Crickets and NASCAR

The cricket spitting world championships were held the other day in Indiana. The winner spitted a brown house cricket 32 feet and 5 inches. The rules state that the cricket must be fully intact when spit and the propulsion can only come from one puffing of the cheeks. An official will check the cricket after it lands to ensure that it has six legs, four wings, and two antennae before the spit can be counted.

In addition to being televised the event drew in excess of 30,000 spectators. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is passing for a competitive sport in our world today. But it only gets stranger from here.

Chess Boxing is also on the rise. The way it works is two competitors compete in alternating rounds of boxing and chess. The first round the two people box each other. In the second round the same two competitors sit down and each gets one move in a chess match. Then the next round they return to boxing. The rounds continue to alternate until a person successfully knocks out or checkmates their opponent. According to the World Chess Boxing Organization, the growth of their sport is amazing and they think it could someday be included in the Olympics.

Then we come to what could be the grossest or just weirdest “sport,” that would be Hairy Back Competitions. Yes, you read that correctly. Shirtless contestants display their backs to a panel of judges who rate the back hair based on diameter, density, color and length. The winner is given a trophy and prize money. There is said to be over 800 back hair athletes on the current circuit.

Is this a sign of the end of civilization as we know it or just a set of new sports that will someday captivate us all and produce fantasy leagues and tailgating? Will schools soon have cricket spitting teams or chess boxing clubs?

I’m not sure but I have to admit that I feel somewhat behind the times and out of the loop if this is what we find interesting as a society. I can’t relate to finding these “sports” enthralling and worth spending either time or money to view.

Give me the good old sports like monster truck rallies or hot dog eating championships. Now those are real sports. Oh, wait, those may be a little on the fringes too. I mean watching giant trucks crush and jump stuff could be a little weird. Also watching a guy win a mustard yellow belt for swallowing 74 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes could be categorized as abnormal.

So I guess we better stick with the tried and true sports like NASCAR. Because who among us doesn’t enjoy watching cars drive around in circles at a high rate of speed?

Or golf, where we are fascinated by pro athletes who earn millions of dollars for hitting a ball with a stick only to go chasing after it to hit it once again. Now that is entertainment.

I guess my point is we are all different and what we enjoy is also different. Does it hurt us if someone else likes something we consider odd or strange? No.

Do we have to all think the same way in order for our society to function? No.

Do we have to agree on everything for us to work together? No. Some folks say sports is a microcosm of society as a whole. If that is true, then I think the Masters Golf Champion can sit down and have a discussion with the Cricket Spitting Champion and probably find at least a few similarities in their sports. Maybe we as a society can do the same.

We are all in this together folks and we can’t make it alone. Let’s figure it out and work with each other to make the world better.

Except for the back hair guys. We may have to ship them off to an island to start their own society because that is just unpalatable.