I Love Geeky Sports

I'm really stinking up the place in trying to post regularly, aren't I. I was doing solid there for a while and then I started letting a week or more go between posts. I'm going to try and remedy that if possible.

I was never much of an athlete as a kid. I was a decent football player and would have been a passable starter my junior and senior year on a good-but-not-great high school team had I stuck with football in high school instead of focusing on the band. I did an OK job in tennis. I played first doubles for my team when we made it to the state semifinals my senior year. I never would have been a ranked player in singles even just in my state, but I would have found a spot on most AA high school teams.

In addition to not being much of a jock, I didn't even like watching sports for the most part. I could watch a little tennis (it's amazing how much playing a sport competitively increases your appreciation for watching that sport), but I didn't pay much attention to college or pro sports. I knew basketball, football and baseball. I grew up playing all three, but I hated playing baseball so I didn't develop an appreciation for watching it either. Basketball was fun to play, but I couldn't find the excitement in watching the game. There's just too much scoring. It's like voting. A single vote is really insignificant. It's the voting trends that are important. I did have an appreciation for football. I loved the sport; I just couldn't pay attention to an entire game.

That continued through college. I'd pay attention to the late rounds of Wimbledon, the US Open, and French Open, but I didn't watch much football. This would have been different if I'd gone to a big football school, but I didn't. My college didn't even have a football team. It wasn't until after college that I got into watching football. I think it started when I played my first fantasy football college pick 'em league. All of the sudden, I had a huge interest in the results of college games, something I hadn't had as a kid or college student. Then I got addicted. During college football season I'll often watch every possible game from 11 a.m. until after midnight. That's probably the reason I won my pick 'em league last year. Even though I play NFL fantasy football leagues as well, I never developed the same addiction for the pro sport. I follow the Falcons, but can't get into a game they're not playing.

Still, despite my geeky obsession with college ball, this hasn't really justified the "I Love Geeky Sports" heading yet. Don't worry. I'm getting to that.

In addition to being a hardcore NCAA football fan, an true Atlanta Falcons fan (that's sad, I know), and a moderate tennis fan, I'm also a serious rugby union fan. It started on a trip to New Zealand and Australia after high school. We happened to be there during the Tri-Nations, one of the most important international competitions of the year, and it was impossible to avoid the sport. We rolled into Auckland, NZ, just as the fans, decked out mostly in the All Blacks black and silver ferns streamed into the stadium. In Australia I watched as South Africa's side rolled over the Wallabies. However it was New Zealand's fanatical obsession with their rugby team that won me over. I didn't really understand the sport, though. It's similar enough to American football that all of the differences just confuse you. It wasn't until several years later when I was working nights at the newspaper that I finally mastered the art of watching rugby. I'd research the laws of the game during down time at the paper, and then watch matches and rugby news on the Rugby Club on Fox Sports World.

Then tragedy struck. Just as my mild interest had morphed into a serious addiction, Fox screwed me over by turning Fox Sports World into Fox Soccer Channel. I still hate them for it 4 years on. There is simply no other venue for rugby. FSC gradually and completely eliminated rugby from it's programming and I was left searching online for rugby programming. I found it at mediazone.com, but I was having to pay $7 a match to watch a less than TV quality picture. It was good enough of a picture that I kept paying for Tri-Nations matches, but I couldn't justify spending the money for more. This year I finally dropped the $99 for a year's unlimited subscription, hoping that they'd carry the Rugby World Cup and figuring I wouldn't mind watching the European Heineken Cup and the southern hemisphere's Super XIV while I'm at it. Then when Mediazone announces that they did get rights to the World Cup, they announce that it's going to cost me $30 more to view those games and I'm going to have to wait 24 hours after the match to actually watch them.

I was assuming that I was just going to have to suck it up and shell out the cash to Mediazone when my "rugby" timer on my DVR suddenly filled up with matches. "Could it be," I wondered. I'd heard of a mythical sports channel that carried tons of rugby union matches that could be accessed on DirecTV, but I, being subscribed to DishNetwork, had no access to it. Nearly shivering with anticipation, I scrolled up the channel guide on my TV to see where all of this rugby was coming from. When I got to that magical number 406 I was rewarded with the word "Setanta." The mythical sports channel was real! And it was on my satellite package. Not only can I watch all of the New Zealand Air Cup and the South African Currie Cup tournaments, and the warm up matches prior to the World Cup, they're carrying all of the World Cup matches, live even. I'll even be able to watch the occasional rugby league (different enough rule set that it looks different, but similar enough that I can easily follow it) and Australian Rules Football (something really weird that is basically a cross between rugby, basketball, and soccer.)

The only downside is that right now it's a free preview that expires at the end of the month (right before the World Cup starts). It's also expensive. It's $14 a month for the subscription, but I'm hoping I can subscribe by the month. I'll subscribe for the length of the World Cup, and then unsubsribe (it's an a la carte offering and not packaged with other channels) when the major rugby matches are over. Then I'll resubscribe in the summer next year for Super 14, finals of the Heineken Cup, and the Tri-Nations before unsubscribing when college football starts.

Enough rambling. I'll post something of more general interest later.