Quote:
Originally Posted by Tabaracci_31
That’s the team I grew up with. I remember being legitimately shocked when a lot of my classmates who never seemed to care about the Flames suddenly got jerseys and shirts in 2004. At the time, I was pissed about it in a weird, hipster way. “I went to their “”shows”” before they were big!” In hindsight, I don’t blame everyone. Funny how things change through the years. It was almost inconceivable to cheer for a team that made the playoffs consistently, who had a lot of fans and made hockey seem cool.
|
My experience was pretty much the same as yours: I knew no one else who watched Flames hockey. As I wrote in "[News] Adidas 4th Jersey "reverse retro" Thread (ol’ Blasty has returned!)":
Quote:
Originally Posted by timun
Prior to the bandwagoneers of the spring of 2004 I didn't know anyone else who was a Flames fan. The only ones I knew were the 12,000 or so who actually showed up at the Saddledome.
|
The Flames sucked—year-in, year-out—for a long time. It went on so long that yeah, it really had become inconceivable that I would cheer for a team that actually made the playoffs and had lots of other fans. It was surreal when they made the playoffs in '04; I almost didn't believe it. And they didn't even squeak into 8th place, as they tantalizingly came close to many years between '96 and '04, they were 6th! Safely "in"!
Most of my friends in the late '90s and early '00s were Oilers fans, because they were the only people I could talk hockey with. They found the Flames' ineptitude sad more than anything. In much the same way I find the Oilers' ineptitude since 2006 sad, and the "Edmonton is no good!" joking that goes on on this forum is puerile and dumb to me.
I also, in retrospect, don't blame the '04 bandwagoneers for not giving a damn for the almost-decade prior. I've come to think of them as "the smart ones": why torture yourself cheering for a bunch of losers who play a boring game? It's a sports entertainment business. The biggest con pro sports ever successfully executed was brainwashing fans into believing that teams are owed any loyalty whatsoever, that you're a "bad fan" if you don't stick out watching a crap product year after year. They wrap their brand with your hometown's name—it's not just the Flames hockey club, it's the CALGARY Flames—and tell you they're out there playing for YOU, to represent YOUR city. It's a crock of ****, it's just a marketing scheme; a gimmick used to con you into spending your discretionary income on their product rather than a dinner and a movie or whatever. I still enjoy hockey but I can't be bothered to watch most games. I go to a handful a year, might watch a few at a pub with friends, but I don't torture myself watching Tuesday night games against the Florida Panthers or whatever anymore.