07 December 2005

Add new sports


As the semester comes to a close, I’ve got a couple of suggestions for the upcoming year’s athletics. No, no, not the mascot again. I said what I had to say about that. And I regret none of it. None of it.

As many of you have probably realized by now, we have a lot of sports teams here at Fisher. That’s great and all but they’re very traditional sports. Football, basketball – yeah, I’m pretty sure I can catch all of those on TV. So, here are some new sports that the athletic program should consider for the 2006 season.

• Cricket: I’ll admit that I have no idea how cricket is actually played. There’s a ball (of that, I’m almost certain), wickets and bats. I think it’s kind of like baseball. Not completely sure but it’s probably close enough. I bet the baseball team could help us out on this one. Just think of the boost in enrollment when we start recruiting all the top cricket players from area high schools. Since there really aren’t many other cricket teams in the Empire 8, we’d be on the fast track toward an E8 cricket championship. Take that, Naz.

• Elephant Polo: The biggest challenge to starting an elephant polo team would be getting the elephants. I checked the Dick’s Sporting Goods ads for this last weekend and they don’t have any elephant sales going on. Once we clear that hurdle – the Seneca Park Zoo is supposed to be birthing some more elephants, maybe they’d loan them out on the weekends – I think the elephant polo team’ll take right off. It should be quite popular. Everyone likes elephants. With the exception of the evil ringleader from Dumbo. He wasn’t very nice.

• Russian Roulette: This might be the hardest one to get off the ground. Recruiting might be difficult, finding people to play against might be difficult, getting school approval might be difficult, getting legal approval might be difficult. It’ll be a challenge. But isn’t that what athletics are all about? Overcoming a challenge. I’m pretty sure I remember that from those posters they use to have on the walls back in elementary school gym class. There’s one key benefit to having a Russian roulette team: unlike other sports, if we suck at this one, it won’t be around very long.

What’s that you say? These aren’t real sports? Listen, if we can consider cheerleading a sport . . .

- Originally published in the Cardinal Courier (Volume 5-Issue 6; December 7, 2005)