Kvelve's Comments: Out of this world

Maybe it’s a case of I’ve maxed out on sports, or maybe it is a simple matter of curiosity, but the other day I was cruising along in Big Red, my legendary Dodge Ram, and I began wondering what outer space aliens may think of some of these events we Earthlings call sports.

Okay, maybe it was boredom or my normally wandering mind. 

But I have always wondered how one would explain this game we call football to an extra-terrestrial. What can explain purposefully donning hard plastics clothing and colliding with each other over a weird-shaped ball? 

Then, as usual, my wandering, wondering cerebral matter took things a bit further.  What ARE the weirdest things we call sports that even residents of this third rock from the Sun would find puzzling. 

Quick Robin, to the sports cave and the search engine. 

The number of sites with listings for weird sports was impressive...and beyond the scope I anticipated.  

Heading the list is a sport popular among those whacky Russians called “regball”.  This is a game described as a combination of basketball, wrestling and rugby. 

For a minute I thought they might have been talking about Bobcat Street basketball, a beer-fueled game played on the outdoor courts across from the jock dorms at Montana State.  Throw in the played-in-any-weather factor as was the case with Bobcat Street B-ball and it came at least somewhat in focus. 

The object of the game, throwing a ball through a hoop, is not held back by wrestling, tackling and other forms of brutality designed to prevent the ball from going in the hoop.  The game is reportedly very popular among mixed martial artists looking for a nice relaxing sport. 

Another of the many, and I mean many, weird sports listed was “Cheese rolling”, a game from Gloucester, England.  For the past 200 years or so, according to the story I read, participants run at top speed down a steep, grassy hill chasing a large wheel of rolling cheese.  The moving circle of cheese can weigh, I guess by rule, up to nine pounds and can reach downhill speeds of 70 mph. The person who catches up with the cheese and reaches the bottom of the hill, presumably still alive, wins the cheese. 

All that fog in Royal Kingdom is likely a factor in the game. 

Continuing the bizarre trip around the sports world has to include a stop in the Netherlands to take in a “canal jumping” contest. Most closely resembling pole vaulting because of the long poles participants use to vault themselves over a muddy Dutch canal. 

The “twist” is that as the pole swings from one side of the canal to the other, participants attempt to climb the pole like a logger climbing a tree in a lumberjack festival to safely reach the other side without drowning in the canal. 

There are so many weird sports and so little time as well as space in this newspaper to describe, but no weird sports trip could be complete without mentioning “ear pull” a sport developed by Eskimo tribes in our own frozen north. 

With their legs touching each other, a two-foot-long string is looped around one ear of each contestant.  They then pull back, keeping their legs touching, until one contestant surrenders to the pain or, presumably, the loss of an ear. 

This sport is rumored to be very popular with boxer Mike Tyson, he of ear-munching fame. 

Try explaining one of those to a dude who just climbed out of a disc-shaped object from outer wherever. 

Football, and even rugby, seem downright sane, eh?