Sports Journal 2-3-14

The Broncos lost because they were wearing their old orange tops.  The franchise lost four Superbowls in those colors and didn’t win until they changed them, as part of their threat to leave Denver if the city didn’t build them a new stadium.  I don’t have any more detailed analysis than that, I wasn’t really watching.  (Translation: I didn’t have any money on it.)  Of course, even Seahawk fans weren’t watching by the end.  They were out scoring more pot for their victory celebration.  Broncos fans were doing the same, but to console themselves.  The rest of the country just had to settle for getting drunk. 

The NFL and various media outlets have been congratulating themselves on putting on a great “event,” much like how Mother Nature congratulates herself after a hurricane and other such disasters.  Now, now, the NFL can’t engineer a great game (wink, wink) or pre-determine an outcome (rolls eyes), they can only set the stage. . . so that a 9-11 Truther could crash it during the MVP presentation.  I’m sure that wasn’t planned.  (You can either read sarcasm or criticism into that statement.)  Speaking of Mother Nature, I would have watched the Frostbite Bowl if that had happened.  Much like the Broncos however, she didn’t show up either. 

I’d like to issue special congratulations to Seattle coach, Pete Carroll.  This man lead USC to a National Championship.  Then when allegations of NCAA rules infractions came up, he bolted to the NFL.  USC got hit with sanctions and was stripped of their title.  Pete then goes on to lead the Seahawks to a Superbowl.  It’s like a fairy tale.

Fox clearly made a mistake in assuming the game would carry the night for them.  Usually networks put on a special episode or heavily promote the premier of a new show immediately following afterward, just to keep the audience around in case the game sucked.  I was pleased that things finished up before Dowton Abbey came on.  Thank goodness the hockey game was good that morning, so at least I got to see some athletic competition.        

In other sports news this weekend, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the “Red Bull Frozen Rush” race.  Red Bull used to produce an energy drink.  Now, I think they just sponsor extreme sports and stunts.  Someday we can look forward to the Red Bull Extreme Olympics where every event will have high speed and sub-orbital drops added to them.  (I’m not sure if I’m being sarcastic or not.  I loathe the Olympics.  Anything might improve them as far as I’m concerned.) 

In this case, the sport/stunt featured off-road racing trucks running a downhill ski slope in the snow.  There was a jump, hard, sliding turns, and even a slalom through a set of gates.  Novel.  Certainly the event gained instant credibility with me by inviting a bunch of good drivers from the CORR series. 

The race format had more in common with rally racing than a typical short course off-road race.  One car was released, then another several seconds later.  The best time moves on to the next round.  It’s unfortunate that the trucks couldn’t race against each other directly.  The large rooster tails of snow made things a little too extreme for that apparently.  It seemed unnecessary distraction for the audience to have two trucks on track at the same time on a split screen, like they thought it wasn’t interesting enough with just one truck. 

Given that only one of the drivers had any experience racing in the snow, they did a pretty good job.  Some of them seemed a little cold, but they were all having a good time.  A couple of them made sure to thank the fans there for standing out in the cold to watch them.  The spiked tires held the trucks to the course, even at high speed, though they did unexpectedly shred the fenders after jumps.

NBC Sports didn’t seem to have much confidence in this first time event.  One, it was on during the Superbowl pre-game.  Granted it’s a horrible, unbearably long show that can be safely ignored (especially after two weeks of hype), but presumably it dominates the ratings anyway.  Two, the amount of padding between heat races was as extreme as the racing.  Then the commercial breaks became almost NASCAR-ish in constant irritation. 

A very British and out-of-place sounding Leigh Diffey worked the race call with a more familiar to truck racing, Cameron Steele.  The lack of F1 cars did not seem to faze Diffey at all though.  Of course the highlight of the race for me was (wait for it), yes, lots of Kelli Stavast talking to the heat winners.  She looked so cute bundled up and was clearly having a good time too. 

Overall, the format needs some twerking.  No, not twerking, tweaking!  What was I thinking there?  The winner was decided on a penalty, rather than just racing.  (Though so was the last CORR championship race.)  However, it was pretty good.  Let’s do it again sometime.