Original printed byline: Hawkeye Z. Hoerr
Historical February–March 2012 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
What’s your favorite spectator sport?
If advertising costs are any barometer (and they are!), the NFL is the top dog. Millions upon millions are spent each year to plug pizzas, beer, autos, and ammo. Is this a guy’s sport or what? College football is second to the NFL. Millions upon millions are spent to plug pizzas, beer, autos, and acne cream. Shortly thereafter in popularity come college basketball, the NBA, and major league baseball.
After that the list runs the gamut from lacrosse, gymnastics, golf, auto racing, beach volleyball, and Wheel of Fortune, to boxing, hockey, Meet the Press, and synchronized swimming. (Hockey, by the way, deserves particular distain. It’s a sport based on the fact that the players have to compete against their environment – skating on ice – as much as the other team. What’s the point? Why not take this to the next level and make it more interesting: What about playing hockey in a vat of peanut butter? Or what if the players had to play on a velcro floor with velcro on the bottom of their shoes? Or why not have them play in a steady rain of molasses? Maybe the latter would also result in fewer fights!) OK, back to my list of lacrosse to auto racing to synchronized swimming and all in between, including velcro hockey.
The only thing that these sports have in common is sweat (not counting golf).
There are many other redeeming ways that we could spend our time, from doing push-ups to cutting the grass, so why are we mesmerized to watch myriad gyrations in gyms, on fields, in pools, on sand and dirt, standing by a spinning wheel, and in a cockpit? It’s simple: competition!
It doesn’t matter whether one keeps track in points, runs, seconds, laps, strokes, or votes.
We are all compelled to watch the fight.
Some of us root for the underdog – Go, Rams! – Whereas others of us root for the predictable winner – Go, Yankees, Hooray for Fat Cat Republicans!
Some of us are odd hybrids and root for the consistent underdogs – Hooray for the Cubs and let’s vote Democratic! There’s no real explaining what causes someone to have longstanding loyalty to a team that doesn’t warrant it. Perhaps mom or dad was a fan of the team; perhaps you were struck by a tree limb in a lightning storm.
But it really doesn’t matter, does it? Spectator sports are healthy because they take our mind away from the real world, so we should all have a favorite team or three. That’s always been the case but given the condition of the real world, it’s even more important today.
As I think about it, though, I’m a little surprised that we haven’t widened our horizons by now.
After all, for how many decades can we root for birds or adolescents without getting bored? I’ve come to grips with the fact that life will go on if the Rams don’t make the playoffs and, in fact, life will go on if Albert Pujols doesn’t stay with the Cards. Sure, I’ll cry and throw a temper tantrum or two, but the world will keep on spinning.
But because it’s spinning and we’re getting older (at least I am), it seems to me that we ought to be finding new attractions for our limited attention-spans, new areas of interest for Sunday afternoons or Thursday nights. Personally, while I’m tired of watching overpaid athletes, underpaid athletes aren’t all that interesting (which is why they’re underpaid, by the way), so now what? Savvy reader, it’s Hawkeye to the rescue! I’m on your side.
I propose three new spectator sports.
These will have the elements that have propelled the NFL to fame: competition, arcane rules, and some variables worth wagering.
I don’t know how long it will be until these sports are picked up by television or found on www. sportshog.com but it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure. Baseball gets more boring each year, football players all look like Michelin tire commercial protagonists, and I have too much trouble keeping track of basketball scores. So find an easy chair, grab a beer and a stogie, and start anticipating.
Here are the three sports in which YOU can participate, and I guarantee that they will hold your interest for the next score of years. 1. Overhead bin stuffing.
The task here is to see how much you can jam into the overhead bin in an airplane. Ideally this shouldn’t be a competition at all. Purportedly the size of carry-on items is restricted and consistent. HA to that! I’ve seen people pulling muscles to carry on huge loads and then try to jam them in the bin.
I swear some of these containers must be filled with people’s rock collections.
The winner is the person who can get the most weight in his/ her carry-on. You’re disqualified if you have to get help from more than one person to get your bag in the bin but you get a bonus point if a helper is wearing an airline uniform. You can earn double extra points, if your bag is so big or oddshaped that it precludes anyone else getting their bag in the same bin.
In case you’re wondering, 27.3 pounds is my overhead bin record. Up, up, and away! 1. Red light timing. Admit it, lead-foot: Don’t you try to time your driving speed so that you never have to come to a complete stop at a red light?
After all, what a waste of time and gasoline it is when you sit at a red light! B-o-r-in-g! Sometimes I just barely make it through a yellow and then I gun it so that I’m ahead of the timing for the next light and can sail through on green. Red lights are my enemy, man! Once the auto Gods were with me and I was on a winning streak – I’d made nine green lights in a row – and I abandoned my destination and just kept driving east to keep the streak alive, seeking green light after green light after green light. Forty minutes later when a red light finally nabbed me I was in Fairview Heights, and I was up to 23 consecutive greenies. What a high that was! (The people that I was meeting for dinner were not amused at my tardiness. What a bunch of wet blankets!) 1. Paper or plastic? Whenever I go to the grocery store and whatever I get, my goal is to carry it all in two hands and make one trip. Of course, this makes plastic the bag of choice. It’s amazing how many plastic bags you can manage to grab with two hands, have affixed to two arms, and have clutched in one mouth. Tote that bag! It’s not fair, by the way, to purchase items specifically so that you can carry lots of bags: there is a limit to how many packages of cotton balls you can get on a trip, and the limit is one. Thus the challenge is how many grocery bags you can carry at once, assuming that the bags are filled with normal items: Hostess cupcakes, IBC diet root beer, pizza, Starbuck’s, cocoFritos, cheap wine, Dove bars, and bananas.
The rules are that you must be able to ambulate to the car carrying all bags, none can drop, and you have to be able to unlock the car and open a door without any of the bags touching the ground (sitting one on the roof or trunk is acceptable, but if the bag slips and falls, you’re disqualified).
My record, by the way, is nine bags. Bonus points can be earned if you do this in the rain. OK, the challenge is in the air. Pack your carry-on bag, look for those green lights, and try to move with ten grocery bags affixed to some portion of your body. Once you get into the zen, Monday Night Football will become a distant memory, and you’ll think Albert Pujols was a Tea Party candidate from Utah. Keep track, shoot for your personal best, and remember that it’s whether you win or lose that counts, not how you played the game. (By the way, the intrepid legal staff at the Times of Skinker DeBaliviere reminds me to remind you that you should not do these tasks simultaneously. Go team!)
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February–March 2012.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Original list numbers all three suggested sports 1; numbering retained.
Original source: SD_Times2012_02.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
