Two diverse topics today, from discussions last night. First, the oil spill. I wrote quite some time ago, that I thought it was clear that Soros used moveon.org and money to buy the presidential election, but I couldn't figure out the payback. Then, when he got a U.S. backed two billion dollar loan guarantee to develop oil resources in Brazil for use there only, I thought I saw some light. Selling oil anywhere today is a pretty good business.
But now, with this sabotaged well in the Gulf, the last piece fell into the puzzle. Because, somehow or other Soros' oil is going to wind up coming here after all. While there's not much anyone can do about this well-planned and executed situation, certainly not me, I just want credit for recognizing it from the beginning, and my early on understanding of what the last presidential election was really about.
On to issue two. My wife knows quite a lot about sports, both today and a long time past. So, at times when she awakens during the night, she listens to sports radio shows, among others. That's fine with me because she wears earphones, so it doesn't keep me up too.
Well, it seems last night that a replacement sat in for one of her favorite show hosts, and according to her, this guy knew very little about the sports he discussed. In fact, many knowledgeable fans called in to dispute or refute his comments and statements. When I awoke, she mentioned her disappointment with this broadcaster and we began a discussion of own. About what broadcasters and fans alike do and don't know about various sports.
That conversation led to another issue I've touched on here before, as to what really constitutes a sport to begin with and then which are the most popular and the reason. So, for the first time, I looked it up. According to ESPN's Page 2 that rated 60 common sports by difficulty, here are the ranks:
1-Boxing 2-Hockey 3-Football 4-Basketball 7-Tennis 9-Baseball
10-Soccer 32-Nascar 60-Fishing.
So now let's look at the popularity aspect and think about it. How much athletic ability or skill does it take to fish? None or less. Thus, just about everyone in the U.S. has gone fishing, even me and my wife. Nascar I've discussed to death (no pun intended). This pastime, or whatever it is, takes no athletic ability at all, except maybe endurance, and just about everyone over driving age gets behind the wheel.
And, as for soccer, maybe it's me, but I can't see the difficulty of running up and down a field in your shorts kicking a ball. For fans the hardest part must be avoiding a coma. But, nonetheless, anyone can do it because it requires almost no skill. So, when you look at the three least difficult activities, you get three huge fan bases. To me that makes absolute sense because folks can not only identify with the activity, they can easily do it themselves.
As for the first and second most difficult, boxing and hockey, their rankings prove the point. Both are extremely hard to master, take stamina, coordination, speed, talent, reflexes and endurance thus very few fans have an iota of commonality with either, so why watch?
The rest, football, basketball, tennis and baseball fall in the middle and so do their rankings. And there you have the range from easy to tough -boxing on top fishing at the bottom. And, I suppose, this is one more reflection of how life works. If it's easy to do, everyone loves it, and if takes some hard work and talent most folks choose to avoid it, whatever it is.
That's all for today folks.
Adios
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