Category Archives: Silly sports
Fans who angrily questioned several calls made by soccer referees in this year’s World Cup won’t be surprised at a report in the journal PLoS One that found inherent bias in referees.
They might, however, be surprised that the bias is perceptual. The study found that soccer experts whose languages read left to right call more fouls when the action moves in the opposite direction, or right to left.
- Sindya N. Bhanoo, New York Times
Awesome, fascinating article from the Science Times.
It’s about 100 degrees outside and hotter in my home office — the AC doesn’t quite make it in here. I’ve got a day off from work, so in lieu of any worthwhile or well thought-out posts, please accept this series of links about Japanese competitive-eating champion Takeru Kobayashi.
First, on the nature of his dispute with Major League Eating. Turns out Kobayashi didn’t want to sign a contract that prevented him from eating competitions in Japan or in endorsements in the U.S.
That’s cool, and makes a lot of sense. I figured he was holding out for more money, which would be ridiculous since he already gets all those free hot dogs. But dude’s got to make a living, and he’s an entertainer and all.
Second, on his special “extraordinary ability” visa. The Japanese Kobayashi applied for and received a special U.S. visa given to only those with extraordinary ability evidenced by “sustained national or international acclaim.” The Major League Eating people had previously sponsored his visas, allowing the organization to keep him under its greasy thumb.
Next, a recap of yesterday’s event, which Joey Chestnut won with a disappointing total of 54 hot dogs. Chestnut admitted he would have eaten more with better competition, but there is no better competition. Without Kobayashi pushing him, Chestnut can just breeze to victory.
Then, of course, Kobayashi’s arrival and arrest, on video:
And finally, just for kicks, an article I wrote recapping 2008′s version of the event, which I really liked at the time but think seems a little ridiculous now, but which says everything I think I ever want to say about competitive eating.
Hero:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Sport Report – Soccer Debate – Marc Fisher & Mark Starr | ||||
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Many of my smart, reasonable friends thoroughly enjoy soccer as I’m certain many of you do, and I’m not looking to start an argument I’ve had about a billion times before. I just don’t care for the sport, for several of the reasons Colbert details in the video above.
Straight up, I find it boring. It doesn’t maintain my interest. And I’ve seen plenty of it at this point, though I was probably biased going in.
The arguments Starr cites are typical of soccer’s defenders. The thing is, I have no doubt that soccer players are world-class athletes and I very much respect the fact that they can run 7 miles per game. Bully for them; I couldn’t do that.
But I couldn’t run a marathon either and that doesn’t mean I’m going to watch one. Plus, the second part of his argument — that soccer players are not “freaks of nature” as I assume he thinks basketball and football players are — not only vaguely contradicts his first (since he expected us to be impressed by the midfielders’ amazing athleticism) but doesn’t make a damn difference to me.
I would actually much prefer to see freaks of nature battling it out in competition. Adds to the spectacle, which is a big part of why I watch. In fact, soccer might be a lot more interesting if both teams had to carry an NFL linebacker on the field somewhere. Oh, and he’s allowed to dispense bonecrushing hits.
On the plus side, I enjoy crazed celebrations and hooliganship in general.
Bull riding has long been mythologized for its danger. A rider climbs onto a lurching 2,000-pound bull, grasps the end of a rope that is wrapped around the animal’s midsection and must stay aboard for eight seconds to score points.
“It’s like a violent game of chess,” said Ty Murray, a nine-time world champion rodeo cowboy.
Hmm… a dude clinging to stay atop a bucking, 2,000-pound beast for eight seconds? Yeah, that does sort of sound like a chess match.
Oh wait a minute, no. That’s nothing like chess. In fact, rodeo might be as unlike chess as any sport there is. Who is the opponent, in this analogy? The angry bull? Death? Sorry, cowboy, I’m just not sure there’s anyone working to calmly outthink you as you’re tossed around by that tortured monster.
The Times story is otherwise tragic and very well-penned, and I don’t aim to make light of Bryan Guthrie’s awful fate, but it makes for a reasonable excuse to weigh in on bull riding. I went to the Professional Bull Riders tour when it came to the Madison Square Garden last summer, mostly so I could say, “this ain’t my first rodeo” the next time I end up at a rodeo.
But now that I’ve seen one, I’m not sure I’ll ever make it out to a second rodeo. I appreciate that it’s certainly terrifying to ride a bull but since they actually stop the clock once you reach eight seconds and judge you on style, it’s not really very exciting at all. Just a succession of dudes riding bulls. Sometimes they hang on for eight seconds and sometimes they don’t. You end up tempted to root for horrifying mishaps, as I imagine you would at a NASCAR event.
And at no point during the event did I ever consider that it was anything like a chess match, or even a violent chess match. A violent chess match would probably be a lot more entertaining.
Actually, I think a good idea for a sport would be to pit two chess masters against each other in the middle of a rodeo ring. Then, at some undisclosed point in their match, release an angry bull and see what happens. Now you’ve got to think on your feet, bro.
Yeah, you could take his queen with your rook right now and put yourself in pretty good position to lock up checkmate in a few moves, but there’s a pretty solid chance you’ll be gored by then, and the whole chessboard bucked into the mud. So how do you play that? You tell me, buddy; you’re the so-called “master.”
Floyd Landis, the American cyclist whose 2006 Tour De France victory was nullified after a positive doping test, has sent a series of emails to cycling officials and sponsors admitting to, and detailing, his systematic use of performance enhancing drugs during his career. The emails also claim that other riders and cycling officials allegedly participated in doping, including seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
- Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O’Connell, Wall Street Journal.
And so concludes a run of public denial and bald-faced lies hilarious enough to make Roger Clemens look like Honest Abe. No word on why Landis fessed up now, though he claims he wanted to “clear his conscience.”
If you weren’t forced by your work to follow cycling in 2006, you might not know that Landis tried to explain unnaturally high testosterone levels by claiming he was out drinking the night before his test (during the Tour De France, because lots of successful cyclists break from the grueling, 2,200-mile race to get all liquored up), and then suggesting that he’s just some special superman who produces twice as much testosterone as everyone else. Because, you know, Floyd Landis is obviously the face of immense virility.
And because, of course, having the type of testicles capable of producing twice the normal amount of testosterone wouldn’t in any way make cycling unbearably uncomfortable.
Also, if you’ve never followed international cycling, you might not realize that every single person who has ever been on a bike has endeavored some sort of illegal doping activity. No term was bandied about on the now-defunct WCSN.com more than “disgraced cyclist,” because international cycling, for those who get broken up about cheating athletes, is a complete disgrace.
Oh, and I almost forgot the most ridiculous part: At some point, cycling legend Greg LeMond told Landis about the sexual abuse he endured as a child, and Landis detailed his doping regimen to LeMond.
And so when LeMond was preparing to testify against Landis in court, Landis’ business manager — from a listed number — placed a threatening call to LeMond during which he said, no joke, “Hi Greg, this is your uncle. I’m going to be there tomorrow… and we can talk about how we used to hide your weenie.”
Floyd Landis: One weenie apparently unwilling to go into hiding.
The E-League playoffs start May 1.
What’s the E-League? It’s a Santa Monica-based celebrity basketball league. Though its Web site is hardly basketball-reference.com, the league does provide box scores for every game.
The records contain a hilarious roster of exactly the type of celebrities you’d expect would have time for such a thing, and attendance is spotty among the ones I’ve heard of. The kid who played McLovin’ almost never shows up.
The best player in the league, by far, appears to be Brian McKnight’s son, Brian Jr., who’s not really a celebrity. Bill Bellamy is pretty good when he plays, which I imagine must be completely intolerable for everyone else on the court.
Wood Harris, the actor who played Avon Barksdale in The Wire, might not be a suit-wearing businessman, but he’s more than just a gangster, I suppose: He has a fine scoring touch.
But one celebrity baller deserves credit not for his play, but for an attendance record that stands head and shoulders above those of all other celebrities who have ever graced the pages of any glossy magazines:
I’m talking about Dean Cain.
While the more current and relevant stars like the Jamies Foxx and Kennedy get pulled away from the league by their duties performing in Oscar-bait like Ray and Malibu’s Most Wanted, Dean Cain apparently had nothing better to do than show up for six of the Boston team’s seven games for which the E-League’s site has box scores posted.
And though the man who once played Clark Kent is hardly a Superman on the hardwood, his teammates can count on him for a handful of points and workmanlike efforts on the boards weekly, even as their squad is mired near the basement of the E-League’s Eastern Conference.
Maybe Taye Diggs steals the spotlights and the ladies’ hearts on the rare occasion he does show up for Cain’s Boston team, and maybe someone named Jarod Paige is a more potent offensive weapon, but Boston fans can count on Cain cleaning up the glass weekly, sweat glistening from his once-chiseled jawline.
Where is teammate Joel McHale, listed on Boston’s roster but almost never in attendance? Who knows? Probably off filming Community. Cain is not Joel McHale’s keeper. (Sorry.)
The E-League playoffs include every team in the league, so Cain’s Boston club has a longshot chance at the league championship, scheduled for May 8. Given the squad’s performance, though, it would take a miracle for the Boston squad to advance that far. Something only a real Superman could accomplish, or at the very least the promise that Cash Warren could pull himself away from sitting around wondering how he got so lucky in life to finally suit up for his E-League unit.
Still, at least one E-League enthusiast and analyst — this one, who’d never heard of the league until about an hour ago — will call shenanigans on the whole affair if Dean Cain is not named to the Eastern Conference’s All-Star team that weekend.
Because though Cain’s contributions to Boston may not present themselves in the box score, he has reliably presented himself in the gym, week in and week out. That sort of leadership cannot be measured, and though it’s hardly superhuman, it’s damn-near heroic.
You might know Brian Boitano as a figure skater, and as the dude so revered by the South Park crew in their song, “What Would Brian Boitano Do?”
But what you might not know is that Brian Boitano is, in truth, every bit as heroic as that song made him out to be.
Check it out. Boitano’s got a newish cooking show out called — no joke — What Would Brian Boitano Make?, and in a recent episode, he treated a women’s roller derby team to a meal entirely composed of bacon-driven dishes.
Obviously Brian Boitano and I are of like mind.
In the video linked above, Boitano visits the creator of the Bacone, a concoction so amazing I can’t even think of how to cleverly describe it. It’s a cone made of bacon filled with eggs and a biscuit. The bacon is the utensil you use to eat the treat, but it’s also, of course, delicious bacon.
Perhaps even more amazingly, the Bacone was not the only dish Boitano made in that episode that featured bacon as a food delivery method.
How this man managed — or manages — to stay in decent shape eating foods like this is beyond me, but I think now I’m beginning to recognize the greatest purpose for the Winter Olympics: The Winter Olympics have brought Brian Boitano into the public eye so he could expose to the world the many awesome ways to make better use of bacon.
Lyrics NSFW:
I’ve voiced my distaste for the Olympic Games on numerous occasions, but due to my old job editing the now-defunct WCSN.com, I know more than I’d care to about the Games and have plenty of opinions about them that I’ll probably end up sharing here.
Before I continue, a little background: WCSN.com’s big calling card was its abundance of live streaming video. The site broadcast sporting events from around the globe, which required a whole lot of mechanics to pull off, and so always necessitated someone to just sit there monitoring the video stream to make sure nothing went wrong.
Many times, that guy was me. I got paid to watch silly sporting events from all sorts of strange places at all sorts of bizarre hours. Sometimes I’d have to write recaps, at least a few of which are still archived at UniversalSports.com. Often, they ooze with sarcasm.
One of my favorite sports to monitor in those days was ski jumping, but I won’t lie: The event’s appeal — especially during the overnight shift — is identical to what I understand is a big draw of NASCAR. You watch to see if they crash.
Sorry if that sounds inhuman. It probably is. But no one ever got irreparably injured in the events I was watching and, you know, they signed up to be ski jumpers, so it clearly comes with the territory.
What I didn’t realize in all the time I spent watching ski jumping was that apparently the entire sport has something of an eating-disorder problem. Who knew? The Times has a great, lengthy feature today detailing the dilemma, including proposed solutions to the issue.
I’m fully in support of much fatter ski jumpers, because, like I said, the most entertaining part of ski jumping is when they fall. (Again, I’m sorry I’m such a jerk.) And as I stated yesterday, fat people falling is hilarious.
But the most important rule change that needs to be made to ski jumping — and if I haven’t offended the ski-jumping community already, this probably will — is this: Ski jumpers should not be judged on style. As it is, five judges rate each ski jumper on a scale of 1-20, and the outcome weighs heavily in the event’s final standing.
I cannot express how dumb it is that ski jumpers are judged on style. It’s inexplicably dumb. The object of ski jumping should be to ski jump as far as you damn can. Who cares how cleanly you land, or how you hold your skis while you’re in the air, or your balance?
It should be about distance, baby. Length. I don’t care if you look like a total clown getting there and crash at the finish, I want to see how far a human being can propel himself on skis. That’s ski jumping. It’s not called “ski aerial balancing.”
Put up a big, cushy pad at the finish, enforce a 200-pound weight minimum, then sit back and watch these fat bastards fly. I guarantee it’d be the most-watched sport in the history of the Winter Olympics.
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