MikeD Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 You want to drastically reduce the number of kids participating in the activity? Implement transfers. I wouldn't have marched my age-out year if this had been in place. Many wouldn't march at all. Again, it's a flawed premise. Baseball is baseball, no matter where you play it. Little League teams are essentially the same. In Drum corps every corps is different. Different styles, different music, etc. I agree. The DCI member as compared to Little League player is as bogus as the attempt to compare it to major league baseball or major college sports. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeD Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 Could you create divisions within DCI, like East Coast, Southeast, Southwest, West Coast, and group corps into a division...you focus on regional shows and have a regional championship and you can have some cross division shows, then hit the DCI regionals, San Antonio, Atlanta, etc. Perhaps you have to place in a certain position within your league to be eligible to attend finals. That would lessen travel costs. And, if corps hit up junior colleges, smaller colleges, etc and used their stadiums instead of small poor high school stadiums that could draw in more ppl. I guess what I am thinking is along the lines of how the NFL has 4 divisions and have to be win the division or be a wild card to make the play offs...a model like that could tweaked to fit DCI corps. Lastly, corps do their own thing. Why not team up with a couple of corps, such as Spirit and Crown basically tour together, Cadets, Boston/ Cavies Phantom, etc, whoever, and they plan on touring with each other...they could split costs of facilities, have greater bulk buying power, etc. I don't know, just throwing stuff out there. It doesn't really decrease travel costs very much, and food costs not at all. You still have to travel show-to-show, and you still have to feed and house the members. The only difference is that the traveling around will criss-cross a smaller area, but the travel in any one day wouldn't be all that different. Also, are there show sponsors enough to support enough shows to create however-many regional sub-circuits you envision? Would fans flock to shows in the East, for instance, were the only WC corps they'd see are The Cadets and BAC for much of the season, over and over again, maybe stretching to add the Bluecoats to the East to provide one more WC corps? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corpsband Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 (edited) DCI promotes this activity as Summer Music Games - Major League thus comparing themselves to major sports; so yell-type in all caps to DCI and tell them to 'stop it already' not us here on DCP!!!! MARKETING SLOGANS DO NOT EQUATE TO REALITY! Get over the Major League moniker Stu. It's marketing-speak -- not reality. No one really believes DCI is a top tier professional sports league. It's catchy. It's easy for the uninitiated to understand. It doesn't really matter if it's particularly accurate. MOST marketing slogans aren't !!! Edited August 17, 2013 by corpsband Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeD Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 Yeah!!!!! DCI could have a system with DCE, DCM,... wait a second; ya mean like the ones already pummeled and destroyed by the push for a National DCI Touring System? DCE died because there were not enough corps to sustain it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRASSO Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 (edited) You want to drastically reduce the number of kids participating in the activity? Implement transfers. I wouldn't have marched my age-out year if this had been in place. Many wouldn't march at all. I start from a different place than you on this ( thats ok, thats why we have discussions between opposing viewpoints done generally in a civil manner on here). I start from the perspective that precisely BECAUSE of the lack of sensible and reasonable transfer polcies in place, since the 70's we have actually LOST perhaps thousands of marchers MORE who would have marched but the Corps that used to be near them has folded, partly as a result of losing marchers they trained to the elites but got nothing back. The lack of no transfer policies at all in place has lost more marchers in my opinion than the smaller numbers of marchers ( such as yourself and a few others on here )that would have left had you not been given the option to transfer. Lets also keep in mind that hundreds of prospective marchers... each year too... are already denied transfers by the elite Corps. As we know, because of that non acceptance by the elites, many just quit altogether. The fact of the matter is, we lose more Corps, and more marchers each and every year by not having a sensible, reasonable, fair and equitable, transfer policy in place... that all amateur and pro sports competitive endeavors have had in place for over half a century... and in which nobody seems to have any problems with, and which has led to the stability, then the growth of the activity to the point that these competitive sports have more participants worldwide today than before they implemented sensible and reasonable transfer policies between competing teams within their organizations. All these growing sports organizations are not run by stupid people. They implemented reasonable transfer policies in place for a reason. These reasons work. We know they work... and as a result, and because of it, all these youth groups have MORE participants, MORE teams, MORE stability, MORE revenues, MORE worldwide fans, and so forth. By contrast, how have we at DCI done the last 35 years ? Do we have more or less marchers than we did in 1975 ? More or less teams ( Corps) than in 1975 ? Can you name a single amateur sports or pro sports, or youth competitive sports organization that does not have transfer policies in place for their organization ? Serious question. Can you ? Edited August 17, 2013 by BRASSO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 MARKETING SLOGANS DO NOT EQUATE TO REALITY! Get over the Major League moniker Stu. It's marketing-speak -- not reality. No one really believes DCI is a top tier professional sports league. It's catchy. It's easy for the uninitiated to understand. It doesn't really matter if it's particularly accurate. MOST marketing slogans aren't !!! But.... it is DCI who came up with the moniker; it is DCI who makes the 'sports' comparison; and I guarantee you that the directors of the G7, especially Hopkins and Gibbs, do think DCI is the top-tier 'league' of the activity. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 DCE died because there were not enough corps to sustain it. Really? There are not very many drum corps east of the Ohio river? Really? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corpsband Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 But.... it is DCI who came up with the moniker; it is DCI who makes the 'sports' comparison; and I guarantee you that the directors of the G7, especially Hopkins and Gibbs, do think DCI is the top-tier 'league' of the activity. But YOUR use of the slogan is intentionally wrong. Clearly the term "major league" in the slogan is used simply as a superlative. Like major-league punch, major-league prank, major-league effort, major-league dessert. Stringing those 3 "m"s together gets you a nice effective alliteration. Your read is always intentionally literal so you can trot out your silly comment about how DCI calls themselves a major-league sport. No. They don't. They say they're the best in marching music. And even you would agree with that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Boo Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 P.S. While I'm on this....do we really need to have scores at every show? Is judging part of the problem or a problem? I know it's the one thing I heard in music school and when I taught band in the public schools was the hate on drum corps was not G bugles. It was competition. Calling it a sport or referring it as one does not work with Florida band directors. Going along with the above model, I'd like to go to scoring for the corps staff for the purpose of improvement and monitoring that improvement. Score the regionals. I don't know if the rating system (Superior, Excellent, etc;) would be the way.....but....it's really almost silly the scoring, isn't it to score every night. "Oh.....Crowns percussion improved 1 full point over night." Really? Whose point was the first and whose was the second? Nobody improves greatly from one night to the next in ensemble anything - especially at that high level unless it was bad luck/bad performance/oops thing. When I marched DCI, as soon as the first show was judged, very first one in June, I knew where the corps was slotted for that year. On night one, I knew it would be the middle of the pack, or the top 4 or the bottom 4. So.....what's the point? Where's the drama? Broadway shows aren't scored and they are performed well. Kids work hard. Parents and kids get worked up with the belief that the score is some relevant holy grail or even accurate. I think kids like it - to a point, but I also think zoomed out, judging is part of a problem. Parents, kids, band directors who influence these kids, heck...even what I see on DCP, get all wrapped up in scores. Drum corps is by its very nature competitive. If there are no judges, the corps don't get to learn what needs to be done to continue to improve. That would be a great disservice to the members. It would be like having a football game without the keeping of scores. If the teams just threw the ball around, the lack of scores wouldn't reveal what section of the team needed improving. This isn't a symphony orchestra concert the fans go for personal edification. Even if a corps doesn't score that well, the members still want to know they are continually improving...feedback they and their instructors need prior to and in between the premier events that it was suggested above is judged. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 But YOUR use of the slogan is intentionally wrong. Clearly the term "major league" in the slogan is used simply as a superlative. Like major-league punch, major-league prank, major-league effort, major-league dessert. Stringing those 3 "m"s together gets you a nice effective alliteration. Your read is always intentionally literal so you can trot out your silly comment about how DCI calls themselves a major-league sport. No. They don't. They say they're the best in marching music. And even you would agree with that. But they (DCI) came up with the moniker; they (DCI) more than imply the sports analogy with both Summer Music 'Games' and Marching Music 'Major League'; and that sports connection is 'exactly' what they (DCI) intended; what part of that escapes you? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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