MikeRapp

This is the equation and analysis that all corps should be doing. It is terrible business and ruins your reputation if you just go out and hire famous designers and then let them go the next year. The finances have to support your vision.

Yes but you wouldn’t be able to hire them without dramatically changing the budget and committing to medalist-level design.

Isn’t that what Soundsport is for?

They seem to have built a sustainable business model, though. With the hopefully temporary departure of SCV, the space near the top also got easier to occupy. Boston doesn’t appear to be borrowing money against next year’s receipts, which as we well know is a pretty certain path to bankruptcy.

This is just my own personal observation and it’s not based in anything but experience: it seems most of the design issues around Madison that are clearly not working are likely the result of budget pressures. Boston always had good designers but they didn’t have the money to fund the sort of commitment that it takes to be a perennial medal contender. This now includes huge props (and all the expenses that go with maintaining and shipping them) and concert level audio systems. It doesn’t take rocket science to understand that just hiring “better” designers isn’t likely to just change your show and performance quality. Hiring the educator staff that is now in place at Boston also came with changing and dramatically increasing budgets for training and design—literally committing to an entirely new and frankly scary level of finances. And if you aren’t making finals, your budget just got slashed. Is it realistic to expect Madison to compete with perennial medalist contending corps on a shoestring budget?

Gosh I hope you are wrong.

Don’t they average all three nights for the final score?

Wow Boston finished second in brass. Coats third and BD fourth. Amazing.

Congrats on another stellar season, Boston. You’re a superpower now, looking forward to what you bring us next year!

Congrats on the Bronze medal Crown!

Any word on the trumpet player whose knee collapsed?

Great season! Thank you all for being so kind and fun, see you next year!

Wow huge jump in scores for the top four coming!

Knights score fell significantly from semis.

YouTube.

If there is a surprise, I predict Mandarins take fifth.

Cadets guard uniforms…

Crown will win brass, but it will be close.

Beautiful show BD, great run, great emotion, worthy of the Gold.

I really don’t know clouds. Like, at all.

Flags in the ballad are utterly hypnotic.

BD’s giant rotating-squeezing rectangle is my favorite marching moment of the season.

1. BD 2. Bloo 3. Boston/Crown tie

Bloo just won the Silver folks.

Standing O, they nailed it tonight.