The dream of every truly committed frisbee kid is to get ultimate on TV. Sure, we all like to say it'll never happen and some of us even go so far as to claim to hope that it never does, but people just say those things so they can live with the disappointment of turning on the TV and seeing Bert Newton on 20-to-1.
Well, perhaps there may be light at the end of the tunnel for the ultimate on TV hopefuls. I've watched a tiny quantity of the Commonwealth Games and two things have become clear to me:
1) Australian TV channels will show any sport that Australia excels in (unless it's a women's team sport) no matter how boring it is.
2) Swimming is the worst spectator sport in the world. You know it's true.
So if we want ultimate to get on TV, all we need to do is become awesome at it. It would help if the UK and New Zealand got pretty good too, without ever being a position to beat us. Imagine it, we'd be beating the US, the UK and the Kiwis. That's about as good as it gets in the sporting universe.
Once we've convinced commercial television to show our international games it should be easy to make the switch to televising domestic competition. After all, if only Australians compete, we win every time.
If you do actually want to watch ultimate on a screen have a look at the world games footage on Youtube. Some of the stuff that was shot by proper camera-people (rather than schmucks in the crowd) is pretty cool.
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I remember as a kid watching Wild World of Sports on a Saturday morning. They would show 'different' sports without explanation and it was cool. I would like to see Ultimate on TV without the whole "Ultimate is a self-refereed sport, combining frisbee, netball, AFl, gridiron, blah blah blah". Just grab highlights from the WUUC focus on Australia with good commentary and away you go. Perhaps a 10min segment on Fuel TV (foxtel) each week showing the Aussie teams progression.
ReplyDeleteAndy Mc
I'm not sure how you ever expect to compete with that tv powerhouse that is netball. The action is just so exciting, and Luke Darcy's expert commentary just hits the spot every time!
ReplyDeleteThankfully for us, Asher, netball is a women's team sport and will probably go the way of women's soccer, cricket, hockey and basketball. Even though Australia are pretty good or awesome at all of these sports, they still don't get much air time.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we can get Luke Darcy to commentate ultimate instead...