Quite simply, the sporting world is weird.
There really isn’t any other way to put it.
Just look at the ways human beings get their athletic game on. The combinations and creations of modern sport are so confusing sometimes that it can make a person’s head rotate.
No wonder so many people shudder at the thought of sitting through, say, an entire soccer game. Few people understand the game. Most only know that when the ball goes in the net, that team gets a point.
But even the outcome of some soccer games is debatable. Why is it OK for some games to end in a tie while others must be decided by sudden-death, or better yet, a series of five kicks from about 25 yards away?
Among some other unanswered questions: What does the PGA Tour have against golf carts? Who decided wrestlers must wear a thin sheet of spandex that leaves so little to the imagination? And in golf, why is 1-under par a birdie and 2-under par an eagle, but a hole in one is an ace? Where’s the love for the robins of the world?
A lot of the chaos starts with the terminology we use to describe the games we watch.
Take football (the American version).
First down, second down, third down, fourth down. Many want to know what is going down and why it’s only happening four times. People know what a first down is and how a team achieves one, but don’t have a clue as to why it is called that.
These things are everywhere in popular sports.
Do volleyball players really “dig” anything? If so, where are their shovels? Maybe we need slo-mo cameras to show us this bit of sporting drama.
And I’ve yet to see a rabbit appear out of a top hat after a hockey player or a soccer player scores a hat trick (scoring three goals in one game), as one is led to believe they might after such a feat of athletic prowess.
I won’t even get into the sports we come up with when alcohol is involved. Beer pong, washers, flippy-cup. Whatever happened to a game of darts?
These little intricacies exist in sports we don’t hear about every day.
Take chess boxing. Apparently, its all the rage in Europe — leave it to the Europeans to figure out a way to ruin good, old-fashioned American bloodsport.
In chess boxing, the competitors square off in a round of boxing with the aim of kicking the crap out of one another, and then, in the name of breaking a mental sweat — Dodgeball reference there — the players sit down in the middle of the ring and play a round of chess.
Absolutely enthralling, or so I hear. The same can be said for Korfball (think soccer, softball and basketball combined), sheep tackling and log riding.
But the one sport I’d love to one day sit and watch would be a rousing match of Pooh Sticking.
While not as dirty as it sounds, Pooh Sticking certainly opens ones eyes to the vast amount of time some people have on their hands.
Pooh Sticking involves taking a stick — any stick — tossing said stick into a river and watching it as it floats to a predetermined finish line. Think of it as nature’s little 100-yard sprint.
Apparently, Pooh Sticking came about after Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin dueled in the epic, first-ever battle, after which some idiot out there decided it would be a great idea to actually contest the sport for real.
Pooh Sticking has been known to get a little rough at times. There was some debate over the winner between Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin in that first match, after which Robin punched Pooh in the stomach, knocking some of his stuffing out through his ears.
Pooh could be heard shouting from his locker room, “that fool just can’t handle my Pooh Sticking skills.”
And I complain about covering NASCAR races.
In case you were wondering, the 24th World Pooh-Sticks Championship Race will be held sometime next March in Oxfordshire, England. Better book those tickets now.
Alas, while sports can be extremely confusing and at times downright ridiculous, they are still so much fun to watch.
I don’t know why the sport of tennis refuses to acknowledge the existence of zero, instead opting to use the term “love” when a player has been held without a point, but I do know that I’ll continue to watch it.
Sports, for all their wackiness, make us feel good, and man are they entertaining.
OK, gotta run.
I’m training to become a professional Calvinball player — for all you Calvin and Hobbes fans out there — and I still haven’t thought of any new rules today.