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Most boring sport to cover

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Beef03, Nov 8, 2006.

  1. KP

    KP Active Member

    1. Swimming
    2. Gymnastics
    3. Cross Country
    4. Volleyball
    5. Field Hockey
     
  2. Double J

    Double J Active Member

    Well, him and the guy he tripped who's still lying face down in the brush.
     
  3. Oz

    Oz Well-Known Member

    Why do you hate America, IJAG?

    For me, it's soccer, the socialist sport. Too many scoreless ties.
     
  4. Crimson Tide

    Crimson Tide Member

    Cross country.

    Most of it is conducted as some golf course that closes down for an afternoon. I was really, really fed up with going to them that by the last one I almost rented a golf cart so I could follow the little fuckers and see what actually happens during a race.
     
  5. PopeDirkBenedict

    PopeDirkBenedict Active Member

    1. Horseshoes tournament
    2. Horseshoes tournament
    3. Horseshoes tournament
    4. Horseshoes tournament
    5. Horseshoes tournament
    6. Horseshoes tournament
    7. Horseshoes tournament
    8. Horseshoes tournament
    9. Horseshoes tournament
    10. Horseshoes tournament

    And yes, I had to cover several days of a horseshoes tournament.....good god, I wanted to blow my brains out.
     
  6. Hank_Scorpio

    Hank_Scorpio Active Member

    True, field hockey isn't great to cover, but there can be worst things too, like swimming. Sitting in an 85 degree pool area, trying your best to stay awake.

    You can usually get decent stories at a swim meet, but having to watch it is excruciating.
     
  7. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Some of my longest days in preps were at the annual state swimming tournament. Had to be there for the never-ending morning heats to get those few grafs on the local kids who finished 20th, then it was back to the pool for the night finals, on a fairly tight deadline (curses to whoever invented "consolation finals"). And I couldn't always leave in the middle of the day if %&#*! diving was still going on and I had a local kid there too.
     
  8. beat me to it.

    1. Track
    2. Field
    3. Arena football (the stoppages in play after every TD every five seconds, complete with canned music and "promotions", are unbearable).
     
  9. Bears00

    Bears00 Member

    I'd rather cover track and field than baseball at the high school level.
     
  10. Shifty Squid

    Shifty Squid Member

    I've said this before on here, but I really, really liked covering high school track & field back when I did it. Part of that could be that there are a lot of great athletes in my area, but I thought it was a great sport to cover. The biggest reason for that was that I thought it was the best sport for mining features during an event. You could interview an athlete while the meet was still going on; not only that, but the athlete's mom/dad/grandma/aunt/uncle/dog was probably there too, and you could talk to one or more of them for a bigger feature. And all his teammates would be somewhere, so you could get them too. One-stop feature shopping. No phone calls. No waiting for return calls. No tracking down phone numbers. No driving around and scheduling meetings. They're all there; the stories write themselves.

    For me, I'm thinking about high school sports. I've never worked at a paper that covered any college sports beyond football and basketball with any regularity, so it's really preps that's at issue here. This would be my list:

    1. Swimming
    2. Girls soccer
    3. Cross country
    4. Bad girls basketball
    5. Bad softball

    Swimming takes the top spot, no doubt. I remember one time in particular a few years ago. A county meet, with four teams competing for the championship. Instead of starting right after school, they decide for some reason to wait until 7 p.m. on a school night to get the thing going. My hard deadline is 11:30, which I know is going to be pushing it. The meet mercifully ends a little after 11, but they're still printing out results for the 73 coaches 20 minutes later. I find the people in charge of the meet and say, "I need results NOW if you want this in the paper." But they're concerned about leaks, saying they can't give out results until they're officially announced.

    Eventually, I get the results but miss deadline. For my nearly 5 hours watching swimming, I get a two-sentence cutline in the next day's paper saying who won. Fuckabunchaswimming.
     
  11. Jones

    Jones Active Member

    Dude, fucking cycling.
     
  12. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

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