Pro sports have a bad name nowadays. But, ya know, maybe they always have had a bad name. Bad news gets headlines. It always has. Scandal! Enemies! Fighting! Is anyone surprised?
Still, I think it’s best if the public can relate to the sports that they watch. When it gets too extreme, specialized and money-oriented, well, there’s less there there. It becomes all about you—as CUSTOMER. So, beware!
I suppose that people watch pro ball sport because they play it, or played it as a kid. Hey, that’s a great reason. Also, it’s amazing to watch people do hard things. But that’s all relative, isn’t it. Like the old Utne Reader cover art cartoon said, “Fit for what?” —All this fitness to move a ball. And all the stress and injury more truly acquired in so doing.
I don’t mean to dis the good ol’ time sports—they can be neat to watch and do and to follow. (The last quarter of the SuperBowl was truly amazing this year.) But don’t forget the rest of the more “real life” scene out there! And by that I mean the OLDER sports. Ballsport is the newbie on the scene, so is motorsport.
I say there’s good reason to add a whole range of sporting events to your watch-it, follow-up line-up. To a big extent I’m promoting these events because now you CAN watch and follow them! 10 years ago you’d have to spectate in person and on site. Little appeared in the news. Actually, these are big enough events that they are big in local news, but still. The Internet has EXPLODED the viability and access to these amazing events.
I’m talking about amateur events that relate to human-scale activities of the kind that anyone can do their whole life long. I guess the trendy parlance is to call them Life Skills. ?
I’ve heard that some phys-ed school programs are starting to include them. Sounds good to me. Sure, kids should have a chance to learn the ball sports and team sports. They’re good and fun to know, like knowing how to play cards or chess. The Life Skills probably used to be assumed. But they did always have to be taught somewhere along the line. Parents and relatives usually did this. They’re mostly gone now.
These are also seasonal activities. Really. Not in any domes. No fake seasons.
I suggest that folks who want some good rah-rah and good camaraderie of the sort where they don’t have to boo their neighbors…that they should check out BIKES BOATS SKIS. And if you have any country in you, why not add GUNS BOWS HOOKS.
In BIKES, the GDR is a sweet thing—the Great Divide Race, an unsupported mtbike race from Canada to Mexico. Takes 2-3 weeks, 2500 miles. (An unsupported RAAM would also be sweet but its organizer disagrees with me on this.)
In BOATS, the Triple Crown in canoeing is a dandy (AuSable, General Clinton, Shawinigan) along with the much-bigger Texas Water Safari and the east-coast Blackburn Challenge. The WaterTribe events are MUST-SEEs. What good clean fun! The Molokai Channel surfski race is a good one. As are the 100+ mile super-tippy, super-fast multiday kayak races in south Africa—including rapids—check ’em out! Any wildwater kayak race done Eurostyle would be sweet to see—they have dozens of superfast supertippy boats going thru rapids at the same time for hours. Crazy.
In SKIS, we have the BIRKIE and the Canada Ski Marathon.
In super-combined WINTER action we also have the Iditaski and the Iditabike—events run concurrently after the Iditarod sled-dog race in Alaska.
In CAR races there are big citizen-grade rallies year round, like the huge classic Sno*Drift in Michigan. Then there are your local stock car tracks for great family fun.
In HOOK’N’BULLET you have the Total Outdoorsman Challenge testing your shooting, archery, fishing and enduro skills. Then there are Lumberjack contests and Mountain Man Rendezvous events.
I’m sure I’m missing many, but you get the point—basically, there are live, streaming websites for these events as they unfold. And within an hour’s drive of you there are probably a wide range of similar events that would be free and thrilling to watch. Like a bike race or inline skate race. Having a dinner at a sidewalk cafe while a city-center bike criterium is under way is a great time and far cheaper and more “up in the air” in terms of what might happen than any pro sport.
I’ll grant that TV wins with the ball and short-track motorsport. TV is also actually darn good for cycling and long-distance motorsport. And XC ski COULD be good on TV—they’d just have to get several cameras out on the best parts of the course. Is that HARD to do today? Don’t they know that there are 50mph downhills out there in the woods where a dozen skiers are clustered together going thru the turns? World Cup courses are CRAZY STEEP and tricky—why don’t we ever see anything but the stadiums on TV? OK, I suppose TV crews are understaffed and like warm vans. Ugh!
For some amateur sport the radio is better than TV. –The AuSable canoe marathon is one such. Of course spectating is best for all these things but we can’t all be there. TV is the key to sport today, I suppose. But maybe not entirely! A big minority role has opened up for amateur sport via the Net and route-tracking and live feeds and streaming video.
Anyway, don’t forget the little guys! That’s what we all are, after all.
