There are some sports that just don't deserve the attention they get. I'm not talking about sports that are struggling (NHL) or outright failing (WNBA), I'm talking about sports (or what passes for sports) that are constantly being crammed down our throats. I don't mean Olympic events or competitive eating, because there are times when people are actually aware of what's happening there. Sure, competitive eating doesn't get the best ratings, because it's just people getting paid to do what fat slobs have been doing for centuries. But people know who Kobayashi is. But despite ESPN's best efforts, the participants of the following sports have yet to take the sports world by storm, unless there's a controversy of some sort. Not that it's going to keep the powers that be from trying...
The Little League World Series
First of all, if you're an analyst for Little League baseball, I'm gonna need you to stop spending so much time watching little boys in tight pants.
But really, I can't imagine that anyone is actually following little league baseball. The only time this stuff is relevant is maybe ten years after the fact, when we can look back on a vacant lot littered with the failed careers of little league stars. Yet, here we have a paid ESPN analyst every year, running down the pros and cons of these kids, like any of that is gonna matter when their twelve year old emotions get the best of them.
Also, these kids aren't even in their teens yet, so it doesn't make sense to me to closely follow sixth-graders in sports. I've been in sixth-grade. I wasn't good at shit back then. In middle school, they'll fill out teams with anyone willing to bring back the permission slips. Those teams are filled with kids whose dads are making them play because the reality that their kid got their athleticism from "mom's side" hasn't set in yet. Half of the kids that make up these little league teams will have given up baseball by high school. So you're not exactly seeing baseball played at its best.
Besides, it's baseball. It's not exactly the most exciting sport. But if Pop Warner football or AAU basketball doesn't get on TV, I don't see why kiddie baseball gets to shut down ESPN for two weeks. Pro baseball, I understand. Even the College World Series, if we must. These are people playing at the highest levels of the sport. But Little League is sub-minor league. I just don't get it. Why not the eighth-grader World Series? Why not the high school softball World Series? The advertising dollars must be really high for this crap.
Horse Racing
Dammit, they're horses.
You know, part of the appeal of sports is watching someone do something that you can't do. Part of what makes LeBron James so amazing is that we have to go into our dreams to be able to do the things that he does when he's screwing around.
But I don't get impressed by horses, mainly because they're not people. I can't tell them apart and I don't know their pros and cons, because they all do the exact same things. They run fast. That's it. And they would have been that way even if there were no people on the Earth. It's not like they have skills to improve, like crossovers or reading coverages. They just keep right on running, then they get to have sex after they stop running.
To let ESPN tell it, though, we're talking about a sporting event on par with the Super Bowl or Wrestlemania. But I've NEVER stumbled across a conversation about who was gonna win the Belmont. I don't know a single person who can identify a jockey by name. I've never heard anyone start a sentence with, "Barbaro was the inspiration that started my career." The jockeys don't even think that way. They're all just short guys from Latin America who couldn't get yobs doing anything else, like Cuban lightweight boxers.
You have to step into one of those tax brackets that require gated communities before you hear anyone talk about horse racing. This doesn't capture the public's imagination, because we can't afford it.
Well, that and because no one gives a shit about horses. Just rich people, eight year old girls, and of course, PETA. Is that a group that the average person wants to associate with?
LaCrosse
The game is played in like, 12 states, at only upper crust schools. It's like televising women's football. There can't possibly be a national following for it, because no one knows what it is. It's in the same category as Jai Alai. The idea that this is even televised is proof that we gotta fill the airtime with something, and American Gladiators got canceled already.
It's not that there isn't a lacrosse following, because there is. And unlike horse racing and baseball, it is an actual sport. It's just that there's only a few hundred people who care. I don't even think they play this game south of Duke University. Then again, reading hasn't taken this region by storm, either. But maybe one day, lacrosse will catch on and people will grow up admiring (name of future famous lacrosse player here). But until then, the majority of us will look at this game and think, "they're just playing hockey in the grass."
The World Series of Poker
All of the excitement playing cards, yet they managed to retain the seediness of an illegal, back-alley, high-stakes game! Some things just aren't meant to be televised, but we live in a world where multiple shows about women whose only talents are spending their husbands' money and making other women hate them are ratings successes. Turns out that playing cards jumped on at the right time.
Slamball
Yes, this is still on TV. Cartoon Network is airing it, which says a lot about Cartoon Network these days. Then again, it also says a lot about Slamball. Mostly that no one gives a shit about it.
Lemme ask the owners of Slamball a question: If the excitement of dunking was actually the hidden gem that you were hoping it would be, don't you think the NBA would have figured that out already? People should stop trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to sports. The Arena Football League was actually an innovate and exciting spin on football, and even it folded. It shouldn't be a shock to anyone that taking all of the strategy out of basketball was never going to work. No one ever wanted to see a game of just dunking, because if we did, the NBA would have never had to retire the Slam Dunk contest. And that had actual world-class athletes in it, unlike Slamball, which is filled with athletes who failed at the sports that they really wanted to play, so they settled for jumping off of trampolines.
It would be like the paddles out of ping-pong and banking your entire future on this game you "invented." The creators of Slamball should really take notes on the life and times of Marc Griffin, the inventor of Bulletball. The only difference between you and him is that you managed to convince a stupider, yet richer person that your abortion of a game was a good idea.
The Westminster Fucking Dog Show
Much like horse racing, there are no people involved in it at all, but with 100% less competition. And it's the only "sporting event" where it's considered "cute" if one of the competitors pinches a loaf on the main stage. Sorry, Sid Vicious.
If anyone ever proved themselves to be out of touch with what the average person wants to watch, it would be the people who decided to televise this. There's no competition. There are no events. It's just all about whose dog has a better haircut and how well their paid trainer taught them to sit. You're selling this crap to an audience who doesn't even always let their dogs live in the house. Good fucking luck.
The dogs don't even compete against each other. They don't race. They don't wrestle. They don't do any of the things that make dogs interesting. Honestly, as violent and reprehensible as dogfighting is, I'd rather watch that. Sure, it's wrong, but it's exciting in the same way that UFC is exciting: Sometimes, you just need to see two people beat the shit out of each other. And if you think that watching people in suits issue basic commands to their dogs can fill that need, I hope you're not a television executive, because your boring ass is gonna pave the way for the World Scrabble Championships to get into prime time.
When will you learn, television executive? Things that rich people like are fucking boring.
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