DCI partnering with Varsity Performing Arts to launch "SoundSport Scholastic" events

[garfield]

2 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

it's to beat out the BOA's, USbands, TOB, you name the circuit. they own big time cheerleading across the country. Now, they want in on marching band...and DCI tie in is a tool to get it.

 

Remember there were hot rumors they were looking at buying USBands. Well now this allows them to start doing the same thing....and in time, reading their ruebook for cheering, you'll see Soundsport start to have a more formalized rulebook.

Yes, rules development shows their hand.  But, IMO, that’s not bad.

[Jeff Ream]

2 hours ago, garfield said:

Yes, rules development shows their hand.  But, IMO, that’s not bad.

Til they dictate what you wear, what music you can play...

[E3D]

22 hours ago, N.E. Brigand said:

 

But I'm still suspicious of Varsity.

 You were last chair weren't you? Never made Varsity always riding the pine? 

[garfield]

14 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

Til they dictate what you wear, what music you can play...

Which is why I asked Does Varsity know music?

 

[garfield]

15 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

Til they dictate what you wear, what music you can play...

What if they dictate what you wear because they sponsored The Top Corps with sweet (read: free) deals?

 

[N.E. Brigand]

24 minutes ago, garfield said:

Which is why I asked Does Varsity know music?

When they started, did they know cheering?

[N.E. Brigand]

1 hour ago, E3D said:

 You were last chair weren't you? Never made Varsity always riding the pine? 

On my best days I was last chair.

[garfield]

4 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

When they started, did they know cheering?

Well, in fact, yes.  Very, very well indeed.

 

[garfield]

Drum corps doesn't bill itself as the "varsity" team.  It's the "Major League".

Is that a branding hiccup or a serious disconnect in the missions of the two.

Who knows: Is Varsity in college programs as well?  Because of the average age of SS/DLB kids compared to the DCI "Major League", it's easier to see why SS/DLB would attract Varsity and drum corps would not.

But heck, what do I know?

[N.E. Brigand]

39 minutes ago, garfield said:

Well, in fact, yes.  Very, very well indeed.

Ah, well, I stand corrected! Thanks. I'd never heard of them before this discussion, and the only link I've seen here offering any hisory of the company implies they moved into cheering after that sport was well established ("In 2004, Varsity bought the National Cheerleaders Association"). But digging into some of the links in that piece, I see that the company's founder, Jeff Webb, who had cheered in college, worked for the the NCA apparently beginning in the late 1960s and then started his own rival league in 1974, which bcame Varsity. And Varsity bought in 2004 was the NCA's "parent company, National Spirit Group."

Now I'm trying to imagine a world in which DCI or Music for All are owned by for-profit companies.

- - - - - - - - - -

On another note, this passage from that Houston Press story amusingly echoes some discussions we've had about drum corps:

"In 2010, Webb was called to Connecticut to testify as an expert witness during Biediger v. Quinnipiac University, a landmark court case in the debate over whether cheerleading is a sport. He testified, definitively, that it is not a sport, which is exactly what the court ruled in the end. 

That may be surprising to the hundreds of thousands of registered athletes participating in Varsity’s competitions, some of which are televised on CBS Sports Network and ESPN."