Maybe it’s because I am more than a little tired of American presidential election coverage, despite the fact that I am both a news junkie and a politics junkie. But with one candidate hinting that gun owners should take care of the other candidate, new lows in decency and decorum are being set daily, and my neck is getting sore from the constant head shaking.
Maybe it’s because I am almost more than a little tired of watching the Riders defense, coached by a supposed defensive expert, give up more than 30 points a game on average. Add to that the fact that the CFL has utterly destroyed the game by flags – orange ones for a never-ending array of penalties, and when there aren’t orange ones, yellow ones thrown by coaches challenging the lack of orange flags – and the game has become slow and boring and frustrating.
Maybe it’s because I am on the verge of getting tired of watching young Mr. Trudeau’s face and torso and travels and lispy pronouncements on TV. I am prepared to cut him some slack and give him a chance, but a fawning Canadian and international media are getting close to overloading my interest quota.
Consequently, despite the fact that people are tuning out the Olympics on TV in large numbers – viewership is down something like 20 per cent compared to four years ago, apparently – I am watching more TV from Rio than I expected to, by default.
The other afternoon, my better half walked in and said, with some surprise in her voice, “They have ping pong in the Olympics?!”
Having just watched an utterly fascinating display of rapid fire hand-eye coordination between a Belarusian and Japanese player, I was obligated to tell her this is not ping pong. This is table tennis.
This is not what we used to play in the basement rec room on a sheet of plywood set on hobby horses, with paddles covered in bumpy foam. This was a game unfamiliar to me, but one infinitely worth watching.
For sheer action and excitement, if your eyes can keep up with the little white ball, this is incredibly more interesting to watch than beach volleyball, synchronized diving, kayaking and yes, I hate to say it, than golf.
With TSN suffering from lack of sports to show, having lost NHL hockey and having to resort to darts and other obscure sports, maybe they can corner the market on table tennis. Admittedly it is not well known in North America – it is huge in the far east - but neither was darts, or Premier League English football, or the much more interesting Australian rules football.
Although, I will admit, a revival of Roughrider fortunes would be preferable to all of those summer TV sports options.
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