Sporting Observations: Choose Your Game
I stayed at my man Jed’s house last weekend. Jed’s a Nikehead who has a huge framed Bo Jackson poster – gotta be like four or five feet wide – and it’s a print version of the ad above, where Bo’s geared up for everything from cricket to surfing. I forgot what weird franchises Bo was with – KC Royals and LA Raiders? Damn. And I love that the hockey Bo is in a Canadiens uniform. I hadn’t thought much about Bo since I found my old copy of his autobiography a few years back – the classic Bo Knows Bo, containing Jackson’s childhood memories of killing a pig, beating kids up and finding a bag of weed at grade school.
Anyways, seeing ol’ Bo all ready for crosstraining got me thinking: What’s the best sport?
It’s a chewed-over chestnut of an argument, as old as playgrounds and the junior debating societies that inhabit them. I resuscitate it here not just on account of Bo, but because we’re days away from hitting the sweet spot of the calendar when all four major pro leagues (apologies to NASCAR, soccer, tennis, golf, competitive eating, etc.) are battling for the continent’s attention at the same time. Plus I just read a convincing polemic written by this dude from Pittsburgh who argues that hockey is king – and I agree.
Here’s the Pittsburgh guy’s relevant (and possibly inflammatory) takedown of the other sports:
Baseball spreads half its players across a pasture, hides the rest in dugouts, and then, proudly aware that it is the only sport without a time clock, proceeds apace as though its fans do not have one either. Football, played on one hundred twenty yards of distant field in increasingly canyon-esque stadia, packs twelve minutes of balletic violence into sixty minutes of game time and two hundred minutes of real time. Basketball provides near constant action and often intimate attention, but when scoring occurs every twenty seconds, only the last hundred or so seem to matter, and they often unfold over such an excruciation of stops and starts and fouls and timeouts and team meetings that even the most dramatic finishes unfold like athletic arrhythmia. Soccer drops one lost ball amidst twenty joggers, offers almost as many riots in the stands as goals on the field, and is beloved only by a loose affiliation of drunkards, Europhiles, and overprogrammed eight-year-olds who have yet to convince me I’m missing anything of interest.
But there’s something about hockey.
Ha! Drunkards and Europhiles, you’re on notice.
Insulted soccer (“football”) fans aside, I recommend reading the whole thing. Yeah, the writing is kinda precious (“they skate with equal parts power and poetry”), and I don’t share the author’s cranky disdain for what he terms “showboating.” But on the whole, I’m sold:
There are no huddles, no audibles, no waiting for plays to be radioed into their empty helmets; plays and formations are called on the fly, run from memory, and most often improvised in brilliant bursts of athletic creativity. Each team gets only one timeout. There are fewer television timeouts in a whole game than there are in any quarter of an NFL game. The time between prime scoring chances is usually measured in seconds, not in innings or minutes or hours.
Hockey is home to grace and grit, to brains and brawn, to prolonged periods of brute force followed by sudden explosions of astonishing elegance. It elevates teamwork and celebrates self-sacrifice. It bestows an annual award for sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct. It inspires awe and honors tradition and does both at once, at the end of each season, when its two best teams meet to win and hold and see their names engraved upon the most hallowed, the most regal, the most revered trophy in all of professional sports.
All true. Plus, hockey has Bobby Orr and Rob Zombie.
Alternatively, I guess you don’t have to choose, like Bo. Hell, I like all of em, really. But arguing about which sport rules them all is more fun. If this was a “Choice Is Yours,” I’d have my answer without hesitation. You?
October 21st, 2009 at 8:10 am
It’s hard t choose a king sport because most people never weigh the fun of playing them vs. the fun of watching the game. A lot of sports I find downright boring to watch are ridiculously fun to participate in.
But I’m sure you know I stand with you that Hockey is king of the hill with me and always has been. But we’re definitely in a minority that thinks so… hell I’m afraid golf and NASCAR may have more supporters in the U.S. willing to crown them number one.
I used to think Baseball wass boring (to watch) but as I’ve grown older I’ve appreciated the subtle nuances of the watching the game and find it pretty relaxing. But relaxing isn’t really what I usually want when I watch a sports. Basketball offers me little incentive to care about a game until the 4th quarter and while I really like watching Football, it’s missing the speed and spectacle that makes Hockey so mesmerizing to me.
Hockey, is brutal, fast & flashy. It’s a shame that in the last 15-20 years they’ve spent most of their time tying to force the sport on markets who don’t understand it, rather than actually just marketing the game as a whole and the excitement it brings to the entire United States.
October 21st, 2009 at 9:20 am
We never really discuss it on the Bloglin, but tennis is my jam. I love the one-on-one aspect.
October 21st, 2009 at 9:54 am
Yeah, crowning a sport a personal favorite is unquestionably a super subjective choice, determined largely by all kinds of idiosyncratic considerations. As such, the “which sport is best” argument is not all that much different from “best album of the decade” arguments. But still fun.
Excellent point about the crucial difference between playing/watching. I lived in Finland for a year as a kid and loved playing soccer with those dudes. But watching is different. While I’ll happily check out some World Cup matches in the same way I like the Olympics – all the nationalism and pageantry and flags, etc. – I still wouldn’t go watch a soccer game at some bar the way I will for football. It loses something in translation for me. And I love playing basketball, but I find watching a whole pro game during the regular season to be tough.
Also, golf. I always hated golf. But I went out to Queens this summer on some nice Friday night with some dudes and rented some clubs at a public course for like 10 bucks and played 18 holes. It was hilarious – we were fucking terrible, most of us had never played – and the fact that they sold beer was real helpful. But I had a good time. It was kinda like bowling in the sense that there’s a low bar for athleticism to participate – you’re not running, for one thing – and you can drink, but you’re outside. I never thought I’d enjoy it but it was cool and as a result I caught myself watchin some golf when I was all hungover on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks later. My girl was horrified, but the announcers were practically whispering and you could hear the wind in the trees. I kinda dug it, and then I felt like I was 60.
Oh Mars, I’m gonna get some tennis up here for you. That stare that tennis players get going while they’re waiting for the serve is always incredible.
October 21st, 2009 at 10:26 am
I also love watching hockey because I like hearing French Canadiens speak (I could listen to Marc-Andre Fleury all day long) and the opportunity it offers me to yell “Hoser” at the TV screen.
October 21st, 2009 at 9:11 pm
It was like two years ago I sent Ted Leo a long rambling email about our mutual interest in soccer. Soccer is the shit to watch. It’s not even like I can say soccer haters don’t get it because it’s impossible not to get. I don’t want to get all Ugly (North) American, but I seriously do not understand the derision of soccer, let alone not considering it the greatest fucking thing ever. Shit is the bomb. These dudes got more talent in one foot than I do in my overweight American body, and I consider myself a bright dude. The World Cup is just next level; you got half the world watching the same thing at the same time. That’s just crazy. A solid pub group makes watching more fun, but I do it on my own, like a drunkard. In 2006 I was in the bars at 8am.
It’s enough for me to completely write off people things for hating on soccer. Don’t make me boycott Mishka. I know, one customer versus soccer (ewww). Soccer is the ultimate frustration. Like a never-ending handy. Maybe I’m just a masochist, one of a few billion. I laaafe it.
Great point on playing v. watching. I know some northeasterners can feel me on this: lacrosse is fun as hell. Don’t ask me how it became my shit growing up in Texas, but it is. I can’t do shit on ice, but gimme a stick witha funny basket and a hard rubber ball (they REAL hard) and Im in my element. shaft size shaft size shaft size shaft size shaft size shaft size shaft size
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:15 am
Haha awesome – been on the Bloglin for a couple weeks and already got a boycott threat. Excellent comment, ya drunkard! Point(s) taken about soccer. Did Ted Leo write back?
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Actually, no, though I got him to write about politics a few times. Honestly, I was mostly making fun of him for being a Portugal fan. To a Habs fan, that’s like being a Bruins fan. Not in rivalry, but just in seething hatred.
And my boycott would fail. My only successful soccer-related boycott has been Chuck Klosterman, and I didn’t even like him much in the first place. Besides, I will have to use that gift certificate I win in the DAFHL.
Couple of related thoughts…
Best Sports Media: Slam magazine. Except for Scoop, god Scoop sucks now. Their monthly old school feature is consistently awesome, and they’ve always been down with the playgrounds. Plus you get to hear Onyx in your head every time you read it.
Worst Sport (for fan experience): MMA. I wrestled in high school and I have friends that practice jiu jitsu, so I got into it easily. But my god. Every PPV I feel like Im doing one of those Vice goes to the Gathering pieces, except Juggalos seem like much nicer people.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
@Guch – I completely agree with you on MMA. Both my roommates are into it and when they have people over for the PPV events I want to jump out the fucking window.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I think the guys take on football – “Soccer” for you non-drunkard/europhiles is treated unfairly in that article. The problem with most people who hate it (and I would argue that people critical of Hockey are the same) is that you have to appreciate minute skills and intricacies that aren’t easily noticed by an untrained eye. I would venture to say that Football is probably one of (if not THE) most demanding sports that exists. Besides hitting, baseball is more or less a joke. American football provides so many stoppages that you could nearly play an entire quarter without breaking a sweat. Basketball is the same way. Hockey is probably as close as it gets when it comes to North American sports to the kind of stamina and endurance that it demands. I can see where he is coming from but come on, show some love to The Beautiful Game!!