These sports need to be off TV

Wednesday, 28 March 2007

Ross Prusakowski

Paint drying, grass growing and people golfing. They aren’t all sports, but they’re among the things that are my least favourite to watch in the world. However, even of this trio, golf is by far the worst to watch.

There’s just something absurd about watching others play the damn game while people talk about them in hushed voices. Aside from the rare unbelievable shot—which can be seen on Sportscentre later that night—not much happens in golf aside from lots of walking, staring and threatening of fans who have the audacity to take pictures during a backswing. What’s worse is that thanks to the number of people playing in a typical tournament, it takes an eternity to reach the final few holes where the drama finally builds up. Meanwhile, there goes eight hours that could have been spent being productive.

So hands down, golf is my least favourite sport to watch. Maybe when I become old and nursing-home bound the nuances of watching people walk and occasionally swing a club will hold attraction for me. Until then, what channel is that grass growing on?

Trevor Phillips

First, is poker a sport? Because if it is, then I pick poker. Hey, if I wanted to watch overweight individuals compete for gold bracelets, I’d go down to the local retirement home on bingo-bracelet night. Cards don’t belong on TV.

In terms of actual sports, I guess I’d have to go with ice dancing as my least favourite. Now don’t get me wrong, figure skating I can handle, but ballroom dancing on ice is just pointless. Figure skating is actually pretty cool; I can remember curling up to my 20-inch Zenith to catch Mr Brian Orser and Mr Kurt Browning duke it out for singles supremacy. Seeing Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kratz bob, weave, and sashay around a perfectly good hockey rink, though, is about as fun as throwing rocks at airplanes. Maybe if the International Skating Union let the couples jump or throw one another, the sport would have some viewing potential, but as it stands now, ice dancing is like social dance on skates.

Andrew Renfree

It’s tough to pick the worst sport to watch. Figure skating doesn’t really float my boat, but it’s not the worst. The skimpy clothes and half-decent music improve the sport to the point where it’s tolerable. Golf is also pretty brutal to watch. The commentators give the Queen a run for her money for most boring person in the world, and the cameras mostly just follow Tiger Woods all tournament. I might enjoy watching golf if they had a colourful commentator who occasionally said “fuck” on live TV, or if the coverage actually followed a Canadian like Mike Weir or Stephen Ames.

But golf and figure skating take a backseat to the absolute worst sport to watch, which has got to be fishing. I’m not even sure if fishing can be considered a sport, because you just have to be patient and have strong wrists to be good at it—every 14 year old boy has that—but ESPN has a link to bass fishing, and they use terms like Bassmaster Classic to describe their events; smells like a sport to me. Fishing is fine if you’re the one in the boat with the beer having a good time with a buddy. But why in the hell would I want to watch some guy drink his own beer with some other guy I don’t know? I don’t.

Robin Collum

I wavered before choosing car racing as the most boring sport to watch because, like a lot of people, I hesitate to call it a one. Sure, it takes skill, and the drivers get all sweaty, but those criteria also apply to porn, and I don’t see anyone expecting that on TSN. But if we pretend for a moment that an activity entirely reliant on an engine can be considered a sport, then it’s clear that NASCAR and F1 are the most boring spectator sports in the world. Golf is slow, sure, but there are good shots and near-misses at the hole to keep you entertained. With fishing you at least get to see some fish, and ice dancing is just really awesome, so Trevor should shut right up.

I am mystified by racing’s appeal, however. You can’t see the drivers’ faces, so there’s no emotional connection; they do hundreds of laps, so you could go for more fake cheese on your nachos and not miss anything. Even the pit stops are stupid. Just make the races shorter, for goodness’ sake. The only variety, and therefore possibility for interest, comes when someone catches on fire, and that doesn’t even happen every time. If I wanted to watch someone drive really fast, I’d get in my sister’s car; at least that way I’d get to look out the window when it got tedious.

Nick Frost

For the past few years—with the re-emergence of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and the Spike TV reality hit, The Ultimate Fighter—mixed martial arts have been steadily gaining popularity with their crossover into the mainstream, yet, I still don’t understand why. There isn’t any sort of appeal involved in watching two guys swing at each other—and miss most of the time—for 30 seconds, and then drop to the floor and hold the same grapple on each other for the remainder of the match.

And it’s not like I haven’t tried to catch the UFC craze, either. I sat through an entire fight once thinking that maybe, just maybe, it would lead to something absolutely spellbinding and satisfy my bloodlust. Instead, I kid you not, the two men involved in the fight locked each other into a grapevine maneuver and stayed frozen in that position for four fucking minutes. Spooning is permitted elsewhere, guys, not on my TV screen. Not to mention, this scenario repeated itself round after round until a panel of older, more out-of-shape men apparently decided that one guy did a better job of spooning than the other. What a joke.

Don’t think for a minute, though, that I don’t think that any of these guys could kick my ass, or that their different fighting techniques—in a perverse sort of way—can be considered as part of an art form, like Japanese martial arts. It’s just that, like some forms of art, it’s just not entertaining to watch at all.

Paul Owen

There are many forms I can accept bowling in: it’s fun to go out with a big group, goof off and fire heavy balls at wooden pins. Regardless of whether it’s five- or ten-pin, bowling is awesome. I even enjoy bowling on the Wii—it has all the fun of heading down to Gateway Lanes without the overpriced food and beverages and the screaming youngsters wetting themselves everywhere. But just because bowling is fun doesn’t mean it should be on TSN.

Look, bowling is one of those sports where you have to do it to enjoy it. Watching balding men with amusing facial hair make balls carve three feet in either direction is impressive, yet utterly boring. Besides, half the fun of bowling is heckling your partners or opponents when they miss a shot. If you do that while watching it, you’re just the crazy guy who yells at his TV when no one else is around. It’s like the aging jock equivalent of the cat lady. In short, televised bowling causes social people to become agoraphobic, and therefore must be stopped at all costs.