars, because of the special crane.... it was a mess. They had to take the thing down in case it fell on someone's head, but there's few cranes that tall around Ithaca. Plus, Ho Plaza isn't made to hold such heavy objects, so there were special considerations for that.

In any case, there is no way that you could have walked anywhere near the tower and not noticed. Well, as I said, unless you never went that way...
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: mnagowski on January 28, 2009, 08:28:00 PM
I call bull as well. It was a huge ordeal due to the perceived safety issues of a glass object falling from such heights. (For some reason a pumpkin falling from the same heights was thought to be safer.)

And even if he never saw it, it was plastered all over the Sun. And even if you don't read said newspaper rag, surely an associate would surely bring it up to make conversation. The likelihood of not hearing about some sort of object on the top of the clocktower would be incredibly small.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: Trotsky on January 29, 2009, 01:40:01 PM
[quote mnagowski]the perceived safety issues of a glass object falling from such heights. (For some reason a pumpkin falling from the same heights was thought to be safer.)[/quote]

Pumpkin shards hurt people all the time, it's just not widely reported.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: RatushnyFan on January 29, 2009, 01:48:03 PM
The real question is student apathy - "None" increased from 26% to 31%.  Holy $hit!

And interest in lacrosse is plummeting despite having a good team.

Sample size is increasing but results are still +/- 4% so hard to make many real conclusions.
Title: Re: Hockey no more popular now than last year
Post by: dbilmes on January 29, 2009, 02:59:29 PM
[quote RatushnyFan]The real question is student apathy - "None" increased from 26% to 31%.  Holy $hit!
[/quote]
I guess we just have to accept the fact that Cornell is not a jock school!