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This article can not describe "Towel Power" as general towel waving that started in Vancouver. "Towel Power" is not a general term employed by others to describe the towel waving and there was no citation to support that. "Towel Power" is a specific term only used by the Canucks to describe their towel waving tradition. Towel waving was invented by Myron Cope for a Pittsburgh Steelers playoff game in 1975. Dubbed the Terrible Towel, it regularly appeared at all Steeler playoff games in the 70s and quickly grew into a tradition at all games prior to its use in Vancouver.
The ironic thing was we had it as just a generic Vancouver term but football editors insisted it be changed to a generic topic on towel power. Maybe its a Canada/US thing. But they do say tower power any time towels are being waved in any sport in any city on Canadian sports broadcasts. -Djsasso (talk) 21:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
OK, I'll remove the fact tag if that is the case. You rarely hear that down here in the lower 48 though. However, if the term "Towel Power" is going to be used as a general term referring to towel waving though, the article must mention the Terrible Towel. It is extremely misleading to suggest that "Towel Power", referring to the general phenomena of towel waving began anywhere but Pittsburgh, where it originated and has become "arguably the best-known fan symbol of any major pro sports team." I think it is better to have the article lead with, and be specifically about the Canuck towel waving gimmick, just as the Terrible Towel has its own article, because I understand this article is primarily devoted to the Canucks and my intent is not to have this turn this into another Terrible Towel article. However, if it is to stay a general towel waving article, proper credit has to be given first to Cope and his towel. I think it is more than fair to say the Canucks were the first to coin the term "Towel Power", it may need a reference, but Canucks fans should get prominent mention for developing that term. For WP:Consensus sake, I leave it alone for a while to see what develops. CrazyPaco (talk) 22:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
oh, I see you reverted back, so never mind. I think it is good to have the Canucks mentioned first with the term "Towel Power" as it reads now. CrazyPaco (talk) 22:07, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Yeah it dawned on me if we made it generic it would just be a replication of the other article, so might as well keep them seperate with seperate info and just mention the terrible tower. -Djsasso (talk) 22:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I fixed up the article to exclude an unrelated event. Saying this started from a one-time forgotten event is stretching it, as much as saying Canada invented Thanksgiving, just because there was a one-time Thanksgiving service generations earlier than the US. That Thanksgiving feast in colonial Canadian history was for immigrants celebrating the survival of their first Canadian winter. Really, everybody I talk to calls Towel Power just that, and they know nothing of the other event. The "earlier" event seems to have only become important AFTER Vancouver created the Towel Power tradition. And I guarantee nobody was thinking of gridiron in 1982 back when the tradition began. Unless you can come up with newspaper articles from Vancouver from 1982 that mentioned this other "earlier" event, leave the unrelated event out of this article. Now, here is the YouTube story about how the tradition started. It was a protest against the officiating of the game. It had *nothing* to do with what may have been a one-time gridiron event. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feomG_Jv-VUCalgaryWikifan (talk) 02:50, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
We've been through this before, the Pittsburgh tradition was not a one time event. It came before, took off immediately, and exists to this day. This has thoroughly been documented in many reliable third party sources, and well, is just the truth. Whether or not the Vancouver copied it or not, the Terrible Towel is the first, most predominant, and most widely recognized towel waving tradition. "Everyone you call" is not a resource. Resources are the NY Times, ESPN, CNN, on and on. Please refer to the Terrible Towel article, which is well referenced, if you want to further explore this, or simple just Google "Terrible Towel" which has almost 30X more hits than "Towel Power". If you want to swap YouTube links, go here or here.
As long as the line: "It can also refer to the general waving of towels at stadiums and arenas in other sports in order to give a morale boost to the home team" exists in this article, it portends, at least in part, to be an article about general towel waving at sports events and therefore absolutely must reference the Terrible Towel tradition. Remove that line in the in the article opening, making it strictly about Vancouver's tradition, and I won't have a problem with removing the Terrible Towel wording there. CrazyPaco (talk) 05:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
