Reader Extra Participation Friday: Let's Go With Something Related To The Ol' "Stranded On A Tropical Island" Cliche

I'm working on a post that's actually long enough to make you scroll down your screen in order to read the whole thing, but rather than rushing through it to finish tonight (it's a big day at the hot air balloon tour ranch tomorrow so I'm getting up extra early), I decided to hold off until Saturday just to make sure I do a decent job on it. You know why? Because I care about you people, that's why. You're special to me. I don't want to give you a big post of half-baked dick jokes and capitalized expressions of exasperation. Fuck that. You readers are big deal to me. I want to impress you. Does my hair look good? Be honest, but tell me you like it. I got it buzzed this way with you guys in mind. And I lost weight too, can't you tell? Please notice my effort. I even put on makeup and high heels for you.

What?

Long story short, substantial post to arrive on Saturday. In the meantime, let's all compete for an imaginary junk food prize and a meaningless title which is awarded completely arbitrarily after being judged by a panel of one. This week's topic: you're stranded on a tropical island with no rescue coming. Would you rather:

1) Have an unlimited number of friendly natives around to play sports with? Or

2) Have a TV that gets every live sporting event (even those on MLB Extra Innings, NBA TV, NFL Sunday Ticket, etc.) plus all the sports analysis channels (We're talking all the ESPNs, FSNs, NFL Network, etc.)?

Keep in mind the following limitations for situation 1- Equipment and facilities will be extremely crude at best. We're talking nothing but tropical plants with which to make things. The natives will take a long time to learn any sport you try to teach them if they can even learn them at all. Good bet- football. Bad bet- baseball. If you injure yourself there's no doctor around to help you heal. Tore up your knee? Well, I guess that's the end of your sports playin' days. Hope you taught the natives enough to be entertained by watching them. And finally, the natives will not let you into their society or associate with you in any way except to play sports.

Also keep in mind the shortcomings of situation 2- You will be totally and completely alone. You may never see another human again, unless they're swimming to shore to be stranded with you, in which case you should probably just kill them in their sleep and eat them. You will have no methods with which to interact with people about the sports you watch. No internet. It's a one way conduit of information. And you won't be able to fix your TV if something happens to it. Especially something hilarious like a coconut falling on it.

Your responses might indicate otherwise, but I honestly feel like it's a tough call. Option 2 is pretty straightforward, it's more or less how most of us sports fans live now minus a few distractions like career, family, and model railroads. Comparing it against option 1, which is so hard to imagine, is the hard part. If you go with option 1 you'll effectively live in a time capsule until and if you're rescued. That would be fucked up to say the least. And you'll be bored whenever you're not playing, which would be a lot of the time. But then again how badass would it be to wake up under a palm tree and know that although you've basically lost everything you cared about in life, you can still go out that day and quarterback your team to an island championship? Or go dunk a coconut off some guy's face on an 8 foot rim? (No one said you couldn't distort the rules a little.) Or if you're patient enough to teach them baseball, hit a walk-off home run?

In the end I think I'm going to choose option 1. Although I haven't left this basement for any reason in almost ten months, played a pick-up sport in over six years, or played an organized team sport since I was six, I seem to remember sports being really fun. I think being able to actively participate in them would trump being able to watch "Rome Is Burning" and "Skip Bayless's Magical Happy Funtime Half Hour" every day. It would be nice to be able to catch all my favorite teams' games, but who would I bitch at after they screwed up? Without being able to do that watching sports becomes less enjoyable for me.

Your thoughts? Even if you have no analysis, feel free to post an unexplained vote for one or the other. We need to have popular opinion answers to questions like these. SportsNation is counting on us.

This week's prize: Freeze Pops! Three of them! Purple, orange, and blue! Sorry, I already ate red.