I'll be the first to admit there are a lot of sports that I know absolutely nothing about. That doesn't mean I haven't been exposed to a fair number of athletic events in my life. It's actually pretty crazy the stuff that they have on certain channels these days.
All it takes is a jump over to the ESPN site and look at the programing schedule for ESPN 8 "The Ocho" and you will see what I mean. Oh, you thought The Ocho was only a made up channel for the movie Dodgeball? You couldn't be further from the truth.
This schedule is just about a year old, but check out some of these events:
SlamBall
Pinball Invitational
Air Guitar Championships
Disc Golf Pro Tour Championship (that one I actually know a bit about)
Foosball World Cup
Microsoft Excel World Championship.
Jelle's Marble Runs
Like I said, it's pretty crazy. You can't make this stuff up. Aside from those "wacky" or unconventional sports, there are quite a few sports that just haven't gained widespread recognition in the US, so I find myself at a disadvantage when I am trying to watch them.
Soccer for sure is one. I finally kind of understand what offsides is, but despite that fact, with everyone running everywhere on the field all the time, I can't quite figure out how you actually pick it out. I'm sure it's obvious for the well trained eye, but for me, it just seems very arbitrary.
I discovered last night that there is an American Rugby league. I never would have guessed that quite honestly. I thought about watching the match (test?) that was being played in Texas last night, but then I realized I still don't understand any of the rules. I feel like everyone just stands around waiting for something to happen.
It seems like it would be more productive if the players actually made something happen instead of standing around hoping they catch a glimpse of the ball. Like I said though, I don't really know.
I'm thinking about making it a point to learn at least the basic rules of the game this year so that I can maybe finally enjoy watching it. Perhaps I will pick something up during the Olympics. They play in the Olympics right?
Finally, we have cricket. I took a bit of a dive a while ago into cricket and I actually learned some of the rules after someone posted about it here. I've proceeded to forget everything I learned at this point though. I noticed the American team seems to be doing pretty good and I was hoping to maybe catch their contest against India today, but it doesn't look like it is on a channel I get. That's kind of a bummer. I might see if I can still bet on the game though. That could be fun!
Like the title says, there are things I know, and then there are things I don't even know I don't know. Cricket, Rugby, and Soccer fit into that last category for sure!
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