The Future of Sports
My kids like watching a program called “The Ninja Factor” on TV. It’s a sports competition that takes place in Japan and is just chock full of weirdness. I rather enjoy it myself and only partly in a novelty, i.e. look at how bizarre this is, way that we enjoy some other Japanese game shows, like Endurance, where they just play really twisted practicial jokes on people and put them through ritual humiliation.
No, this is a real athletic competition. Contestants have to run, jump, climb, balance and occasionally dodge in order to win. They must be well endowed with speed, strength, coordination, endurance and a competitive spirit in order to win.
Of course, it looks a bit silly. There are oddly shaped walls they must climb, multiple opportunities to fall into water and many, many obstacles which seem to be designed for their comic appeal as much as their worthiness as a test of pure athletic ability. This is a sport for the television age and it could not have happened any earlier. Your average neighborhood school does not have the funds to build this kind of equipment.
Still, it has some advantages over other popular sports which i think will lead to a steady increase in its fan base and its eventual inclusion at the Olympics.
1. As I said, these people are real athletes. They cannot just be genetic oddities like the semi-aquatic Michael Phelps or pretty much anybody who plays professional basketball or American football. It includes log rolling, for goodness sake. I’d like to see a bunch of NFL linemen try log rolling. That would be a hoot.
2. No special equipment. Not on the competitors at any rate. The playing field is all special equipment. But in professional ice hockey and, again, American football, the players are so covered up you can’t see their faces at all. The agony of defeat and the thrill of victory is pretty much relegated to corny gestures and locker room interviews. In Ninja Factor you can see the tension in their faces, you can see the strain of their muscles. When robots start playing ice hockey, nobody will notice the difference.
3. All action, all the time. Each competitor is going against the clock and also struggling just to compete the course. They could be on track to turn in a record time and, boom, last second, they’re in the drink.
Football may be the world’s most popular sport but a lot of the time that ball is just going back and forth and not much is really happening. It’s only really exciting when one team scores a goal.
So, I think Ninja Factor, or something like it, is going to be the world’s most popular sport in the very near future. I’m looking forward to it.
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