Tag: Sports

The State of Televised Sports

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I saw a couple of articles on the internet that piqued my interest. The first article is by Bill Simons over at ESPN.com. He talks of his love of World Cup Soccer. Not soccer, just World Cup Soccer. He makes some interesting points. I found myself watching the end of the semifinal game between Italy and Germany on Tuesday, just waiting for something to happen. Saw a couple good parts with a lot of action, but there is a lot of waiting in soccer.

The second article, also over at ESPN.com, is by Jason Whitlock. He talks about some new possibilities for sports that should be televised now since that in addition to poker, we have dominos and competitive eating. Truth be told, I watched the hot dog eating contest on the 4th. It is actually the third year in a row that I’ve watched this contest. I wake up to ESPN on TV and this contest comes on at 11am. Once it starts, it is just hard to turn off. I did like his ideas for some new sports, especially the Scoring Number in Bars and the Beer Bonging competition.

Seriously, go check out both articles and then keep reading… I found them both informative and funny… Here are the links again:

Both articles point out the fact that we’re televising soccer (which is a very popular sport, just not in the USA yet) and poker, dominos and hot dog eating contests which with at least three of those, you sit and wait for something to happen (an actual play, someone to win big or lose even bigger, regurgitation), truth be told, I’m not really sure why people watch dominos, unless it is to see someone that looks like Ice-Cube slam down a domino and yell “Domino!” (I think that is from a movie or something, not sure, let me know if you know).

It makes me wonder why a sport that I love, waterskiing, doesn’t get more air time. 3 event skiing (jumping, slalom and tricking) hardly gets any air time, wakeboarding get just a tiny bit more, barefooting gets pretty close to zero air time.

Show skiing’s national tournament, an event that takes 2 days to complete with 14 hours of competition gets 42 minutes of air time, and in reality gets maybe 30 after taking out the promo time given to the sponsors. Show skiing, for those who don’t’ know, consists of jumping, ballet, barefooting, and human pyramids. Probably close to a thousand people compete (14 teams) taking many thousands of runs. They collapse this into 30 minutes of highlights. Just doesn’t do it justice. To do it right, they should show an hour long summary of the bottom teams and edit the top 4 teams’ shows so they’d each fit into an hour of TV. Make it a five night event and show it. And then, keeping it in line with how the scoring actually occurs, don’t announce the scores after each show. Obviously, the bottom 10 teams will be known, but the top four should be shown in the order they compete and just let the drama build. Tack on an extra half hour to do the awards justice and to announce the winners.

Just imagine if they took the Tour de France and editted it down to a 60 minute show. Here’s Lance starting, here he is going up a hill, here he’s passing someone, this is him finishing this stage, and look, he won the whole thing. That’s what they do to show skiing.

Meanwhile, I’ll need to go check the schedule to find out when they are televising dominos next.

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Random Thoughts About Sports

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First up, Soccer… Today while eating lunch I caught the end of the World Cup soccer game between Germany and Costa Rica and I ended up learning something new about the game of soccer. I knew they played two 45 minute halves and would go in to overtime or shoot out and the end of regulation if it was tied. I also knew that the clock kept running when the ball goes out-of-bounds, there’s a penalty or injury. What I didn’t know is they keep track of how much time runs off during the out-of-bounds, penalties and injuries and then at the end of regulation they go into something like extra time to play for the time when, at least in my opinion, the clock should have been stopped. My question is why don’t they just stop the clock then? Every other sport that involves a clock does this. I can’t think of a good reason for not stopping the clock. Is there one?

Next up, Endurance Barefooting… Later on today the second annual Mad-City Endurance Dual takes place and I’ll be attending. I’m curious to see the condition of the bay. As I mentioned earlier, it is typically chuck full of weeds and was just a couple days ago.

Finally, Sport Laws… Saw a very funny article by Gene Wojciechowski on ESPN.com today discussing what is acceptable to do in various sports situations… The very best “law” in my opinion was the last one. The Packers beat the Bears on a Brett Favre touchdown at Lambeau Field. You turn to the Cheesehead next to you and embrace. What is the maximum time allowed for a Man Hug? Lets just say the answer involves no nipple-to-nipple touching. Read the rest of it here.

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Full Circle

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When I was much younger, when there wasn’t a hockey game that my brother or I were playing in, our Friday and Saturday nights consisted of cooking up a tombstone pizza and watching either a) a Badger hockey game or b) The Dukes of Hazard.

Back then, the hockey team was really good. They had Chris Chelios playing D and a very young Jeff Saurer coaching. They even rated regular coverage on Channel 3 (CBS). We watched both (hockey and Dukes) religiously.

Now tonight, many, many years later, I’m at the UW Band Concert. Part of the Badger celebration, because that what’s the UW Band Concert is, a celebration of the Badger year that was, revolved around the Badger Men’s and Women’s hockey teams winning their national championships. Both teams and both trophies were there. Crowd on their feet as the band played loudly (that is the only way they play).

And then, one of the many special guests, Tom Wopat, one of the original Duke boys is getting ready to sing The Day the Music Died and somebody yells out “Play the Duke’s theme”. Tom goes “I’ll get to it.”

He finishes up the one song and then goes into the Duke’s of Hazard Theme. And that got me to thinking of the “Good old days”. Friday nights, pizza, hockey and the Dukes.

Funniest part was, I almost had a Tombstone for supper. And amazingly, Chelios is still playing D. Dude is getting old and still plays like a stud.

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Badger Hockey

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Finally got to see the end of the triple OT game from yesterday. Wow, what a goal. The announcer’s had a good line just before the goal… they commented about the two players who took the coincidental roughing penalties. And this is after 110 minutes of hockey, nearly two games, and the players are getting tired.

“The rest of the players might figure it out… hey, if we can take coincidental roughing minors, we’ll at least get a two minute break in the box.”

I couldn’t help but to laugh at that one.

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Olympic Wrap Up

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I was reading Tristan’s blog and I guess I feel the need to kinda of second his opinion. People are saying that the US team was a disappointment. I couldn’t disagree more. Yea, there were some less then stellar moments (speed skaters arguing about team, show boating, Bode) but there were some really good moments too. Sasha Cohen’s short program was great and she had a strong finish to her long program that earned her a silver, Apollo just embodies the Olympic ideal, some excellent speed skating performances, and a skier that came back from a horrendous crash to compete well. And how ’bout the half pipe snow boarders. Having fun and taking home the medals.

I just can’t get over how when our athletes are competing against the rest of the world’s best athletes and the fact that they don’t always get a medal is a disappointment. Some of these sports aren’t everyday sports here in the states and we’re losing to these other countries where these sports are THIER sports. Holland is speed skating, Germany is luge and bobsled.

Also, people are disappointed in the ratings. Do you know how hard it is to stay in the dark all day and not find out results? It isn’t easy. Open the browser and BOOM, there is a result you didn’t want to see yet. And very few people like to watch a sporting event knowing the result, especially if it isn’t the result they want.

All in all, I thought we did very well. I would have liked to see the men’s hockey team do better, but there are a lot of good hockey players in the world and not all of ’em are from North America.

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