Thursday, February 28, 2008

Reader Extra Participation Friday: Keeping It Simple

Lately there's been, well, not much participation in Reader Extra Participation Fridays. Part of me wants to attribute this to the fact that we only have nine readers. But a small sliver of brain keeps insisting it's because I choose topics that are too complex and don't lend themselves easily enough to comedy. So let's ignore bad journalism for this week's installment and just talk about something everyone has an opinion about: What are the best and worst professional sports ever created? We'll keep a broad definition of "professional sport"- anything people do for recreation that requires them to move and is televised. So after some careful consideration, let me make my personal nominations:

Best- Bowling, because any fat pasty guy/blogger could conceivably practice enough to go pro in it.
Worst- Baseball, because it's impossible to play in a basement. Fucking sun.

Don't think you have to try to be clever or anything. This is an environment of welcoming. If you just want to straight up say that football is awesome and womens' basketball is a joke, nobody's stopping you. I'm changing the format of this in hopes that more than three people will throw their hats in the ring. Go on, make me look like a desperate, pandering genius.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Best: Soccer, cause it manages to get the wife and kids out of the house for 5 hours every Saturday.

Worst: Women's basketball. Cause really, nothing is worse then women's basketball.

Tonus said...

Best: Football. Maybe it's the once-a-week format, but most other pro sports just seem boring after a while. Watching guys armor up and beat each other silly hasn't gotten tired yet.

Worst: Soccer. That's right, I want to watch 22 people run around on a field the size of a large city for several hours, take three shots, score no goals... and then watch another 20 minutes of this after the game was supposed to end.

Anonymous said...

Best: Blernsball. Because all players are required to take steroids, it creates a level playing field. Also: multi-ball!

Worst: Chess. Don't get me wrong, I like chess. But when Bobby Fisher died recently,players quoted in the flood of resulting articles kept citing all Fisher "had done for our sport." Seriously? Sitting at a table for days & taking hours to decide in which direction you want to move a tiny piece a total of about 3" qualifies as a sport? I think I burn more calories taking a dump than a chess player does in an entire match. Plus the title "Grandmaster" sounds suspiciously like "Grand Wizard," and that's just racist.

Jeff said...

Best:

Dr. Dodgeball. The way we played it it was dodgeball combined with basketball (sink a 3, release all your teammates). I don't know why the Dr. was added instead of calling it, say, basketball-dodgeball or dodgetball.

Worst:

Soccer. I'd like to see Soccer played on a 5 on 5 on a field the size of a hockey rink. Make the goal about 5 x 5, remove the goalie position. You know, sort of like foot-basketball. Never mind i'd still be bored.

Archie Micklewhite said...

Well, as long as this is an environment of welcoming, how's about I make this my first comment?

I'm going to focus on the backyard sports division, ages 6-12.

Best: Calvinball. Because even twelve years after the last new strip, Calvin and Hobbes is still hands-down what all other so-called "funnies" aspire to. Also, because no one's allowed to question the masks, a line of reasoning I've found very helpful in my side-career of 1930s bank robbing.

Worst: Supersoaker fights. I don't know whether I'm the first person to point out to comedic effect that commercials don't always tell the truth...but man, what a joke those supersoaker ads are. They take ages to fill up, you spend about eighty percent of the time pumping them (and I'm not even going to get into the Pavlovian implications of that), and then they shoot about five feet if there's a wind. Also, running around barefoot on wet, uneven grass is a great recipe for child safety.

Of course, you know what I used to love? Fucking supersoaker fights. Best outdoors exercise I ever got.

Honorable mention: Starcraft. I just want to make it clear I haven't had outdoors exercise in years.

Archie Micklewhite said...

By the way...I kinda ignored the whole "is televised" part of your incredibly broad definition. So I think I may have to expand the definition of "is televised" to "can be seen on YouTube."

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

Truly an auspicious start for me, I must say.

Archie Micklewhite said...

Also, are there still winners? Because I'm obsessed with winning.

Anonymous said...

I think Archie wins, so my posts are going to be short.

Best: Football. College or Pro...both are awesome.

Worst: Poker. I marginally understand it and think it is stupid. Every time I see it on ESPN I ask the person I am beside (usually no one) why the hell it is on television. Men and women holding cards trying to get a flush or a straight is boring. I have people tell me I don't understand the strategy in it and I probably don't. All I can see is people are wearing sunglasses indoors (stupid and obnoxious), and do cheesy commercials with models that make little to no sense to me.

Of course I am also too stupid to figure out how to get my name "Bengoodfella" as my Blog name on this, so just factor that into my opinion.

Craig said...

Worst: Anything that's ever lent itself to a Will Ferrell "comedy".

Best: All of the other ones.

Unknown said...

Good turnout today! My ego is rapidly expanding. Everyone watch out, I'm fucking awesome.

Winner to be announced on Monday.

Anonymous said...

Best: Baseball. You can be short, or tall, or fat, or thin, or fast, or slow, and if you have the skills, you can be a pro. What other sport has such diversity of athletes?

Worst: Golf. Assuming we count this as a sport, it's slow, and the "athletes" are mostly whiny bastards who need total quiet to hit a ball that's stationary. Meanwhile, baseball players hit 90 MPH sliders with the roar of the crowd in their ears. Golfers are pansies.

Anonymous said...

Baseball is truth.

Hey the Phillies got one more pitch out of Brad "Call Me Freddie Garcia 2.0" Lidge than I expected before the pitching rubber snuck up on him and tore his brittle knee to shreds.

Glad to see Spring Training has arrived, play ball!

Worst sport;

Women's Basketball
Almost inconceivable a sport could get covered nationally that makes soccer a palatable alternative...