J. Andrew Lockwood
Senior Editor / Columnist
With the onset on the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, I find myself increasingly glued to the most obscure sports at the latest hours on the most low-budget sports television channels. Mogul trick-skiing on Versus at 11:30pm? Something must be wrong with me.
Or maybe it could be the disease of ‘Unpopularsporteristis’, commonly known in the medical field as a person affected by sports popular in foreign nations yet seemingly unpopular or unimportant in one’s home country. Common symptoms include watching Manchester United games early in the morning against opponents you’ve never heard of, knowing more than one person or one team in a sport that doesn’t really matter in your home country, and trying to get your computer to translate the foreign language in the latest recap of cricket from Bangladesh.
Take the Europeans for example. They have a variety of sports to keep up with. Cycling, equestrian, rugby, and football (not the NFL kind) rule across the pond while we go crazy about our big three: baseball, basketball, and American football. Canada? They have hockey...and curling because it’s too cold for anything else of course. Take a look to our south in Mexico were bullfighting is big.
Sports can be a funny thing in that they depend on location. And if for some reason your location isn’t befitting for a sport, you can risk your public reputation by still participating in the sport or you can just let your passion go and blend in.
It seems to be an increasing trend within the last few years for unfashionable sports to be ‘accepted.’ Take MMA fighting for example. The violent sport that mixes martial arts with boxing and wrestling has all but gone mainstream as prime matches can be viewed on CBS and a plethora of other smaller networks. NASCAR has certainly done very well in marketing their product to average American citizens and their 36 race schedule includes dates that stretch from New York to California. Soccer has even started to catch on in the U.S. with big time players moving to Major League Soccer clubs.
While the current sports market in America doesn’t seem to be moving away from the big-three sports, others are finding their niche. Others however, remain almost exclusively foreign. Cricket can draw bigger crowds than NFL games do in countries like India, yet the game remains only in countries that were traditional English colonies (of course, other than the U.S.). Rugby and Gaelic football are popular in Western Europe and Australia. Formula One racing is popular all over the world except in America where it is greatly overshadowed by other motorsports.
That takes us back to the topic of hard-core fans that watch every YouTube video of their favorite foreign sport because there isn’t television coverage. Trust me, I know. I used to make fun of an English Premier League fan for waking up at 4am to catch matches being streamed live over the internet yet I found myself trying to watch the Tour Down Under (a professional cycling race to kick off the season in Austrailia) on obscure, foreign cycling websites.
It seems that what goes around comes around eventually. Therefore, my warning is don’t hate on your brother for watching snowmobile racing or a Scottish rugby match because there will be a day when something sparks your interest in something peculiar. With that said, I’m missing a Canadian Football League game on Fox Sports Net Ontario. Laugh at me if you wish.
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