Known Unknowns

It may be spring, bit there's still curling on TV. The Players' Championship is showing that curling is the latest sport whose popularity has caused it to overflow its appointed season.

It used to be that the only curling you saw on TV - even here in Canada - were the Canadian and World Championships. But when someone noticed that a curling tourney could be a cheap ratings grabber, they invented a bunch of other events patterned after golf's majors or tennis's grand slams.

What I find interesting about this phenomenon is that although curling is a spectator sport in Canada but nowhere else, many competitors from other countries are good enough and well known enough that they get invited to these Canadian-based tournaments too.

So now people like David Murdoch, Eve Muirhead and Niklas Edin are better known in Canada than in their own countries. That's got to be strange. They probably have to keep explaining to their friends and relatives what this hobby of theirs is. Then they come here to curl on TV. And how do they explain why they keep flying to Canada every few weekends? I remember hearing that a Canadian curler working in Europe had trouble explaining to his boss why it was really important that he have a week off to play in the Brier. Imagine trying to ask your manager to find someone else to fill your shift at the Volvo factory so you can go to some place called "Kamloops" to vigorously sweep ice in front of a thousand people. Okay, it’s Europe, they get five weeks off, never mind.

Other than those awkward moments, it must be a great life: mostly you're just leading the average existence, but a few times a year, you travel off to a strange place where everyone knows who you are and is interested in what you do.

I know there are some cases where it's gone the other way, and Canadians have become more famous elsewhere. For instance, Canadian snooker players have made it big in Britain. So if you're looking for a sport to become world-class at, why not look elsewhere in the world? Consider handball, or Finland's variation on baseball, or that Afghani sport they play with a headless goat. Or you could try Aussie rules football. That's what I did.

Count 'Em Up

Canada's Olympic curling trials are nearly done.  The Ron Burgundy appearance went better than I expected.  My apologies to Will Ferrell; I'll go see Anchorman 2 as soon as it comes out.  Well, let's say when it gets to on-demand.  Anyway, watching the curling this week has made me think of the odd aspects of the sport that other sports could benefit from.  So here's my list of "Things other sports should borrow from curling."

More than one game going on at a time. 

If you get stuck watching a meaningless game between incompetent teams, just cast your eyes to the next field over.

Players make up their own teams.

Don't fight with teammates through subtly passive-aggressive quotes in media. Instead, start your own team and get some real revenge.

Coaches only get involved when they're asked for their input.

Some coaches are entertaining, but most are micromanager control freaks.  It would be better if they were forced to watch from the stands and only intervene when the players are totally perplexed.

Everyone is miked up all the time.

They often have microphones on some of the players in, say, football.  But that's just so they can play sound bites as a montage leading in to a commercial break, but it's usually just inane chatter. I want to hear them argue strategy, so we can finally find out who doesn't really know what they're doing.

Middle-aged super stars.

I find it's easier to cheer for someone when you don't have to resent their youth.

Vic Rauter. 

Lots of commentators know less about the sport than the audience, but only he has the courage to be open about it.

Clock limits time between action, not the action itself.

Think how much better sports would be if there was some limited amount of time for mound visits, soccer throw-ins, etc.

Name the teams after the star players. 

Let's drop the pretense and rename the Denver Broncos as the Peyton Manning Team.

This Is Going To End Terribly

It's pretty clear that Canadian networks don't really understand the whole media conglomeration thing. Bell, Rogers, Shaw-Canwest-Global-whatever love the idea of reminding everyone what other properties they own. And I'm sure they love the thought that they're shepherding their audiences from one outlet to another. But in practice, this leads to things like sports announcers awkwardly shifting from commentary into a promo for Orphan Black.

But the awkwardness of media crossovers will reach new heights this weekend when Will Ferrell, as his Ron Burgundy alter ego, makes an appearance at the Canadian Olympic curling trials. Who thought that was a good idea? Look, I've mentioned my problems with Ferrell in the past, but I'm wondering how many of his fans will turn out for curling. Is there that much of an intersection between curling fans and the potential audience for Anchorman 2? Sure, curling's older-skewing audience does include many people who can remember the golden age of local news that the movie satirizes, but that's also unlikely to be the people who go to movies.

So why would Farrell spend so much of his precious pre-release promotion time on such an unproductive publicity stunt? It could be that he just loves playing the character. It could be that he no longer has a personality of his own and is slowly turning into Ron Burgundy. But I really hope it's not this: that it's all about producing indirect marketing. Imagine: he yuks it up on the curling telecast; hardly anyone sees it, but TV stations and networks all over America pick up highlights of this goofy footage of the semi-fictional buffoon commenting on this oddball sport that no one understands. I wonder if curling/Winnipeg/TSN know they may be about to become patsies in someone's guerilla marketing campaign.

I'm a Uniter, Not a Divider

Yesterday I implied that hockey and curling represent different ends of the Canadian cultural spectrum. So what can bring this country together? NHL endorsed curling brooms!

A Really Boring Post

There were a couple of big televised events in the U.S. today: the Daytona 500, and The Oscars.  Here in Canada, you can add the final of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts (championship of women's curling.)  What links these three events?  All three are widely criticized for being boring.

As you might see from my Twitter feed, I got kind of tired by how many people were making sarcastic remarks about the race.  I don't really understand why you would say such a thing.  Sure, not everyone is going to enjoy stock car racing.  But as big media events go, Nascar races are pretty easy to ignore.  If you find football boring, then I could understand if you go a little crazy on Superbowl weekend.  But Daytona?  Just don't watch that channel on that Sunday afternoon, skip over that one page of the sports section with a preview the day before, and don't watch the Speed channel for the month before, which you probably avoid anyway.

Because curling and stock car racing are so easy to get away from, expressing your boredom with them reflects badly on yourself.  The fact that you seem to feel the need to tell everyone you're bored - and the fact that you're spending several hours watching a TV event you have no interest in - indicates that you are quite boring.  After all, you are the only common bond in all these boring situations.

The Oscar telecast, okay, I can understand if you're finding it dull.  And I can understand if you're feeling like you can't escape it: so many people insist on talking about it before and after the ceremony.  But it is on only one channel.  You don't have to watch it.  And making jokes about how long and boring the ceremony is are becoming as repetitive as the presentation itself.  It seemed like half of Seth MacFarlane's jokes in this year's show were about how long the show is.  So please don't make the ceremony seem even longer by talking about how long it is.

Things I've Taken For Granite

Today I saw live curling for the first time.  It was the Ontario Scotties Tournament of Hearts, which is to decide the Ontario women's champion who will go to the big Tournament of Hearts.  So I think this tournament should be called the Tournament of Ventricles or something, but whatever.  Here's some of my reactions after seeing a sport in person after years of seeing it on TV:

• The Noise.  You don't realize how loud the rock and the brushes really are.  Or the fact that with five games going on at once, you can't tell which team is yelling "hurry hard!"  I assume they get to know each other's voices.  And the infamous "nice shot" that the skip says after every shot, regardless of how nice it really was?  There's no way the teammates can actually hear it.
• Everything seems smaller.  I know, that affects a lot of sports live vs. televised.  But the sheets seem much smaller.  If the shooter doesn't pull up after releasing the rock, she can coast all the way to the other hogline.  It's amazing there aren't any collisions between sweepers and the other players going back up the sheet.
• Only curlers can see the imperfections in the ice.  On TV, you'll see a rock hit an ice chip and turn, even though you can't see whatever it hit.  One player asked another to clean something off the ice.  It was right in front of me, maybe ten feet away, but I couldn't see it.
• They don't show the guy with the sprinkler who resurfaces the ice during the break.  After the fifth end, a guy goes over the houses with a specialized hose to sprinkle water on the ice.  Weirder is that the hose is connected to a tank strapped to his back.  I'm hoping that someone, somewhere has though of dressing him like a Ghostbuster.
• The scoreboards make no sense.  For big events, the scoreboard is a table listing the ends, with the number scored in each end, and the total scores on the right (like a baseball box score.)  At smaller events, the scores are listed across the top, and the numbers beneath them indicate the end in which the team got to that score.  I'm sure mathematicians would find this inverting of concepts interesting, but it's really hard to read.  I guess the advantage is that they'll need fewer number cards.  But come on, at one end you have computer monitors listing the time remaining for each team.  At the other end, you have unintelligible scoreboards because the club is too cheap to buy a stack of "1" and "2" cards.
• It's freezing in the curling club.  No wonder the expensive seats in the lounge sell out first.  On the other hand, I learned curling is good exercise.  While I was shivering in a winter jacket, tuque and gloves, many of the players were down to t-shirts.