Open All Night

I have professed to this before, but I will watch just about anything on TV provided that someone, somewhere on the planet considers it a sport. I was never really sure of why this is, but I think I stumbled across it last night. I think that I am just so competitive that I enjoy watching others compete at a high level at whatever they are good at. That sounds ludicrous, but that is the only rational explanation for it.

I came to this conclusion after spending four hours this weekend watching the “Bassmasters Classic” on ESPN. It is the Super Bowl of their sport, if you listen to the announcers. And boy did I ever! I tried to suck up every detail and nuance of the sport. I sat up closer to the TV every time they did a 3D animation of what a different lure looked like to the fish underwater. I nodded each time they broke out the graphic and associated google map of where the competitor was fishing on the river. I appreciated the strategy and similarly appreciated how much it meant to each of the anglers. (See, look at me breaking out the pertinent terminology).

But you know what? I hate fishing.

That is ok though, it still made for good theatre. It is not the first time I watched it (I have taken some of it in during previous years). I do not like the fact now that they have “real-time” weights of the fish coming in to the boat. I would prefer to just “see” the fish (and number caught), and have an idea in my head of how much each weighs. Then, wait until the end of the day when they have the weigh-ins in the arena and watch each person weigh his fish. It is great – those rednecks go bananas when the angler (see, there it is again) holds up the two biggest fish he caught. Speaking of rednecks, one thing that did cross my mind was the comparison to NASCAR. Since I know so little about fishing, I was still confused at many junctures. There were explanations, but not enough for me to grasp some concepts. My point is, did they dumb down any of the explanations? Because I know a tonne about NASCAR, and it irritates me to no end when they
explain the same thing to “new fans” each week. Was I one of those novices to the fish fans? Yikes! I better to grab my new copy of Bassmaster magazine and head off to the commode. I got a lot of work to do!

Competitively yours,
-Michael

(Summary of the “sports” I watched at one point or another this weekend for a minimum of 5 minutes? Auto racing, fishing, poker, bowling, cheerleading, some sort of skiing terrain park, basketball, golf, hockey, and motocross)