i don't disagree with the spirit of what you're saying at all, but there's a certain irony in that back when soty felt like less of a competition, performance in competitions was actually a bigger factor in winning. feel like BA and Senn (probably amongst others) got it partly for doing really well on the circuit.
nowadays, no one is going to get it off the back of dominating street league or whatever.
That's true, that is a good change that has happened for sure considering how corporate and awful most contests have become (Dew Tour being among the worst).
There were actually *some* cool contests back then. Now there aren't many straight up contests that don't suck anymore besides maybe for Vert? Seems like people are starting to mess with the formula a bit though, so that's good.
I could see something like Dime Glory Challenge, Copenhagen Open, Halloween Hellbomb, FA Hollywood Skate Jam (and to a lesser extent Vans Showdown) all contributing to building the legend of a SOTY type year. We need more cool events like those, for real. Those weird non-contests/semi-contests. Not quite a demo, not quite a contest, just skateboarding and having a great time.
Would be really cool to see someone win not just because of some scheduled part releases, but because of them just showing up places and doing cool shit for the love of skateboarding.
Johnny Wilson did it in a way when he dropped John’s Vid right after soty or on the same day.
Good point. Even more reason to love that crew of skaters.
EDIT: God, now I'm imagining someone doing some SOTY-style clip stacking... they have their 3-5 parts for all their different sponsors (or for whatever Youtube VM's) and they literally hold the parts and release them all on the same day, the day after SOTY is announced.
idunno, would be pretty funny to me