JCC Ender Sigh rags on 'Murica

I give you Will Skelton, 2.03m for 140kgs, and Uini Atonio, 1,97m for 152kgs.

 

I dunno what the **** is going on in this thread at this point but I definitely need more photographic arguments.

 

Look up Faf de Klerk I guess?

 

Tangentially on this, I do know someone that was in some sort of curling league that, while he wasn't of the sufficient caliber, did mean he had known (not sure if actually competed against) some of the US olympians for curling.

 

Look I am British and I just want to apologise for Cricket. it started as an exercise in existential tedium and the hopelessness of all life , but somehow it caught on .

 

Ah, so kind of like English cuisine.

 

To be fair I’m not too familiar with the NFL of the past, for obvious reasons, but from the games I have watched, the biggest drawback isn’t it’s ‘toughness’ (although I’m sure you’re right about the protective gear having such a psychological effect, as this has also been noted with headgear in Rugby), but rather how slowly paced the game is. One of the great things about a Rugby game, particularly Union, is how long the game can go without a breakdown in play. I think this adds another level of skill for Rugby players, because they have to develop their tactics while the game is flowing around them (which is why you have playmakers moving to slow the ruck down, or kicking the ball dead, to give their team some rest-bit).

 

Big guy running

 

I never fail to not get anxious when they run over the end line without putting the ball down in the goal area.

 

So many missed tries...

 

The fact that it's called "touchdown" when they don't actually touch the ball down makes it even stranger.

 

and that its called football yet they carry the ball around in their hands all the time.

 

Curling is absolutely exceptional. I loved waking up before dawn to watch the Canadian team play in the last Winter Olympics, no matter how much my roommates made fun of me for it. America would be wise to get back on that horse, followed by widening lacrosse's appeal outside of high school trust fund babies.

 

Part of the problem is access. It's hard to just try curling in the states because there's so few places to curl. Nova Scotia has fewer than a million people and has 33 curling clubs. Minnesota and Wisconsin have the most curling clubs in the states, both have between 20 and 30 clubs, but the states have over 5 million people. There's 11 curling clubs in New York state. It's really hard to just casually curl in the states because the clubs are filled with serious, hardcore, competitive curlers who don't have a lot of places to go, and it just doesn't leave room on the schedule for the curling-curious to try. And trying curling really builds interest in curling because it's fun. Sure, you fall, everyone falls their first time, but you get up, you throw some rocks at the house, you sweep, you drink. Great times.

 

My Airbnb houseguest is a middle-aged Australian woman and she familiarized with me with an interesting Australian political event called The Dismissal. What's the best published one-volume treatment of this?

 

@Ender Sai Here's a sample of Americans watching (good) Rugby ^^

 

I’ve given up on watching Rugby because whilst it is supposed to be a flowing game the referees ruin it by blowing the whistle every nine seconds due to some perceived rule infraction.

 

So they are going all "NFL Refs" on that sport too, eh? Great. Its killing football here in the states, IMO. The rule changes and stoppages are too much. When I was a boy it wasnt like this at all. Way better.

 

When I was a boy, you could still call anybody you considered less 'a boy'.

 

True. How did it get named that?

OK, time to pick on other countries sports now: What’s the infatuation in Europe and other places with soccer? Talk about boring.

 

I guess you didn't watch the Croatia-Spain and France-Switzerland matches on Monday. Anything but boring.

The rest of your post...

 

sigh..... there's a whole collection of related sports all called 'football'. Also see: Rugby Football, which American football branched off of in the late 19th century.


I do think South Africa was the last world cup I was particularly invested in, though. Tough to watch without a desktop since I relied on alternative means to get the games. What with America being America and all (similarly, the London Olympics were the last decent ones since I wouldn't watch the bad and non-existent American coverage.)

But I guess the World Cup wasn't deadly enough for some attention spans. Wonder if the only Olympics he'd like would be Munich.

 

The Sweden-Ukraine match yesterday was very boring.
But you know what's really boring?
Thumping your chest over sitting on a couch and watching one sport over the other.