Saturday, June 24, 2006
Well the race for the Stanley Cup is over and Canada has once again failed. While I'm pissed as hell that yet another team from a Southern state with no naturally occurring ice has won the most recognized prize in all of winter sports, it reinforces a growing problem with sports in general:
Countries need to either stop claiming certain sports as their "national game," or they need to get better at them.
This is not entirely Canada's fault, and the burden does not rest soley on them. I mean, any of the Northen States could have rescued the Stanley Cup from the cruel, sunburned grip of Dixie. But still...I mean come on Canada has hockey on the back of its five dollar bill!
They have claimed hockey as their national sport, but haven't taken the Cup since 1993...Granted, most of the Canadian team's players are from Europe and most of the players on the US teams are Canadian, but it's still awkward to think of Canada not being dominant in the sport.
I blame this on Murphy's Law. It seems that whenever a country loves one sport too much, something happens to bite them in the ass. For even more evidence, we can go stateside.
Baseball is still called "America's Passtime" despite the fact that almost no American kids play anymore and most of the love of the game has to be imported from Central America and the Carribean. And, for some reason, we call out national championship "The World Series" despite the fact that only American teams play. Well, we finally decided to take our national passtime on the road and play against the rest of the world, hoping to show that Americans still love their baseball.
Naturally, Japan won.
Let's also not get started on the basketball. Now, I don't follow basketball too much (can't stand the sport in fact), but I seem to recall a little something taking place during the last Summer Olympics...What was that again? Oh yeah...I think it was something to the effect of the US team suddenly realizing that many it's most talented NBA players were imported from other countries. In short: Fuck.
We're just bringing it on ourselves. You can't claim a sport, without invoking Murphy's law! Meanwhile, there's the World Cup. Nobody claims to own soccer, and they all play together. Maybe that's why we couldn't give a rat's ass: We can't even pretend to have cornered the market.
In conclusion, countries need to stop proclaiming "national sports." It will only lead to heartbreak and tears. In the meantime, I say we in America tap in to our fast natural resource of fat peole and begin training Sumo wrestlers...then those bastards on the other side of the Pacific can see how it feels....
This transmission logged byErisSaid on 8:28 PM
