Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday
I greatly enjoyed your video about sports
that ought to be included in the Olympics
but there was one big problem with it, which is that
the Olympics only occur once every four years.
And I for one am not willing to wait until 2020 to watch some live, televised headis
the head-centric version of ping pong.
Headis, Muggle Quidditch, the Settlers of Catan World Championships,
human backflip racing,
demolition derby soccer featuring an excavator serving as goalie -
all of these amazing sports share one commonality, Hank:
their brilliance goes largely un-televised.
I mean, Hank, if I can't watch one man wriggling
beneath two other men while all three men are
simultaneously jumping rope,
why do I even HAVE cable?
I mean, here is an incomplete list of the 24-hour
sports networks currently available in my area
and yet, somehow, I've never been able to watch
live, professional, double-mini-trampolining,
and that's just a travesty.
So in the 2004 movie Dodgeball,
the Dodgeball World Championships are broadcast
on a fictional sports network called ESPN8: The Ocho.
In real life, of course, the Dodgeball World Championships
are not televised at all,
and there is no ESPN8
Although, for the record, ESPN does own
eight cable networks.
But there is a subreddit called The Ocho,
where you can find highlights of lesser-known sports
from remote-controlled truck racing
to tug-of-oars,
a sport that despite being born from a pun,
is incredibly entertaining.
Let me submit that The Ocho would be a wildly popular
cable network/streaming service.
It could be your TV home for everything from
well-established niche sports
like the ones in the Olympics
to, you know, competitive log-rolling, which requires amazing balance
or foot billiards which, yes, exists
and yes, is awesome.
I just wanna highlight three more sports
that I think would be awesome viewing on The Ocho
First: far-leaping
which is a very popular sport in the Dutch province of Friesland.
Far-leaping is essentially an exaggerated pole-vault
over a moat, and it is terrifying and beautiful
and I love it.
Why is there no television program called
Far-Leaping Weekly?
Then there's cup stacking,
an exciting sport that's also very fast-paced
like, while I've been talking about it
you watched someone set the world record.
We should be talking about the stars of cup stacking
every night on SportsCenter!
And lastly, Ultimate Frisbee.
It's the best part of football plus the best parts of basketball,
and it happens to be the sport
that I played in high school to get out of
my Physical Education requirement.
But I'm not gonna lie,
I mostly want Ultimate Frisbee to receive more attention
because dogs are pretty good at it.
Which makes it the sport most likely to inspire
the new Air Bud sequel our dark and broken world
so desperately needs.
Hank, with our superabundance of sports media,
you'd think there would be room
for more than four or five sports,
but, there isn't, at least not in the U.S.
And that bothers me because
sports with a cult following are loved deeply,
even when they aren't loved broadly,
like anything with a cult following.
And the Internet has been pretty good at
building homes for communities like that,
from primitive technology YouTube channels
to bands that sing about Harry Potter.
But for reasons I don't really understand,
that hasn't happened with sports yet.
If it ever does, by the way, I suspect
it will be known not as ESPN8: The Ocho,
but instead, as YouTube Sports.
I can't help but hope that maybe someday
I'll find my true calling:
as the color commentator in the Far-Leaping World Championships.
Hank, I'll see you on Friday.
