Summertime Sports Spectacular

Summer is almost upon us and that means we are nearing the golden months of televised professional sporting events. And no, I’m not talking about the NBA playoffs or the race for the Stanley Cup (NHL playoffs for those of you who aren’t Canadian). No, once those two pesky distractions are played out and off the air we can finally settle down for what the summer was meant for. If you’re thinking baseball, guess again. Baseball is about as exciting as watching gay-hermaphrodite-farm porn. Actually… I take that back, that’s far too offensive to gay people.

No, the summer season is all about those lesser known sports, the ones you rarely hear on Sports Center and seldom see in the paper. This is the time for bowling, spelling bees, and hot dog eating contests. If you aren’t sitting on the edge of your seat, thrilled to death to learn more, then there’s seriously something wrong with you. Seriously.

First up in our Summer Seldom Heard Sports tour is the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Held every year in Washington DC, the National Spelling Bee pits eighth graders (and younger) against each other to see who can spell the most haphazard words that you’ll never use in the English language. Now honestly, who wouldn’t find that exciting?

ESPN will air the semi-finals live from 10am to 1pm on May 31st. Later that same day, ABC will be airing the finals live between 8 and 10 pm. That’s a prime time spot for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Pretty spiffy, if you ask me. Personally, I can’t wait to see all the little kids on stage, nervous as hell because their parents are pushing them too hard to win a spelling bee. It’s a friggin spelling bee. Yeah, no worries about going to a good school or getting a high class job, but by hell or high-water, you’re winning that spelling bee! And if you’ve ever watched the Scripps before, you can easily tell that the parents have a larger interest in winning than their kids do. I’m sure the kids would all rather be playing Nintendo. (Quick, can you spell Shigeru Miyamoto? And no cheating with Google!)

But it’s all well worth it for the winner. The championship prize is a $20,000 award from Scripps, $5000 from Franklin Electronic Publishers, $5000 from LeapFrog Enterprises Inc., $5000 in scholarships from Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation, a $2500 US Savings Bond and reference library from Merriam-Webster, and some reference materials from Encyclopedia Britannica worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000. So for our Grand Champion Speller, we get somewhere around $42,500 of total prizes. Not too shabby, even though it’s not exactly Peyton Manning money, but it’ll pay the bills. More pointedly, it’ll pay for the parents’ bills.

By rule, contestants may not be past the eighth grade nor may they be any older than sixteen years to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. That means that legally, the money goes to the winner, who must be a minor, and the parents take over the money as custodians. As I said before, you can tell that the parents are the ones really pushing their kids to succeed. And something tells me that those parents aren’t going to use the massive winnings to buy their kid a brand new Playstation 3. I’m not exactly sure, but I think $40k may just be enough money to buy one of those outrageously priced Sony contraptions. Though buying the actual games and extra controllers for multiplayer is probably out of the question. So, can anyone out there please tell me why the new Playstations aren’t selling like hotcakes right now?

If parentally whipped pre-adolescents aren’t your thing, then you might want to tune into the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest held annually on July 4th (and televised on ESPN). This magnificent even has the world’s greatest “gurgitators” competing to eat as many hot dogs (including the buns) as possible in a twelve minute period. Reigning world champion and near demi-god Takeru Kobayashi has won the event that past six years running. Last year, however, he had some competition from American Joey Chestnut who wolfed down 1.75 fewer hot dogs than the Japanese title holder.

Now I’m really upset. It turns out that the registration for the June 9th circuit event for Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest held in Charlotte (only 3 hours away by station wagon) is already closed. I can no longer enter the event. And this makes me sad. I really thought that I could pull off an upset of some sort in Charlotte and pave my way to the International Competition at Coney Island. But alas, it was not meant to be. Not this year at least. Never mind the fact that at best, I could down maybe… maybe five or six hot dogs before rolling over and going to sleep. I guess it’s just not my time to dominate the world of competitive eating just yet.

The IFOCE, The International Federation of Competitive Eating, sanctions many competitive eating events from hot dogs, to cow brains (yum!), to baked beans. Winners of any of these many and varied events can take home upwards of $25,000 (and if you must know, the $25 grand award is for the cow brain competition: winning never tasted so unsettling). The IFOCE warns that fans of the sport should not try competitive eating at home, that it should only be done under very controlled circumstances and with emergency medical attention nearby. They also don’t endorse training for competitive eating of any type. Ha, and you thought football was a dangerous sport.

I think it’s time that these lesser known sports got the attention they deserve. Sure we may not have an Obscure Sports Quarterly magazine or an ESPN 8, “the Ocho” to keep us informed on the competitive worlds of eating and spelling, but the current TV avenues should be more than sufficient. Qualifying rounds for the sports could easily be shown on the ESPN family of networks which currently include: ESPN, ESPN2 (“the Deuce”), ESPN-U, ESPNEWS, ESPN-Classic, ESPN-SOCOM, and the much more recent ESPN-DVD-PVP-LSD-LMNOP-CV. I’m beginning to think the fine folks over at ESPN like needless acronyms as much as the US military. And that’s saying something.

So the next time you find yourself disgusted at watching overpaid “athletes” running around on TV and not putting in the professional level effort that Gordie Howe or Jackie Robinson or Bart Star put in, then please flip over to the more minor sports. I think you’ll find that they more than merit your attention. Hey, what else are you going to do this summer, watch golf? Oh, and for those of you who spelled Shigeru Miyamoto’s name correctly (answer: S-H-I-G-E-R-U, M-I-Y-A-M-O-T-O) then congratulations, you can read! You might want to send an apple to your elementary school teacher in thanks.