Ad Disclosure
82% of Flyers Poll Takers Think Gritty is Great
Published:
Kevin Kurz at The Athletic (now with ads) ran a 14-question Flyers fan poll, asking mostly standard questions about Danny Briere, Torts’ firing, the Rick Tocchet hiring, and future expectations. At the very bottom was this question:
This feels high? Or maybe not. Maybe social media is generally grumpy and therefore negative towards the Gritster, but the subscriber portion of Flyers fans overwhelmingly think that Gritty is great. 81.8% is a landslide, the type of numbers a Democrat typically pulls in Philadelphia.
It would seem as though the attitude towards Gritty, and other mascots, ebbs and flows with the general attitude towards the team. For a few years there, the only thing the Flyers had going for them was Gritty. The team itself totally stunk, Comcast-Spectator leadership was trying to carve out an identity in the post-Ed Snider era, and Chuck Fletcher was handing out bad contracts like they were going out of style. So Gritty got this extra ligstick-on-a-pig type of push because he/she was one of the few interesting things going for the franchise at the time. That’s when you heard things from fans, like, “enough with fucking Gritty,” because they were suffering mascot overexposure and just wanted to see five guys on the ice who could put a shot on frame during the Peco power play.
Now, the team is moving in an identifiable direction, and anti-Gritty sentiment seems to have cooled. That’s the observation.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com