Remember When the US beat Canada.... in Curling? Probably Not

Such concentration!

I’ll admit that over the first two weeks of the Olympics, not a whole lot has caught my attention. Of course I watched one of the most exciting days of hockey in my lifetime (Russia vs. Czech Republic in the afternoon, then the classic US/Canada game, then Sweden vs. Finland). And Apolo Ohno, Lindsey Vonn, and Shaun White all caught my eye. But suffice it to say ice dancing didn’t fancy me much. But I’ve got to tell say, over my winter break, I got hooked on one sport in particular, and I’m not the only one: Curling.

No, curling isn't simply throwing a rock and sweeping really fast. It goes all the way back to around 1541 in Scotland, when actual rocks were thrown to a target, a lot like Bocce ball. The term "curling" first appeared around 1620, and comes from the way the stones "curl" as they float down the ice. Although in existence for over 350 years, it wasn't made an Olympic sport until 1924, and even then it was only considered a demonstration event. It wasn't until 1998 that the sport was considered "official". There’s a lot of strategy and drama involved. The sheet of ice is 93 feet long, yet if a thrower misses a shot by 3 inches, it could win or lose a game. 3 inches: the length of a pinky. Do I know all the rules? Not by a long shot. I'll admit that most of the time I have pretty much no clue what's going on or why a certain strategy was chosen over another. But here is what I do know, and hopefully it clears things up a bit for you, too:

• There are ten ends, which are similar to innings in a baseball game. Each team gets 8 stones to throw per end, and teams alternate shots.
• Each team has a strict 73-minute limit to throw all 80 stones. If a team fails to throw all their stones in that time, it is an automatic forfeit. The clock starts as soon as the opposition's stone has stopped moving.
• The goal is to get your stones closest to the button, or the small hole in the center of 3 rings, called the house. If you have the closest stone, it is one point. If you have the closest 2 stones, it is 2 points. Up to 3 points can be awarded (which is a rarity). The team with the most points after 10 ends wins.
• The hammer is the last stone thrown in an end. If a team has the hammer and fails, or chooses not, to score a point, they maintain possession of the hammer (I think...). Having the hammer in the last end is a huge advantage for a team.
• Golfer/cigar-smoking, woman-chasing drunk John Daly is obviously a close relative to someone on the Norwegian curling team.

I don’t know what a draw or a guard is, or why/when a team uses it as a shot. I don’t know what the role of the "skip" is, or why the line that can't be crossed when throwing the stone is called the hog line. I don't know how they determine a player’s accuracy. And I have no freaking clue why every team yells, "WHOA! WHOA!" like Freddy Krueger is chasing them as the stone rolls down the ice. All of this aside, I have found the sport to be spectacularly captivating. The closest thing I can compare it to is the NFL Draft: watching it is like watching paint dry, or grass grow, or Jim Caldwell's facial expression change. Much like baseball, there is a ridiculous amount of time in between throws, just like there is a ton of time in between draft picks. Yet there is something so enthralling about the whole spectacle that I can’t convince myself to change the channel. It could be that the players are essentially professional sweepers. Perhaps it could be the human interest side of the sport makes me want to watch (Over about 4-6 games I saw a statistics teacher, an engineer, a stay-at-home mom, and a computer technician all take vacation time out to travel to Vancouver.) Or it could be the fact that NOTHING is on at 1 p.m. on a weekday. I do not care about how Man A's wife cheated on him with his brother/best friend/cousin, and the ensuing fight that is sure to happen. Or about how a woman slept with 18 guys, had a child, and can't figure out which one is the father. Am I less American because of that?

Maybe what's so attractive about the sport is that, like the Draft, when it ends, it goes away for awhile. Once the Draft is done, I have to wait a whole year until I get to watch again. Once the medals are handed out, it could be 4 years until I see curling on television next. My solution to the issue? Have curling year-round on ESPN. I guarantee it would get ratings. If people will watch 7 losers sit around a table and play poker "professionally", I see no reason why they wouldn’t watch 8 people throw 40 pound rocks on some ice for a few hours. Because it has never been on television, look at who we've missed curl: Don Duguid, Russ Howard, Bob Dunbar, Sandra Schmirler, and my personal favorite, Orest Meleschuk. And who would have forgotten the March 21, 1972 classic between the United States in Canada in the Silver Broom world championship? NO ONE, THAT'S WHO. Curling is incredibly popular in Canada, and as Americans isn't it our job to try and one-up our kind neighbors to the north? We already ruined hockey by putting nearly half the NHL teams in warm weather cities, and it would be very much the American way to greedily take away curling from them, too. Once the Olympics are done, curling will go away until 2014 in Sochi, Russia. I say we keep it going, though, and start the PCA (Professional Curling Association) and continue the incredibly boring, yet captivating, sport into the future outside the Olympic Games. I, for one, would watch, and that's the important thing here, right?.... I thought so.