Wolfpack and grassroots

[adamkungl]

A common criticism of TWP by the heartlands brigade is that they don't even have any Canadian players.

I think most sane people agree that's a fairly ridiculous criticism for a 3 year old professional sports outfit launched in pioneering territory.
BUT what is concerning, and a fair criticism, is how little TWP are doing to engage with local football and develop pathways for Canadians to become professional footballers.

I believe that the Wolfpack project will at best be only a half success if they never develop a pathway from Canada to Super League. At their current rate of engagement, they will never develop a Canadian professional RL player. I don't think "exposure" by simply staging professional sport in the city will be enough to get that pathway going.

The obvious suggestion is for TWP to play a reserves team out of CRL or USARL competitions. But it's pretty fair to say these competitions simply aren't good enough even for a reserve squad run by a professional outfit. The most recent USARL and Ontario RL seasons were 6 and 4 games respectively. Simply not feasible for professional aspiring players.

Being amateur competitions of an obscure sport, there are obvious difficulties in running a 12 or 18 week season (18 is probably the minimum competition length to actually be a useful hunting ground for pro or semi-pro reserve players).

So what can be done?
Is it feasible for TWP or the proposed NYC franchise to invest in local competitions to bring them up to a useful standard?
Are there smaller steps that could be taken in the meantime to build pathways between American grassroots and TWP?

 

[Perth Tiger]

I would think that their first priority is to ensure that the club can become sustainable on its own before worrying about further grassroot developments. If Argyle decided it was costing to much money or becomes jacked at the RFL and left, Wolfpack would fold the next day.

As Widnes is showing at the moment, it seems hard enough creating a sustainable professional club at this stage, better to focus on that than spreading themselves to thin.

Better off leaving the development to CRL and USARL while providing whatever support they can.

In reality, unless you get some freak athlete fall in love with the game, there wont be any Canadian or USA players developed in the next 10 or 20 years. After all the Storm have barely produced a Victorian junior in 20 years.

 

[Pommy]

I think we would all love the Wolfpack to be developing players but we really need to take what we can get.
A pro league club in NA would have been unimaginable 10 years ago. We have that now, it might not be perfect but it’s better than nothing. We just have to hope that having a visible presence can help push things forward.

It would however be nice if Argyle could put some money (change in the grand scheme of things) in to an English or French side just so the club was contributing something to the development of players even if they weren’t Canadians.
Canadians would be preferable but it does seem unrealistic at this point.

 

[latingringo101]

The least the Wolfpack could do is help promote the local RL comps (Ontario,Alberta and BC) at WP homegames or even have double headers of the Ontario league playing before WP games.

 

[taipan]

If they've got the money to make a bid for SBW,surely they can put some money into grassroots, within Toronto and surrounds.

 

[Walter sobchak]

If they've got the money to make a bid for SBW,surely they can put some money into grassroots, within Toronto and surrounds.

Hopefully that comes when the Wolfpack reaches super league in the form of argyle and maybe the Canadian/Ontario government.

 

[Hello, I'm The Doctor]

Im not surprised they are first focused on making the team successful, popular and sustainable....

After that, we can demand grassroot stuff.

Im also wondering if it is just the American culture to keep it all separate. For example, NFL has nothing to do with funding the college players, they just take them after they graduate. And i dont think the Colleges have anything to do with the highschool programs (do club programs exist at all?)

Maybe they only plan to build the first grade team and expect others to come through and do the rest separately

 

[deluded pom?]

Im also wondering if it is just the American culture to keep it all separate. For example, NFL has nothing to do with funding the college players, they just take them after they graduate. And i dont think the Colleges have anything to do with the highschool programs (do club programs exist at all?)

I’d never really thought about that much before. So how do colleges and high schools fund their sports’ teams? Is it purely financed by the money generated by people attending home games? I imagine the coaches at the high end of college sport don’t come cheap. Then there’s the maintenance of the stadium etc. Huge outlays for what is essentially an amateur organisation. I was under the impression that NFL teams would pay a fee to the colleges they take their players from. Sorry if it’s OT.

 

[thorson1987]

I’d never really thought about that much before. So how do colleges and high schools fund their sports’ teams? Is it purely financed by the money generated by people attending home games? I imagine the coaches at the high end of college sport don’t come cheap. Then there’s the maintenance of the stadium etc. Huge outlays for what is essentially an amateur organisation. I was under the impression that NFL teams would pay a fee to the colleges they take their players from. Sorry if it’s OT.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/100001024

High School Sports Have Turned Into Big Business

Mark Koba | @MarkKobaCNBC
Published 11:29 AM ET Sun, 9 Dec 2012 Updated 5:27 PM ET Tue, 11 Dec 2012CNBC.com

Source: Aerial Photography Inc. | Wikipedia
Eagle Stadium in Allen, Texas.
Naming rights for stadiums,TV and Internet broadcasting revenues, coaches with big pay days and multi-million dollar game day facilities. These types of money deals in sports are usually associated with the pros and college.

But American high schools are taking a page out of the same playbook by doing similar kinds of deals. While the money is nowhere near the pro and college level, schools are nonetheless turning their athletic programs into one of the most explosive areas in sports business, say analysts.

"It's an economic juggernaut," said Mark Conrad, associate professor of legal and ethical studies at Fordham University's school of business. "If you think about where people are on Friday nights in areas like the South and Midwest, they are at their local high school football game. It's no wonder the market for high school sports has expanded."


Conrad said the fan devotion that's fueling the business expansion is comparable to what some people feel about a company like Apple."People love their iPhones and iPads and it's like a religion to them. It's the same with high school sports."

The money began slowly pouring into high school sports in the 1980's when local networks, along with ESPN, started featuring high school events, especially football. Budget cuts, even before the recession of 2007-09, forced many schools to seek out lucrative deals. But for some schools, the funding keeps flowing in from all sides-public and private.

For instance, a $60 million state-of-the-art high school football stadium that seats 18,000 – the money approved by voters in a local referendum - opened this past summer in Allen, Texas. Meanwhile, shoe company New Balance paid $500,000 last year to help refurbish an existing high school football stadium in Gloucester, Mass., as well as getting the stadium's naming rights.

Similar high school stadium naming deals with local businesses have been made across the U.S., including in Lakewood, Ohio ($320,000) and Noblesville, Indiana ($575,000).

Broadcasting rights and money are also expanding. Last summer, the New York City public school system negotiated a two-year, $500,000 contract with the MSG Varsity Network — a Cablevisionnetwork — to broadcast all types of high school athletic events.* And the California Interscholastic Federation just signed a 15-year deal with Time Warner Cable to broadcast high school football playoff games, for $8.5 million.

"The money in sports is looking for the next generation and high school sports are huge economically. It's natural in a way that big money is going in that direction," said Robert Boland, academic chair of the NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management.

It's the constant demand for any kind of high school sports product that's spurring business growth, said David Rudolph, CEO of PlayOn, a high school sports media company.

"The number of people who go to high school is three times the number in college and almost everyone can identify themselves as a high school fan," said Rudolph, whose company broadcasts some 30,000 high school sporting events over television and the Internet. "Most people played high school sports and they love to watch it."

PlayOn became an independent company with venture capital money in 2008 after initially being part of Turner Broadcasting. Rudolph said the Atlanta based firm has a breakdown of 98 percent digital broadcasting and 2 percent television.

"There's no central high school organization like the NCAA in college, so we pay state wide school sport associations for the broadcasting rights and then license those to cable companies and get advertising fees," Rudolph said. "We're right at profit."

But as the marketplace for high school sports heats up, so too is the cost of doing business, Rudolph said.

"We pay less than six figures for the rights to high school events but they are going up in price as the competition for those rights heats up," added Rudolph.

The money from a PlayOn, ESPN, New Balance or a Time Warner goes to the local school boards and districts for them to dish out to the actual high schools. And that could be a problem, said Boland, as some schools may be more equal than others on and off the field.

While the national average salary for a high school football coach is around $39,000, in football-loving Texas, that average is more than $88,000, and one coach at Euless Trinity High School made more than $114,000 in 2011.

"In a school district, the schools will likely be competing among themselves for money," said Boland. "Some schools will have higher-paid coaches and better sport programs and they can keep getting money while leaving others behind."

For Naomi Storey, a resident of Hiram, Ga., the worry is that all the money will make a bad situation worse.

"Many kids are already putting too much emphasis on sports and not academics, "said Storey whose children and grandchildren have gone to local area high schools in this northwest section of Georgia. "And a lot of them are getting injured with broken bones and blown knees and arms."

Storey, who worked as a substitute teacher for 19 years, added that she's experienced firsthand the negative influence of money and competition at the high school level.

"My granddaughter's husband was fired last year as a football coach from one of the local high schools after 18 years because one of the highest donors felt like his son wasn't getting to play enough," Story said. "Luckily he got hired by another high school principal."

Analysts say the worry with all this money is of course what it could do to the student-athlete, the coaches and the schools under the increasing exposure to media coverage. There's pressure to perform through injuries, the danger of recruitment violations by coaches, the special treatment to schools - at the expense of others - that are deemed winners by districts.

"These are just kids really and so vulnerable in many ways," said Boland. "These high school sports have been monetized and it's not always in the best interests."

But the spotlight on high school athletics - and the money that comes with it - just continues. ESPN broadcast nationally some 24 high school football and basketball games this year while Fox Sports Florida, a regional network like FSN Pittsburgh or Comcast Sportsnet, shows a high school game every weekend live and in prime time through the season.

It just proves, said Mark Conrad, that no one should expect the money that's pouring into high school sports to get thrown out of the game anytime soon.

"There may be a saturation point to all this but right now it keeps growing. The market in high school sports keeps expanding," Conrad added. "The dedication to high school sports from all sides is endless."

*CNBC is part of NBC Universal which is majority owned by Comcast.

 

[Pommy]

I’d never really thought about that much before. So how do colleges and high schools fund their sports’ teams? Is it purely financed by the money generated by people attending home games? I imagine the coaches at the high end of college sport don’t come cheap. Then there’s the maintenance of the stadium etc. Huge outlays for what is essentially an amateur organisation. I was under the impression that NFL teams would pay a fee to the colleges they take their players from. Sorry if it’s OT.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/feb/22/zion-williamson-injury-duke-nike-hypocrisy

It’s been big news recently after the top college amateur had a potentially career damaging injury playing as an amateur whilst wearing trainers the college is getting paid large sums for the students to wear.
Luckily for the guy the injury isn’t as serious as first feared.

 

[RedVee]

https://www.cnbc.com/id/100001024

High School Sports Have Turned Into Big Business

Mark Koba | @MarkKobaCNBC
Published 11:29 AM ET Sun, 9 Dec 2012 Updated 5:27 PM ET Tue, 11 Dec 2012CNBC.com

Source: Aerial Photography Inc. | Wikipedia
Eagle Stadium in Allen, Texas.
Naming rights for stadiums,TV and Internet broadcasting revenues, coaches with big pay days and multi-million dollar game day facilities. These types of money deals in sports are usually associated with the pros and college.

But American high schools are taking a page out of the same playbook by doing similar kinds of deals. While the money is nowhere near the pro and college level, schools are nonetheless turning their athletic programs into one of the most explosive areas in sports business, say analysts.

"It's an economic juggernaut," said Mark Conrad, associate professor of legal and ethical studies at Fordham University's school of business. "If you think about where people are on Friday nights in areas like the South and Midwest, they are at their local high school football game. It's no wonder the market for high school sports has expanded."


Conrad said the fan devotion that's fueling the business expansion is comparable to what some people feel about a company like Apple."People love their iPhones and iPads and it's like a religion to them. It's the same with high school sports."

The money began slowly pouring into high school sports in the 1980's when local networks, along with ESPN, started featuring high school events, especially football. Budget cuts, even before the recession of 2007-09, forced many schools to seek out lucrative deals. But for some schools, the funding keeps flowing in from all sides-public and private.

For instance, a $60 million state-of-the-art high school football stadium that seats 18,000 – the money approved by voters in a local referendum - opened this past summer in Allen, Texas. Meanwhile, shoe company New Balance paid $500,000 last year to help refurbish an existing high school football stadium in Gloucester, Mass., as well as getting the stadium's naming rights.

Similar high school stadium naming deals with local businesses have been made across the U.S., including in Lakewood, Ohio ($320,000) and Noblesville, Indiana ($575,000).

Broadcasting rights and money are also expanding. Last summer, the New York City public school system negotiated a two-year, $500,000 contract with the MSG Varsity Network — a Cablevisionnetwork — to broadcast all types of high school athletic events.* And the California Interscholastic Federation just signed a 15-year deal with Time Warner Cable to broadcast high school football playoff games, for $8.5 million.

"The money in sports is looking for the next generation and high school sports are huge economically. It's natural in a way that big money is going in that direction," said Robert Boland, academic chair of the NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management.

It's the constant demand for any kind of high school sports product that's spurring business growth, said David Rudolph, CEO of PlayOn, a high school sports media company.

"The number of people who go to high school is three times the number in college and almost everyone can identify themselves as a high school fan," said Rudolph, whose company broadcasts some 30,000 high school sporting events over television and the Internet. "Most people played high school sports and they love to watch it."

PlayOn became an independent company with venture capital money in 2008 after initially being part of Turner Broadcasting. Rudolph said the Atlanta based firm has a breakdown of 98 percent digital broadcasting and 2 percent television.

"There's no central high school organization like the NCAA in college, so we pay state wide school sport associations for the broadcasting rights and then license those to cable companies and get advertising fees," Rudolph said. "We're right at profit."

But as the marketplace for high school sports heats up, so too is the cost of doing business, Rudolph said.

"We pay less than six figures for the rights to high school events but they are going up in price as the competition for those rights heats up," added Rudolph.

The money from a PlayOn, ESPN, New Balance or a Time Warner goes to the local school boards and districts for them to dish out to the actual high schools. And that could be a problem, said Boland, as some schools may be more equal than others on and off the field.

While the national average salary for a high school football coach is around $39,000, in football-loving Texas, that average is more than $88,000, and one coach at Euless Trinity High School made more than $114,000 in 2011.

"In a school district, the schools will likely be competing among themselves for money," said Boland. "Some schools will have higher-paid coaches and better sport programs and they can keep getting money while leaving others behind."

For Naomi Storey, a resident of Hiram, Ga., the worry is that all the money will make a bad situation worse.

"Many kids are already putting too much emphasis on sports and not academics, "said Storey whose children and grandchildren have gone to local area high schools in this northwest section of Georgia. "And a lot of them are getting injured with broken bones and blown knees and arms."

Storey, who worked as a substitute teacher for 19 years, added that she's experienced firsthand the negative influence of money and competition at the high school level.

"My granddaughter's husband was fired last year as a football coach from one of the local high schools after 18 years because one of the highest donors felt like his son wasn't getting to play enough," Story said. "Luckily he got hired by another high school principal."

Analysts say the worry with all this money is of course what it could do to the student-athlete, the coaches and the schools under the increasing exposure to media coverage. There's pressure to perform through injuries, the danger of recruitment violations by coaches, the special treatment to schools - at the expense of others - that are deemed winners by districts.

"These are just kids really and so vulnerable in many ways," said Boland. "These high school sports have been monetized and it's not always in the best interests."

But the spotlight on high school athletics - and the money that comes with it - just continues. ESPN broadcast nationally some 24 high school football and basketball games this year while Fox Sports Florida, a regional network like FSN Pittsburgh or Comcast Sportsnet, shows a high school game every weekend live and in prime time through the season.

It just proves, said Mark Conrad, that no one should expect the money that's pouring into high school sports to get thrown out of the game anytime soon.

"There may be a saturation point to all this but right now it keeps growing. The market in high school sports keeps expanding," Conrad added. "The dedication to high school sports from all sides is endless."

*CNBC is part of NBC Universal which is majority owned by Comcast.

Different world. Amazing.

 

[taste2taste]

First thing is to get the game played in schools and Colleges.
As boring as it sounds ... thats the best way to introduce Canadians to the game.

 

[Walter sobchak]

First thing is to get the game played in schools and Colleges.
As boring as it sounds ... thats the best way to introduce Canadians to the game.

Does Canada have the same type of college/university draft system like the US has for basketball and American football??

 

[Hello, I'm The Doctor]

I’d never really thought about that much before. So how do colleges and high schools fund their sports’ teams? Is it purely financed by the money generated by people attending home games? I imagine the coaches at the high end of college sport don’t come cheap. Then there’s the maintenance of the stadium etc. Huge outlays for what is essentially an amateur organisation. I was under the impression that NFL teams would pay a fee to the colleges they take their players from. Sorry if it’s OT.

The Ticket sales and sponsorships for HS and College games are huge. t is only amateur in the sence that they dont pay their players (so more money for the school)...

And yeh, the coaches are paid an assload.

 

[yakstorm]

The least the Wolfpack could do is help promote the local RL comps (Ontario,Alberta and BC) at WP homegames or even have double headers of the Ontario league playing before WP games.

They have done this, a number of Ontario games were played as Double Headers in 2018. Unfortunately due to weather and ground changes a few of the games had to be moved, but they played the majority at Lamport (http://www.canadarugbyleague.com/domestic/ontario/orl-fixturesresults/ - Header says 2016, but it was 2018)

 

[paulmac]

A common criticism of TWP by the heartlands brigade is that they don't even have any Canadian players.

I think most sane people agree that's a fairly ridiculous criticism for a 3 year old professional sports outfit launched in pioneering territory.
BUT what is concerning, and a fair criticism, is how little TWP are doing to engage with local football and develop pathways for Canadians to become professional footballers.

I believe that the Wolfpack project will at best be only a half success if they never develop a pathway from Canada to Super League. At their current rate of engagement, they will never develop a Canadian professional RL player. I don't think "exposure" by simply staging professional sport in the city will be enough to get that pathway going.

The obvious suggestion is for TWP to play a reserves team out of CRL or USARL competitions. But it's pretty fair to say these competitions simply aren't good enough even for a reserve squad run by a professional outfit. The most recent USARL and Ontario RL seasons were 6 and 4 games respectively. Simply not feasible for professional aspiring players.

Being amateur competitions of an obscure sport, there are obvious difficulties in running a 12 or 18 week season (18 is probably the minimum competition length to actually be a useful hunting ground for pro or semi-pro reserve players).

So what can be done?
Is it feasible for TWP or the proposed NYC franchise to invest in local competitions to bring them up to a useful standard?
Are there smaller steps that could be taken in the meantime to build pathways between American grassroots and TWP?

Whilst I agree you can’t put a reserves side in the USARL surely the TWP could put an u/20s in that comp.

 

[c0c0nutz]

A common criticism of TWP by the heartlands brigade is that they don't even have any Canadian players.

I think most sane people agree that's a fairly ridiculous criticism for a 3 year old professional sports outfit launched in pioneering territory.
BUT what is concerning, and a fair criticism, is how little TWP are doing to engage with local football and develop pathways for Canadians to become professional footballers.

I believe that the Wolfpack project will at best be only a half success if they never develop a pathway from Canada to Super League. At their current rate of engagement, they will never develop a Canadian professional RL player. I don't think "exposure" by simply staging professional sport in the city will be enough to get that pathway going.

The obvious suggestion is for TWP to play a reserves team out of CRL or USARL competitions. But it's pretty fair to say these competitions simply aren't good enough even for a reserve squad run by a professional outfit. The most recent USARL and Ontario RL seasons were 6 and 4 games respectively. Simply not feasible for professional aspiring players.

Being amateur competitions of an obscure sport, there are obvious difficulties in running a 12 or 18 week season (18 is probably the minimum competition length to actually be a useful hunting ground for pro or semi-pro reserve players).

So what can be done?
Is it feasible for TWP or the proposed NYC franchise to invest in local competitions to bring them up to a useful standard?
Are there smaller steps that could be taken in the meantime to build pathways between American grassroots and TWP?

I’ve thought about this for a while maybe a similar way to how the Broncos have their reserve players assigned to QLD Cup teams the Wolfpack could have players feature for clubs in the Usarl north conference with 3 at max per Usarl club..