Are You Ready for Some Curling?

            Because I’m a sports addict, I spend most evenings and my entire weekends watching ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN U, ESPN Classic, Fox Sports, Fox Sports South, Fox Sports North, Fox Sports Tennessee, Fox Sports Eastern Montana, the NFL Network, the SEC Network, the MLB Network, and the 24 hour-a-day Lacrosse Channel.  I will watch virtually any sporting event telecast on the Jumbotron in my den.  Heck, I’d watch the NCAA National tiddly winks Championship if they telecast it on ESPN U, particularly if the Vols’ tiddly winks team was playing Florida.

            Thus, it should come as no surprise that I have spent about a hundred hours over the past two weeks curling (yes, curling!) up on my sofa watching the Winter Olympics.

            As a Southern boy, there are a lot of sports in the Winter Olympics that are literally foreign to me.  Take for example, ice dancing.  This sport features figure skating couples who dance around the rink while wearing bizarre costumes.  When I first saw ice dancing, I thought, “What is this?  Village People on Ice?”  Just imagine dancing with the stars featuring an ice skating Tom Delay dressed in drag.

            Another Winter Olympic event I just can’t understand is the Biathlon.  This event involves gun-toting skiers who ski for a while and then stop and shoot at targets.  I have heard of skeet shooting, but not ski-et shooting.

            The Biathlon has to be the only sporting event protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.  (“I’ll give up my biathlon when they pry my cold dead hands off my gun and skis!”)

            Another Winter Olympic event that literally scares me is the Skeleton.  That’s what it’s called, the Skeleton.  It’s sort of bobsledding without the sled.  It may be the only Winter Olympic event I could actually compete in, as I have done the Skeleton on icy winter mornings in Memphis when I am trying to fetch the newspaper at the end of my driveway.

            But the winter sporting event most baffling to me is Curling.  It looks like shuffleboard on ice, but the part I don’t understand is the athletes using various household appliances, including small brooms, vacuum cleaners, and dustbusters to move the stone toward the target.

            I read that Curling is the second most popular sport in Canada.  Again, this is a mystery to me.  I understand Hockey being the most popular sport in Canada, but how is Curling more popular than the Calgary Stampede, dog sledding, or the Montreal Biathlon, featuring French Canadians with firearms?

            I wonder if on Monday nights, millions of Canadians gather in front of their television sets to watch the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s Monday Night Curling.  I bet the telecast starts with one of those ice dancers dressed as a cowboy and crooning, “Are you ready for some Curling?”

            Yes, all my rowdy Canadian friends enjoy Curling on Monday night!

            Now if you will excuse me, I have to curl back up on my sofa.  It’s time for the finals of the Ice Dance Biathlon.  Are you ready for some skate-shooting!