Of the hundreds of media personnel in Vancouver to cover the Olympics, Steve Glynn might be the most unlikely one who made the trip.
EMAIL
| PRINT
| REPORT TYPO
| SEND YOUR FEEDBACK
|
Hockey blogger snares Olympic dream job
- February 22, 2010 9:31 PM |
- By Erin Valois
Story provided by
By Matt Hartley, National Post
Of the hundreds of media personnel in Vancouver to cover the Olympics, Steve Glynn might be the most unlikely one who made the trip.
Just a few months ago, he was familiar to only a few thousand diehard fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who knew him by his online pseudonym, Steve Dangle. But thanks to the popularity of the comical fan videos he records in his bedroom and posts to YouTube after each Leafs game, today he's rubbing elbows with Canadian hockey stars in Vancouver as part of a Web marketing initiative designed by Nike Canada.
"Most people wait a lifetime to cover the Olympics, and here I am," a clearly excited Mr. Glynn said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. "I never thought anything like this would ever happen just from turning on my crummy webcam -- and it is crummy -- and just blabbing."
For the 21-year-old Ryerson University radio and television student, the trip to Vancouver is the latest in a string of new adventures which began with his video musings about the pitfalls of being a Leafs fan on YouTube.
In December, Nike flew him to Saskatchewan to cover Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championship, and the equipment maker was so impressed with the response that it decided to send him to Vancouver for the Olympics to help promote its NikeTraining.ca site. Throughout the Games, Mr. Glynn is also taking over Twittering duties for the Nike Training account.
"I don't get starstruck, but I was struck by the moment when I was in Regina and I was talking to Jordan Eberle," said Mr. Glynn. "Less than a year ago I was in my basement freaking out because he scored that goal against Russia, and here I am interviewing him at the World Juniors."
It gets better. After the World Juniors, the LeafsTV network in Toronto took him on as an intern and began airing his videos on the program Leafspace.
At the beginning of the 2007-2008 National Hockey League season, Mr. Glynn was exasperated by all the negative media talk about the Leafs. To help vent his frustrations, he shot, edited and posted a short video to YouTube, where he voiced his opinions on the team and the young season.
After the next game, he made another one. By the third game, he challenged himself to shoot a video for every game that season. Since then, he's shot more than 370 videos, his YouTube channel has more than 4,000 subscribers and his videos have been watched more than 1.2 million times.
Late last year, he got a message on his YouTube account from someone who wanted to know a bit more about his videos and the traffic they were getting. He thought the person sending the message was a high school student working on a project.
A few days later, representatives from Nike called and wanted to know if he would be interested in working with them at the World Juniors.
"When they dropped the bomb on me, it took some time to reattach my jaw to my face," he said.
The company outfitted him in Canadian hockey gear, provided him with a professional crew and, since they couldn't call his videos "Leaf Fan Reactions" anymore, came up with a new name for his online rants: Dangle's Angle.
In Vancouver, he records videos after each Canada hockey game -- both men's and women's teams. In some, he addresses the camera directly; in others, he argues with himself. One recent video shows him challenging a trio from the women's team to a game of street hockey, and losing.
Mr. Glynn said he hasn't decided if he wants to become a sports broadcaster after he graduates in the spring. "To cover an NHL team is something a lot of kids dream about, and to cover team Canada, is something a lot of kids dream about, and somehow, someway, I'm doing both."
About the Author
- Bruce Arthur Bruce Arthur is the National Post's national sports columnist. A Vancouver native, he has been with the Post since 2001, and a columnist since 2005. He is covering his second Olympics, after the 2008 Games in Beijing. He expects these Games to be slightly less propagandistic, and for China to win slightly fewer medals.
- Joe O'Connor Joe O'Connor is a roving sports feature writer with an open-ended beat. He joined the National Post in 2002, and has spent the past seven years bouncing from sport to sport, offering fresh perspectives and delivering unique stories wherever he goes. Whether it has been getting Don Cherry to open up about his love life; George Chuvalo to talk about heartbreaking loss; or racing down the side of a mountain with former Crazy Canuck, Dave Irwin, the veteran Postie chases a story wherever it leads. Before joining the newspaper he was a two-time silver medalist at the National Magazine Awards. Vancouver will be his first Olympics.
Recent Entries
- To Iginla, Crosby's call sounded like gold
- "Iggy!" It's a scream Jarome Iginla has heard many times in his career. But never this loudly, never with so much urgency.... Continue reading this post
- Olympic Memories: Heartbreak and triumph
- For all the moments that made you so damned happy you wanted to cry -- the triumph of Alex Bilodeau and his brother Frederic, the delirium of Marianne St-Gelais as she watched her boyfriend Charles Hamelin win gold, the pure... Continue reading this post
- Olympic Memories: The strength of a lion
- It happened in a blink. A skier was skittering down a steep and icy slope at Whistler Olympic Park and disappeared into the woods.... Continue reading this post
