Texans in Canada, Part 3

Golf. Also for white old fatties. Image via Wikipedia

The sports you play and, for the rest of us, the sports you watch, define your character as much as anything else. For awhile now I've acknowledged that the world outside of the U.S. is mostly obsessed with football. The other football, which Americans call soccer. We call it soccer because in America we like to make fun of foreigners and display our own ignorance in the least moves possible. Giving a different name to the only sport that has the perfect literal descriptive name and is beloved by Latin Americans everywhere is the two for one deal of the century.

What I never realized is when those other countries obsess with one sport, they offer so little in the other ones. Canada's obsession is of course hockey, and as a result most provinces fail to maintain a decent baseball or football team of their own. I'm not sure they've discovered basketball yet.

American television and everyday life is inundated with a variety of sports, so there is always a game on of some kind. (Sports Bar is easily agreed upon as the best combination of words in the English language.) In Texas however, we understand the single sport obsession and it is football that we worship. Other sports are just something for the kids to do until they're old enough to play football, or maybe between football practice, or when you're not throwing the football around. Basically if you're playing baseball or basketball it's because you didn't make the football team or you're trying to stay in shape for the next football game.

...Football.

Canada does have the CFL which is followed by all of dozens of fans. The Canadian Football League apparently is a little different from the one I know, adding ten extra yards to the field and retracting one down. I think they might also use a live chicken as the football during the second half but no one has made it that far through a game yet, so it's not a widely known fact.

There is also something called curling here, where you throw smooth stones across the ice and use brooms to sweep away ice gremlins that try to keep the stone out of the target area. I guess it's kind of like shuffleboard but I just can't imagine this sport being invented while sober. They throw rocks at the ice on which they're standing. I smell alcohol and failure, two very old friends. I will likely be joining a league as soon as possible.

Finally, I've yet to see it with my own eyes, but they've gone and screwed up bowling. Bowling! The ball is much smaller and there are only five pins. I'm not sure but I think this is some passive aggressive attempt by Canada to insult America. I think we've gone to war with countries for less. Pretty clever though Canada. If you want to offend balding overweight American men, the bulk of our governing class, go after the only sport in which they can excel.