Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Please Stop Boring Us With Your Tour De France Coverage

In case you were wondering what the Polish cycling squad looks like without pants on, well, here you go.

I've got some news for the old people who control what type of content is covered here in the good ol' U.S. of A., we're never gonna like Arena League Football, we don't like soccer despite the fact that we all grew up playing it, no one watches the WNBA and we could give two fucking SHITS about the Tour De France. So stop covering it. Spend more time on pre-season NFL or college football. Gimme some friggin coverage of the minor league guys who are gonna make a difference in the second half of the MLB season or preview the British Open like you do the Masters. I'll watch all of that shit because I know the players, I know the stories and it's relevant to stuff I already watch and follow. Admittedly, there is not a ton of coverage but it does get mentioned on every SportsCenter and there's always a link to the coverage on ESPN.com. But know this, I didn't give a shit about the Tour De France when Greg LeMond was winning it or Lance Armstrong was winning it. I only cared because of how angry the international Cycling community became about the whole thing. It's always fun to cheer for someone when irrational Europeans "sophisticates" don't like them (that's why I'm rooting for Zinedine Zidane to make a come back. He headbutted some faggy Italian guy who then flopped as if Chuck Norris had just given him a friggin a flying elbow to the sternum and it started an international incident. How can we as Americans not like that guy?). And it only got worse when it turned out that every cyclist in the history of the world is blood doping in order to get a performance edge (which, ironically, if everyone is doing it, doesn't really give anyone an edge, idiots). So a sport I didn't give a shit about in the first place became illegitimate because of a drug / doping scandal making the whole thing even more unwatchable and the coverage more infuriating. That's not really a winning combination. And don't give me this bullshit that it's a big international deal and because of that it requires our attention so that we can become more cultured. More people watch big Cricket matches internationally and you don't see or hear boo about it. That's because we in America don't care. If you want to bring the Tour de France to our attention, do it the same way you bring all the other peripheral sports and sport stories to our attention: send Chris Connelly over to France and have him find some disabled or terminally ill family member of a cyclist and then pull on our heart strings. At least when I hear his voice I'll realize that I have to turn the channel and won't be forced to waste a second of my life on a sport no one gives a shit about.

1 comment:

Jason h said...

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