I Need a New Sport

Tom Matlack is disillusioned with the Patriots, Celtics,

Red Sox, and Bruins. He wants a new sport. What should
it be?
It all started last spring when I took my son Seamus and his friends to a Red
Sox–Yankees game on a Thursday night. We live a quarter mile from
Fenway Park, so we walked over on a pleasant sunny afternoon. After four
hours of long pitch-counts and Dice-K’s excruciating between-pitch routine,
the Sox were ahead 2-1 in the top of the seventh. It was a school night, and I
needed to get the boys home. But even more troubling was that I just didn’t
give a shit if we lost to A-Rod and those other Yankee A-holes. I had lost
interest. We left, and I never checked the box score the next day.

Wasn’t I the same guy who lived and died on every pitch of the Sox’s come-
from-behind victory in the ALCS in 2004? The same guy who watched the
silly DVD recap of that whole season probably 20 times?
For Game 7 of the Lakers-Celtics NBA finals I found myself at, of all
places, the bar at Bubba Gump Shrimp on Fisherman’s Wharf. Our family
was on vacation and had ventured out too close to game time. Seamus and I
frantically looked for a television set as tip-off approached. We sat at an
outside bar, watching a tiny screen until my wife secured space at Bubba’s.
All five of us sat through the entire game, drinking Diet Coke, eating fried
food, and increasing our heartburn. I watched in horror as the Lakers played
volleyball on the boards. My Celtics went from a double-digit lead with six
minutes remaining to hanging their heads in defeat, making me sit through
Ron Artest thanking his shrink for helping him combat his many demons.

♦◊♦

I happened to be at a party a couple of weeks after the Celtics debacle with

the team’s owner, Wyc Grossbeck. All the men at the party snuck to a back
room to catch the tail end of Game 7 of the Bruins-Flyers series, culminating
in a humiliating end for Boston, who fell to Philadelphia after a 3-0 series
lead.

Then there’s Tom Terrific and the Patriots. Football is the one sport with a
real salary cap, so there are no LeBron James press conferences or New
York Yankee payrolls. It’s a pure sport in the sense that each team has to
develop talent on a budget. It looked liked the Patriots had done that as well
as ever as they headed into their playoff game against the loudmouthed Jets
last month.

I went to the game with Seamus and my wife, Elena. We watched from the
50-yard line. Everything was perfect—until I caught Tom Brady snorting
ammonia before the kickoff. When he took the field he looked as confused
as when he tried to figure out how to dump a pregnant girl next-door actress
for a Brazilian supermodel. Watching the Jets players run around the field
like bald eagles, flapping their wings, was about as painful as it gets for a
Boston sports fan.

♦◊♦

The Celtics look damn good right now. The Sox have reloaded. But I’m not
biting. I’ve been to one Celtics game all season, and I’ve watched a grand
total of two on television; seeing them beat the Lakers in L.A. lifted my
spirits for an hour or two.

Here’s the thing: professional sports pretty much suck in my book. I’m not
just saying that because I’m a bitter Boston fan (OK, maybe just a little). But
really, baseball games go on forever. Tim Donaghy, despite being a
convicted
felon, is right
about the
NBA: the refereeing is awful. Hockey and football are both purer sports, but
let’s face it, Big Ben, the rapist, and Shawn Thornton, the Bruins thug, are
hardly role models. For a while I was thinking about the Boston Breakers,
the indoor lacrosse team in Boston. But then they had a lap dance contest at
halftime, which quickly put them out of the running..

I live within walking distance to the Boston University rink and a short ride
on the Green Line to Boston College, where Seamus regularly goes to
basketball and football games. So I’m thinking about giving up pro sports
entirely. I’m fascinated by college football in the south. Recruiting
violations aside, it’s more like what sports should be about: athleticism,
team spirit, sportsmanship, manhood. Thankfully, I do have March Madness
to look forward to. Seamus and I participate in a “suicide” pool that’s a lot
of fun.

In the meantime, I’ve become a huge fan of Seamus’ freshman football and
basketball teams at Boston College High. I’ve also been coaching my five-
year-old son’s YMCA basketball team and taking him to this cool indoor
baseball camp called Frozen Ropes. And I’ve been riding my bike and
practicing kickboxing. I need to reorient my love-hate relationship with
sports. I don’t really hate all sports, just the ones that I know about right
now. I love being a fan, but don’t know where to put my loyalty in this
upside-down sports world we inhabit.

I asked Good Men Project readers what they thought should become my new
sport of choice, and here’s what they said.

♦◊♦

Rodeo cowboys and cowgirls are among the most popular, respected athletes
in professional sports among adults and children alike. They compete at the
highest level in a sport that has America’s early west as its roots. They have
no guarantee of a paycheck. Most of them regularly play with injuries that
would sideline most ball and stick athletes. They travel 60,000 miles per
year, most of it over the road to compete.

—Mike Donnell, Pueblo, Colorado

♦◊♦

I think you should be a skier. Skiing (and its twin, snowboarding) is a

participatory sport. It is healthy and invigorating and gives you something to
do during the dull winter months. Furthermore, skiers are more handsome
and have better sex lives than non-skiers (just ask them!). Seriously though,
I spend my life in the mountains. My “office” overlooks the glaciers of Mt.
Rainier, the tallest volcano in Washington state, and the view is so
spectacular I’m often tempted to yodel. Whether ripping across groomers or
getting face shots in the powder, skiers race down steep slopes and gain
access to the mountains in a way that no other sport allows.

—Kim Kircher, 40, professional ski patroller at Crystal Mountain for

21 years, author of the forthcoming memoir The Next Fifteen Minutes
(Behler Publications)

♦◊♦

Water polo is a great sport to be a fan of. Without any pro leagues in the
United States, the sport is done strictly at the amateur level, meaning
college, high school, or national team. You won’t see any of the issues you
have with professional sports. In addition, there isn’t a sport that is more
physically demanding than water polo. These guys and girls tread water for
nearly an hour while playing a sport. It’s a mixture of sports you already
love—basketball, soccer, swimming, and maybe a little rugby. You’ll likely
get so pumped up watching this game, it’ll make you want to get back in the
gym or pool and get in shape. Not to mention, our country is very good at
water polo. Our women’s national team are two-time defending world
champions, and our men’s team won a silver medal at the last Olympics.

—Greg Mescall, USA Water Polo, Huntington Beach, California

 ♦◊♦

Powerlifting. More than anything, it’s a man versus himself, striving to be

the very best that he can be.

—Jordan Gottlieb, Mansfield, Texas

♦◊♦

Baseball is still where my heart lies, but market inequities and a stadium
experience that is increasingly geared toward fat cats make it hard to justify
intellectually. Hockey is the one sport that seems to maintain a blue-collar
ethos, both on the ice and in the stands, but it’s hard for me to transfer
affection from blue skies and the crack of the bat to refrigerated arenas and
Canadian accents. I think there’s an argument for trying, however.

—Seth Berkowitz, 34, singer/songwriter from the band Lucky Ghost,

New York, New York

♦◊♦

Mixed martial arts is the sport a man should be a fan of. It’s pure one-on-one
combat, no excuses, one man’s brute strength against another’s brute
strength. Referees play a big role in the top sports—in football, baseball,
basketball, hockey. They can change a game. In MMA, that’s not going to
happen. The combatants alone determine the outcome in the octagon.

—Andrew Golding, 33, TV executive, New York, New York

♦◊♦

NCAA college basketball. It’s not as talented as the NBA, but conference
play is always exciting, and the NCAA Final Four is one of the most
exciting tournaments in all of sports. Lots of kids will not make it to the next
level and don’t care; they’re there to do what they love.

—Scott Keatley, director, Nourishing NYC

♦◊♦
You should be a fan of cycling—mountain biking in particular. Not so much
pro road racing because the doping scandals make it ridiculous. Mountain
biking is honest. It’s real. It’s powerful. Getting lost (figuratively) on a dirt
trail in the mountains for days on end is magical. Think of it as bike-packing
—packing only the necessities on your bike and taking off a few days or a
few months.

—Mike Dion, 42, film/TV producer and producer of the award-winning

film Ride the Divide, Denver, Colorado

♦◊♦

You should be a fan of college football. Every major sport is somewhat

influenced by money. However, there’s no sport where the players’ passion
for their teammates, their classmates, and their schools are more apparent.
These kids pour their hearts out every weekend. There’s no contract season,
no free agency, and no trades. College football players pound each other’s
heads in for three hours in front of 100,000 fans, climb into the stands with
their classmates and sing their school’s fight song, and go back to a dorm
room to celebrate. Emotion and dedication still rule college football.

—Sam Debord, Seattle, Washington

♦◊♦

Hockey seems have much less nonsense in it than other sports like
basketball or football. For example, last summer there were two major free
agent signings that dragged on all summer—basketball’s LeBron James and
hockey’s Ilya Kovalchuck. The Kovalchuck saga was about as ridiculous as
it gets in hockey, but it was completely toned down compared to LeBron’s
“decision” on ESPN. The cult of personality is not the same in hockey as it
is in football or basketball, and there is nowhere near the emphasis on sex in
hockey as there is in other sports. (Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, anyone?)
Hockey salaries also tend to be lower than those in baseball or basketball.

—Dan Landau, graduate student at Fairleigh Dickinson University,

Bridgewater, New Jersey

♦◊♦
Golf is all about patience, commitment, and power. Sexy.

Tennis is about agility, athleticism, and grunting. Sexy.

Baseball is about Derek Jeter. Very sexy.

—Sara Daly, 39, president of Waterfalls Day Spa, licensed physical

therapist and massage therapist, Middlebury, Vermont

♦◊♦

Yachting/sailing. A few reasons why: Few sports have been around for
2,500 years; it’s one of the greenest forms of transportation (wind); it’s a
combination of physics, navigation, and athleticism unmatched in any other
sport; if you happened to have a time machine handy, would be one of the
only sports you could have a conversation with your great-great-great-great-
great-grandfather about; everybody looks cool in boat shoes; it’s one of the
only sports on the planet that has named its ultimate prize after our country
—the America’s Cup.

—Bob Denison, third-generation advocate of the yachting industry

♦◊♦

Martial arts, specifically taekwondo. Why? One, it’s physical. Olympic-style

taekwondo is a full-contact sport. Men want and need physicality. Two,
there’s no age limit. People can participate in martial arts tournaments all
over the world at any age. It’s something they can watch and participate in.
Three, it’s truly family-oriented. You won’t find all of the associated
negatives of professional sports. Four, it offers great life lessons. Taekwondo
teaches sportsmanship, respect, and self-discipline—all the things you want
your children to learn.

—James Davenport, president, All American Martial Arts

♦◊♦

I could say something about the romanticism of the sport. Or how each game
is a complete blank slate, a canvas to be painted over 90 minutes. Or how,
more than any other sport, any team can win on any given day. Remember
Switzerland? Or the U.S. in ’94 and 1950? And as far as expressing and
fostering creativity, soccer has no match—unless you’re British.

But I’m gonna go at this from a different angle. Peter Crouch—a 6-foot-7,
256-pound, sinewy alien of a man with the face of a ghoul—was asked what
he would be if he weren’t a professional soccer player. His response: “A
virgin.”

—Ryan O’Hanlon, sports editor, the Good Men Project Magazine

♦◊♦

Win or lose, the post-game handshake is a long-standing and well respected

hockey tradition that teaches sportsmanship at the highest level.

The notion that two players who have battled hard through a game can put
aside their differences and look each other in the eye afterwards and whisper
“good job” is a testament to the hockey fraternity.

Anything less is frowned upon by your peers.

—Brendan Shanahan, NHL Vice President Hockey & Business

Development, eight-time NHL All-Star, three-time Stanley Cup
champion, Olympic gold medalist

—Photo femaletrumpet02/Flickr

About Tom Matlack

Tom Matlack is just foolish enough to believe he is a decent man. He has a 16-year-old daughter and 14-
and 5-year-old sons. His wife, Elena, is the love of his life.

Comments

1. David Wise says:

February 17, 2011 at 7:20 am

 Tom Brady snorts ammonia? Eww.

Reply

2. j.michael hall says:

February 17, 2011 at 7:48 am

My new proposal is for men who no longer have kids in youth sports to pick a little league team
and follow them like a #sox fan (red or white-both are crazy about their teams). Go to all games,
get a shirt and cap. Support them as if every kid on the team is your grandson. Buy the team ice
cream when they win etc. This is good for the fan, good for the team, and the community. You
might just follow a kid to the bigs.

Reply

3. Perry Glasser says:

February 17, 2011 at 9:34 am

Lacrosse–popular and growing, contact, teamwork, run run, run, run, run.

Reply

4. Ryan says:

February 17, 2011 at 10:03 am

Tom, have you considered curling? It’s a deeper, more complex game than it first appears; kind of
like chess on ice. Can be played by people of all ages and physical ability, and is one that
extensively stressed the qualities you mentioned as admirable (“athleticism, team spirit,
sportsmanship, manhood”) to the extent of players refereeing themselves and the winners buying
the losers a celebratory round after the game’s done.

If you’re looking for a spectator sport I’d suggest Major League Soccer. It’s a professional league,
but one that’s small enough to avoid a lot of the dramas and ancillary issues that arise from
“professional sports”.

Reply
5. Tom Matlack says:

February 17, 2011 at 10:11 am

Curling and Lacrosse are both options. I have also been told by friends who are obsessed with the
sports that golf, tennis and boxing are all sports where pay is based almost exclusively on winning,
which is a big plus. And also you can participate in each well into old age, which means you can
play along with the pros doing as well as watching…

Reply

6. Caleb Armstrong says:

February 17, 2011 at 10:36 am

Hurling. It’s everything you like about those four sports with all kinds of crazy mixed in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurling

Reply

7. Matt Perelstein says:

February 17, 2011 at 11:47 am

Racquetball is my fave! Most fun sport in the world.

Reply

8. Kevin Cox says:

February 17, 2011 at 2:34 pm

Oh, that’s easy: RUGBY! Want to get a chill up your spine? Then watch the All Blacks do their
pre-game Māori Haka. I’ve seen it a hundred times, and still get chills. I’m just glad I’m not on the
receiving end of their chant! The game of Rugby is spectacular! Truly a man’s sport.

Reply
9. Daddy Files says:

February 17, 2011 at 3:19 pm

First of all, curling is awesome. I joined a league and learned how to do it very quickly. The only
problem is it’s only during the winter. And if you’re a recovering alcoholic, you’ll be turned off by
just how much drinking curling involves. Seriously. They have hollow legs.

Second, sorry Tom but this is crap. You’re disenfranchised with pro sports IN BOSTON?? You’re
not a Royals fan. You can’t bitch like Cubs fans can. You don’t root for the Cleveland Browns.
We’re provided with top-notch sports teams around here. We’re unbelievably lucky on so many
levels. And you’re bored? If that’s the case then I question whether you’re really a sports fan,
because it doesn’t get much better than this.

I hate college sports. And don’t give me this crap about “purity” and “for the love of the game.”
Division I college athletics is a big business. But more than that, I want to see the game played at
its highest level. And that happens in the pros, not in college. Sure there’s something to be said for
checking out future stars in college and the minor leagues, but I’ll gladly take professional sports
every time.

Reply

10. Ross Knights says:

February 17, 2011 at 6:02 pm

ULTIMATE DISC!!! It’s played worldwide, is non-commercial, and is self-refereed (meaning

there is some sense of honor and accountability). There are vital and competitive women’s teams
and leagues along with men’s and mixed teams.

Reply

11. Mark Ellis says:

February 17, 2011 at 6:03 pm

Unless it is really heinous, like Michael Vick, I don’t really care what these guys do in their off
hours, so that’s not going to make me stop watching sports, just like the fact that Ozzy was on
drugs for decades didn’t keep me from a Black Sabbath concert. Our Portland Trailblazers have
garnered the nickname Jail-Blazers because of their off-court extra circulars, but I’ll still watch, or
if I get tickets, go.
 What really dissuades me from televised sports is the sheer amount of chowder-headed
commercials I have to sit through. Studies show that in a football game there is something like 5
minutes of actual play in the three hours. The rest of the time I have to endure dunderheaded spots
for everything from Cialis to Pamprin, and I just don’t have the time or the available brain cells.

Some of the best sports times I ever had though involved watching my children participate in team
sports, so that’s my suggestion.

Reply

12. Vee says:

February 17, 2011 at 11:05 pm

Badminton. It’s a very complicated sport that you can play well into old age, and you never stop
learning. Competitively it’s played around the world, and it can be played professionally as well.
The rules of conduct in badminton are very strict in the sense that no cursing is allowed and all
kinds of mind games against the opponent are frowned upon. Generally the Asian politeness can
be seen throughtout the badminton scene. It’s a very good sport for children to participate in and
no scandals have ever been associated with badminton.

Reply

13. Miguel says:

February 17, 2011 at 11:39 pm

C’mon dude, TENNIS. If you’re looking for a sport with endless room for your own personal
improvement, look no further. Recreationally, it’s a great social game. And to boot, tennis has got
some increbidle ambassadors and good citizens. Just look at what Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal
have done. Clean images, no Tiger Woods scandals, and both have major foundations that do a
tremendous amount of good for impoverished children around the world. Plus to be a marginal
fan, you only really need to watch four tournaments a year. Next time you’re in Florida, I’ll give
you a lesson.

Reply

14. Lance says:

February 18, 2011 at 8:28 am

As a die hard Jets fan, I could not read much of your post without gagging or becoming angry so I
an reacting to the headline out of online friendship.

The obvious answer is beach volleyball.

Good luck

Reply

o Tom Matlack says:

February 18, 2011 at 10:38 am

Lance your Jets kicked our asses, which is part of what sent me into a tailspin. So
congrats on that.
Yes, beach volleyball is a lot of fun…and easy on the eyes. I do like Tennis Miguel but
suck at it. Badminton I am very good at but feels a little less than macho. Ultimate
requires me to be high, and since I have been clean 14 years that is out. Rugby, now that
might be just the ticket!

Reply