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An online news headline really reached out and grabbed me the other night: “Pole Dancers Push To Be Included In Olympic Games.”

 

There, I skipped a few lines to let that sink in. Did it?

Pole dancing…at the Olympics…

Okay. I’m alright now. But it’s taken three days to get that way.

And don’t get me wrong here; I don’t watch, like or care one bit about the Olympic Games. Television has ruined all appeal for me, since I think it’s too disorganized and contracts prevent other networks from adding to the choices a viewer has of which events they would like to watch. I hate ice hockey and figure skating, and I’m not sitting through those to get to the bobsled competition.

But I have to face it, the Olympics are doomed, and they have been ever since they allowed professional athletes to compete in them. And while I’m on the subject, snowboarding should never have been added either.

I don’t take well to the ideas of changing the way the games were structured mere decades ago, but that does not mean that all of the older sports included in the competition belong there, either. Some sports, you see… are not sports at all.

In fact, I’ve never been sure what they should be called, and this extends well outside of the Olympics and into collegiate and professional “sports.”

Take auto racing for example. That is not a sport. Oh, like Hell it is. Take any kind you want: NASCAR, Formula One, Sprints, drags… whatever, and I will defy you to prove it is a sport. So when a racer got busted on HGH couple of years back, I laughed my sports-hating ass off. If your want me to believe that driving a car is a sport, then why isn’t it considered a sport when you get in your BMW and drive from Los Angeles to Lake Tahoe? Does it mean you should be joining the race-car driver’s union, local oh-four-two-three? Should you be paying dues, and get benefits? Get real.

Driving in a circle for five hundred miles, according to racing fans, is not only a sport, but a high endurance one requiring top athletic conditioning.

They say it’s even more difficult with (take your pick) open-wheel, road courses, or endurance racing (such as the 24 hours at Le Mans).

I say: Horse puckey.

I once drove from Tampa to Baltimore. Thousand miles, give or take, and did it without stopping at a motel. I also drove an eighteen-wheeler for a living until I nearly cut a station wagon in half.

I shouldn’t have said that…

But the point is, yes, if you’re going to push it, then you need to be durable. You also need to expect lots of accidents, most of them your fault, because no coffee ever made, not even Starbucks’ turpentine-instant coffee mix, can keep you either awake or alert. And that doesn’t even count all the idiots out there on the interstates and what they happen to do behind the wheel. And I mean it, because when in a tall truck, you can look down and see what these fools are doing: Driving around naked, having sex (alone or with a partner) eating full-course meals, reading books, texting, emailing, talking on –get this–not one, but two cell phones at once, and oh, so much more. I don’t give a damn if it’s on the road or a track, driving is serious business and it is dangerous in the extreme, but none of that makes it a sport.

Here’s another favorite of mine… and by favorite I mean to say I hate it: Horse Racing. You have got to be kidding me. They still use the whip, and dig with boots which have built-in, friendlier-looking versions of spurs, the animals are routinely drugged and injured, they’re raised for racing or breeding stock, and will never know the feeling of freedom. Haven’t we done enough to them without continuing this barbaric treatment? As for whether it’s even a sport or not, the answer is no. It takes small people to be jockeys, and for the length of the race, they may be very active, but whipping an animal is no sport–and never should have been called one in the first place.

In tandem, there is also greyhound racing. Since dogs are not as expensive as thoroughbred horses, they get treated in ways you would never believe. I personally knew some people who adopted “retired” hounds, and you never saw such skittish, terrified animals in your life. What goes on after the track closes, it goes without saying, must be sickening.

This might be a bad time to bring it up, but then again, do I care?

Absolutely not.

So next on my list is golf.

That’s right, I said it. Golf is a game, like croquet writ large. A big lawn game, nothing more. Most of the activity of a player during a tournament is walking. Walking is an exercise, not a sport. And just because it might take good eye-hand coordination to make it at the game, hey–that does not make it a sport. It also takes good eye-and-hand-coordination to play video games, but that’s hardly a sport, either.

If I’m going to be fair, though, then going back to Olympic “sports,” curling has to be right up there. Only 5 people alive today even know the rules, and those are kept in secluded places surrounded with wire and towers. In the match, a player on one team takes a turn as a sort of “bowler,” if you will, and bowls what looks for all the world like a squashed beer keg down an ice-coated lane with strange markings on it. At the other end stands a player with a broom. A broom!

This player waits until the–thing– is almost to him or her, then frantically sweeps the ice laterally. It is bizarre in the extreme, but once you start watching it, you can’t stop. It’s like when you were a kid and for the first time saw your neighbor’s dogs getting it on. You couldn’t look away no matter how sickened your were. Well, watching curling is like that: It’s a sick thing to do, but you  can’t help yourself. As far as being a sport: Uhm, no.

Perhaps part of the blame goes to idiots with too much time to fill on their networks. ESPN brought us “professional” poker, and now, right up there with billiards and bowling, there are card games. I can’t wait for the “World Series of Go Fish” or even “Old Maid” or “Hearts.” Oh, and after that? Probably “War.”

You think I’m being single-minded, perhaps a bit thick? Hmmm? And that I’m way off base?

Stop right there. Remember, I have no love for sports. They bore me. And after watching this last Super Bowl, I’ve had it with the NFL, too. Say what you want, believe whatever you choose. I thought that game was…fishy.

Which leads to my next non-sport: Fishing. Again, ESPN occasionally covers Bassmasters tournament fishing. Why? I ask again: Why?

Oh, I’ll grant you, finding a bait or presentation of color or texture a fish is in a mood to take can be tricky. But let’s be real here, this is not a sport. Anglers claim that fish can’t feel hooks in their mouths, but how they know this, well, you’ve got me. The object in a tournament is to catch the biggest/most fish, go weigh in, then release the fish.

Oh, that’s humane. Release them so that if they stay in the area, several people can catch the same fish. The fight alone gives them enough stress to cut their lives short, and when a fish is handled, and the protective layer of slime is removed in large spots, the fish will likely die anyway. I’ve released fish before and watched them start to swim away vigorously only to die before making it out of eyesight. Fish also swallow hooks, although with lures it’s far less likely. Digging the swallowed hook out of a fish kills it. If left in, it will probably still die. Cruelty to any animal–for fun, “sport” or profit–is just evil. I put up with hunters, but only if they eat what they kill, and only because deer and bear populations are growing rapibly and are now posing dangers in populated areas.

Big game fishing is considered a sport even by some who look down on fresh water angling. This involves large species like Blue-and-yellowfin tuna, white or blue marlin, swordfish, and even sharks. Yet the idea is to, once a fish is hooked, fight it in. It gets complicated depending on tackle limits, like restricting anglers to a certain range of pound-test line. But it doesn’t matter. It can take hours of hard work to boat a large specimen on rod and reel, and the fish is certainly not going to be released. Again, if the angler and boat captain agree on who gets what portions of meat and nothing is wasted, that’s one thing. But there should never have been big game tournaments or bass tournaments; it isn’t a sport when the animal will be overpowered and killed. As far as shark fishing, not many people will eat the meat, although to certain markets they are considered a delicacy. But shark fishing can be right scary, as I found out when going after tigers. even a five foot specimen is highly aggressive and is not safe whether in the water or on the deck. And if any large game fish is horsed, then boating it is a harrowing ordeal you’re never going to forget. The fish rarely survive, and even tagged and released individuals often don’t make it. But they never show you those parts.

Next on my list  is high-or-cliff diving. Diving is no sport, plain and simple. It’s nothing but jumping into water from a height nobody has any business going to. People are commonly injured during these types of contests, but just because it happens to be dangerous does not mean it is a sport. The extreme of cliff diving is, at the least, a downright stupid thing to engage in; it is at the most suicidal behavior. But having a death wish is not a requirement for any sport. I think psychiatry could learn much from high divers.

Then there’s weird behavior within both sports and non-sports alike. NBA referees taking bribes or betting on games they just happen to be officiating, players who command high salaries to perform and never really do, Vegas running betting lines on games and people going broke for going by what the oddsmakers say, drug abuse, sexual scandals, and violence. Both collegiate and professional athletes are too often winding up on the losing ends of guns these days. Steve McNair may have been retired, but it shocked the whole country when he was murdered, just as it’s shocking any time a figure we’ve ever watched play their game while we were cheering for them.

But that’s not really what I’m getting at here. I want to discuss the really odd stuff. And almost all of that is restricted to, not the players so much, but the people who make it all possible. We’re talking advertisers or sponsors, team owners and the fans themselves.

Sponsors pay big money for premium slots during sporting events, and the bigger the game, the bigger the payday for the networks. Super Bowl commercials notwithstanding, ads are geared toward whatever sex or age is most likely to be viewing the game. Since there is a growing number of female football fans, and they take their Pittsburgh Steelers or Washington Redskins very seriously, commercials during NFL games have slowly been changing. In the late 1960’s, it was Gillette razor blades, Old Spice after shave, Chevrolet, and Marlboro. Nowadays, you’ll see diet sodas being hawked as well as other products which have a known appeal to women. Studies show it’s effective. The ads, especially the most obnoxious ones that boil your blood, sell products. It’s all about the money.

One thing that makes all this corporate attention take away from a given event is that by contract, a certain amount of ads must run; they’re “paid” for. So during a football game, college or pro, you’ll come back to the field after commercials to see players just milling about the field, not even in a huddle yet. Once the referee gets a cue, he winds his arm, blows his whistle, and the play clock starts. The intervals have gotten longer and longer, as greed knows no limits and is always hungry. It’s pretty stupid; the viewers at home don’t like it, the fans in attendance hate it, the players cool off too much, they lose focus, and I would not be surprised if that’s the beginning of some injuries.

Fans are not going to escape my wrath, either. Put a beer in the stomach of certain kinds of people, and trouble’s coming. One night at Oriole Park, a man climbed the foul pole down the third base line. Of course, it snagged up the game.

Fans are forever climbing, shouting insults, falling, tripping, throwing objects or debris on the playing field, and yes–it’s true–they still go streaking (running naked onto the field). I’ll never forget one such guy who was extremely unfortunate at a game the old Baltimore Colts were involved in. He made just one mistake. He wandered too close to middle linebacker Mike Curtis. Curtis was the type of 60s-70s player who was definitely of the old school: Anything moves, hit it. Worry about flags later. He did a shoulder hit on the poor, hapless, scrawny streaker, decked him, and the guy was taken into custody. He most surely felt it the next day, too.

While that may have been funny, what happened during the Preakness Stakes a few years back most certainly was not. Drinking in the infield is allowed; it’s a traditional and major party day for Baltimore. But on this day, one man managed to take in a wee bit too much. During one of the races, he wandered onto the track near the finish line while the field was still on the back stretch… and was waiting right there when they made the last turn to the final stretch. It took no time…they were all upon him, and–he swung a punch at one of the horses!

He got locked up, but I can’t recall whatever became of him after that. He could have caused serious injuries with his actions. Kind of like one night, decades ago, I was at a Baltimore Clippers hockey game. They had to stop it while they tried to get small metal wires or thin rods off the ice. Which, of course, were thrown there by… spectators, who else?

But there are other gripes I have… like baseball. It’s okay, I’ll call it a sport. But getting close-up shots all nine innings of players who pull, scratch, twist and grab at their crotches makes me pretty sick. For all I know they’ve just masturbated. Baseball may indeed be a sport, but there needs to be some class in there somewhere. Enough already. Cut the damn spitting and crotch pulling out.

Finally we have my favorite sports oddity currently in use.

I’m talking about sponsors sending blimps to cover games that are in domed stadiums and arenas. If anyone thinks that being able to see the top of the stadium enhances my viewing pleasure, then they need some therapy.

So, to the question then: Pole dancing as an Olympic sport–yes, or no?

I hope by now you know, my answer is NO.

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