Top 10 Biggest Moments of Super Bowl XLVI

  10) The Victoria's Secret blame game-We all know the world of fashion is a harsh place where even the most civil of friendships can crumble from competition and jealousy. What we didn’t know is that this occurs apparently in the NFL even when TO is not involved. Apparently, Gisele went back to her roots and called out everyone but her hubby. In the world of underwear, the ego is a well-known accessory, but in a game that necessitates true brotherhood, such as football, that shit does not fly. I’m sure Wes Welker, probably one of the most reliable hands in the NFL, appreciates Gisele blowing up the fact that he missed one of the most crucial catches of his career. It’s alright because now Brandon Jacobs is calling her out… Honestly, this situation is just getting weird.

9) The Tom Brady Slump- Bradying might become more eponymous than Tebowing. You might be a future HOF Tommy boy, rich, and married to one of the most famous super model in the world, but you will always be looking back at your career knowing that the Gmen own you. Sit down, relax, and keep your head down pal.

8) One Finger up- MIA has once again necessarily blemished the NFL half-time show, this time by flipping the bird to the camera. At least this made the half-time show cool again. (Read the previous article for the pic)

7) Gronkowski and Matt Light raging after the loss- I mean, good for them. What better way to forget that you lost one of the biggest games of your career by chugging booze, surrounding yourself with beautiful babies, and dancing shirtless in a club. From men all over this country, well done.

6) Lame commercials-Does anyone really remember the commercials from this year? I believe a few of them had animals and stuff. Yea, they sucked.

5) Viewers- The Super bowl was the most watched television event in history. Suck on that AMERICAN IDOL.

4) Eli’s Elite Drive- Eli managed to pick apart a vulnerable secondary that lead to a rushing TD with little time left. This is the second time that he has done this to the poor Pats. Tom Brady, bow down to your owner (And I’m not talking about Gisele).

3) Wes is coming up short (And we’re not talking about height)- I’m not saying that this was a perfect pass, but for a go-to receiver and someone as elite as Wes, you need to come up with this catch. They might have scored a TD this drive, thus eliminating the G-men entirely. A field goal might even have done it as well depending on how much time they took off of the clock. Either way, sorry Wesley, you are an elite receiver but you blew it.

2) Manningham is the new Tyree- Could Mario’s catch surpass that of Tyree’s? Sure Tyree was more acrobatic, but let’s be honest here, there were certainly elements of luck involved while Mario Manningham used solely superhuman focus and hands to complete that unreal catch. The throw was amazing as well, but that catch should be immortalized in the HOF. Maybe we should get the three players and freeze them in Carbonite while they reenact it.

1)Giants Win- It is funny how many plays, side stories, and failed/made opportunities have been analyzed where you almost start to forget that the Giants won. They proved again that it’s not always the best team during the season, but the hottest team going into the playoffs. Congrats Giants. Get after it for a few months, enjoy living like kings, because I can guarantee you ain’t winning it again next year. - Kyle

MIA was just saying Eli's #1: How The Halftime Show Proved Bored Parents Hate Freedom

So 2 days after the big game, there’s plenty I could talk about. About how I was rooting for the Giants fresh on the soul-crushing loss of my Ravens to pretty-boy Brady and the Northern/Mid-Atlantic Patriots. About how in response to claims that Brady was Jesus I professed, at least for the day, religious sameness with my Jewish brothers and sisters.  

We could talk about how Gronk has apparently still not recovered from the hurtin’ Bernie Pollard put on him during the Ravens game in spite of claims otherwise. How Brady, after a season that would be described only as inconsistent at best, has been riding on hype over ability for more than a few games. About how Eli’s made history going 10 for 10 in his first 10 throws and how the junior Manning won 8 games this season on 4^th qtr/OT drives, arguably the true measure of a great quarterback (leading a game-winning last minute drive), and perhaps, just maybe, he’s going to step out of the shadow of a certain brother who, as the post-game question went, “built the stadium” in which Eli won his second Super Bowl.

But I’ll let all the sports talking heads talk about that. You saw it. 

Instead, I’m gonna talk about the halftime show. 

This year’s halftime show was hands down the best produced and executed show in the last few years. No more aging rockers who make you cringe at the fact that, well, even rock stars lose it at some point (with the exception of Keith Richards, of course – by the way, was last year’s halftime show a glaring reminder to anybody else the lyrics that The Who famously sang in possibly their most famous song, MY GENERATION, are, and I quote, “I hope I die before I get old?”). 

No, this year was a nod to what’s happening now, to the electro-dance-hip-hop party scene blaring out of the hottest clubs and appearing in everybody’s favorite MTV shows.  And even more, it’s a nod to our female viewers who, with exceptions, mostly watch for the commercials (this year they were abysmal, by the way) and possibly an entertaining halftime show. It was also a celebration of the fact that the Super Bowl, with over 100,000,000 viewers, is literally the king of television. In a day and age when advertisers are refusing to pay standard prices for commercials that’ll just be DVR’ed or Tivo’ed over, there is one time frame in which they can be sure that, no matter what, everybody in America will be watching. As such, the halftime show was launched with a budget for special effects, extras, choreographers, mechanics and practice routines, as well as for talent, which must have been on par with China’s opening ceremony. Madonna (the original Lady Gaga and at the same time better than Gaga will ever be), LMFAO (the hottest pop group amongst the young party people of America and maybe even the world), Nicky Minaj (rap’s bubble-bootied “it” girl), MIA (the former rap/pop crossover “it” girl), and Cee-Lo Green (the Gnarls Barkley singer-cum-THE VOICE judge) ran through a live routine that had certainly been arranged by some DJ at the Governor’s ball in the middle of an epic Molly binge. Oh yeah, and a song off Madonna's new album was unleashed. The women in my group were all wowed. Even us men, who may not necessarily choose to listen to Madge, MIA, or Nicky Minaj, couldn’t help but admit that it was visually and sonically flawless, even exciting. The NFL is king. Let them celebrate. 

So today I was surprised to read about the Parents Television Council complaining about something. Was it the World Peace claim, surely that’s offensive – I mean, to think, was that a message against our military? Or was it the 53-year-old woman gyrating and gesticulating sexually in front of the whole English-speaking world – Jesus, doesn’t she realize she’s at the age when she should be joining AARP and going to church regularly? And remember when she was hitch-hiking naked in the 80’s? 

Nope, it wasn’t any of that. It was the fact that apparently at some point MIA snuck a middle finger into her performance. Did you catch that? Because I sure as fuck didn’t. In fact, according to Tivo the moment didn’t so much as make a blip (compared to the wardrobe malfunction, which is still the most-Tivo’ed moment of all time). It was on screen at most a second or two before NBC could blur it. But yet today it’s alert the presses, this is insulting. But let's all be real for a second - NBC and the NFL stumbling all over themselves to apologize is just pathetic.

"The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate, very disappointing and we apologize to our fans," said Brian McCarthy, NFL spokesman.

"The NFL hired the talent and produced the halftime show. Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers," said NBC spokesman Christopher McCloskey.

"Most families would agree that the middle finger aimed directly at them is not appropriate, especially during the most-watched television event of the year," said Tim Winter, the president of the Parents Television council. Am I alone in thinking this is the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever seen?

First off, Tim, a simple gesture means nothing taken out of context. Remember president Nixon’s “Victory” hand signals? When he flips his hands over, that means “Fuck You” in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In Shakespeare’s time biting your thumb was an aggrieved insult. In many countries, giving the “OK” hand gesture (y’know, thumb and forefinger in a circle) is practically a challenge to a duel to the death. So if your son or daughter associate the middle finger with the term “fuck you”, it’s because you’ve allowed them to associate that particular American gesture with that statement. Asshole, it’s YOUR FAULT  that your kids see this motion and take it to mean "fuck you". Even more, if your kids know what it means, banning it from TV isn’t gonna do a damn thing. That’s hypocrisy, bordering on hysteria. I mean come on, it’s a hand signal. For a word that most of us hear every day. It’s a part of life. And even more, it’s a word which only has the power we assign to it. It doesn’t have a history of racial hatred or oppression. It isn’t even a slang or degrading term for a “private part”. It’s a simple four-letter expletive with homonyms in almost every language (the French slang for school is “fac”; to say something is hot in Italian is “fa caldo” which is pronounced like “fuck Aldo”). And she didn’t even SAY IT but simply flashed a hand gesture, that was hardly noticeable, which is given importance by men like Tim Winter, an ex-NBC exec who, depressed that he’s out of the TV game and discontent with his boring life of family commitments, speech-giving, and writing blowhard articles, needs to found councils and make public complaints to feel like his life has meaning anymore.

He’s like the stereotypical housewife who hires caretakers for her children and cleaners to keep her house spotless and, due to a lack of feeling of purpose (I mean seriously, what DO you do?) she forms an organization aimed at limiting other people's rights so they can attribute their children’s good behavior to themselves changing society (versus the actual reason, Consuela’s love, attention, and occasional chides when the child says a bad word or pushes somebody down on the playground). People who are discontent/unfulfilled with their own lives and have too much time, money, and/or influence on their hands more often than not are dangers to the freedom of others, especially people who don't toe the line. And from an entertainment side, this is like Ed Sullivan trying to tell Jim Morrison not to say “higher” during his performance or NBC trying to tell Howard Stern not to talk so candidly about sexual deviance. It’s why Europeans laugh at us and why every year American celebrities and politicians and priests and pastors are brought down by the public exposure of the sexual perversions which have festered inside them their whole rotten lives due to our society’s puritanical prudishness and desire to ignore the harsh reality of life.

I remember a comic a few years ago in which a sexy Alien girl says “I come from a backward planet where we worship sex and demonize violence.” Because seriously, how did it become okay to have people getting beaten, shot, and yelled at in movies, TV shows, commercials, and especially the evening news but somebody shows a breast or flashes a confrontational hand symbol for the word “fuck” and these sick parents rush to claim that’s what’s destroying society?

You know what's destroying society? A political system with a bipartisan fissure the size of the Grand Canyon, an economic system dictated by the very robber barons who benefit most from it, a generation growing up without any time to just sit, think, and contemplate life in silence, and a world which, as it grows smaller, is just rife for one more epic cultural war, taking it back to the Crusades of yore.

And by the way, Winter’s the same asshole who’s been leading a crusade against violence in video games. Per his bio on the PTC website:

“He is also passionate about the harmful affects of violent and sexually charged video games on today’s children. Harnessing the energies of the organization’s more than 1.2 million members, Mr. Winter works to ensure that retailers do not sell graphic adult-oriented video games to children without the parent’s consent.” (http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/aboutus/winterbio.asp ) 

This is directly copied and pasted from his site. Yes, homeboy doesn’t understand the difference between the noun “effects” and the verb “affects”. Definitely somebody who should be dictating what are children are exposed to.

You know, I used to play GRAND THEFT AUTO a bunch. I hated going on missions, I just liked driving recklessly and killing people; occasionally I’d enter a cheat code, kill enough people to summon the Police chopper and blow it out of the sky with a bazooka. I once bought a hooker, then beat her to death and took my money back.

I have never in my life considered stealing a car, shooting a cop, or even hiring a prostitute, much less killing one. I have never struck a woman and the idea appalls me. 

A friend of mine is a gamer. He probably spends more of his waking free-time killing people, slaying aliens, slicing enemies, and driving dangerously than he spends doing any other single activity. Yet he would be the last person I’d see committing a violent crime.

Know who I do see committing a violent crime? The kid whose parents tried to shield him from the real world, who tried to create a false illusion about life, who tried to control every image, word, and action to which their son was exposed all throughout his youth. Because when he gets free and sees the world the real way it is, when he’s flicked off by some angry driver or joins the military and finds himself at a whorehouse with his shipmates or realizes how much time his parents spent rallying futilely against society when they should have just spent it with him explaining what’s right and wrong, he’s going to be angry and he’s going to be confused. He’s going to feel his burgeoning explosive humanity with all its inherent ugliness which he’d been taught his whole life is sinful and to be avoided, ignored, protested. And that kid’s gonna go fucking nuts. 

In the end, it’s time to stop bowing to these fucks. To put an end to the softening of our country by whack-job parents trying to avoid the increasingly tough outside world. It’s time for people like the NFL to say “fuck you” to people like Winter. Because I believe his censorship, his disdain for the harsh realities of life, and the fact that, quite simply, he’s just a bored opportunist looking for some way to cash in on a career he could no longer hack (he was in charge of emerging technologies at some point – another reason why the dinosaurs will lose to the fast-moving young, small companies) makes him dangerous to freedom. And even more, by getting his panties all in a bunch over an arbitrary gesture flashed for about 2 seconds during a light-and-flash-filled halftime show (that was admittedly better than any awards show live performance of the last decade), not only is he training his child to be over-sensitive and petty (the usual warning signs of eventual psychological disorders), he’s  also assigning more importance and power to the very gestures and words he’s trying to censor. 

This is a man with misdirected ambition. There's a lesson here, just ambition isn't enough. You need to look at what you're REALLY ambitious to accomplish. In this man's case, he's trying to pretend the ugly world doesn't exist alongside the beautiful world, which it does. His time could be spent doing so many more worthwhile things - instead of finding ways to keep all kids from seeing a middle finger on TV, maybe he should spend his time finding ways to make sure all kids have food and medical care? Maybe he should do something positive that actually benefits people in a real way instead of proffering censorship which will, at best, simply avoid the inevitable. Like the mother who pretends to be okay with homosexuality but when her daughter sees two women kiss says it's just because they're being silly. Or the father who tells his son that we didn't slaughter Indians and dehumanize black people in founding this country but rather just started this grand experiment solely with the purpose of making everybody happy and free (when in reality it was literally so a group of religious nuts could practice their painfully prohibitive religion with more freedom to punish people who don't play by their rules). 

Stop the hysteria. America may have been founded on censorship, prudishness, and disdain disguised as respectability but it became great on freedom of expression and celebration of diversity and audaciousness. 

And everybody out there, if you ever see Tim Winter’s son with liquor on his breath and a duffel bag, run the other way. Because he’s just found out about the word "fuck" and played his friend’s copy of LA NOIRE and he’s gonna be gunning for the next person who flashes him the middle finger.

- Ryan

Lock-Street- The Fatty Bowl

Superbowl. No matter the teams, players, or history, the big game day on Sunday has become synonymous with partying. People decide to congregate together as it becomes more of an event then a sports game leading to a completely hung-over and distraught Monday. I don’t think I have ever been to a Superbowl party that includes strictly football fans, which adds the gravitational pull that this entails. The simple fact that this one game has the ability to drawl an individual in makes NFL Executives and Owners continue to jerk themselves to the amount they see on what have been subpar commercial adds and the new fans that it creates.


SUPERBOWL Picsanity

Giants vs. Patriots (u 54)-This game contains two high flying, defense-ass-raping offenses that cause problems for every team they have played, and because of that I’m making the obvious decision on betting on the under. Both will be held stagnate due to extensive game planning, health on the defensive side of the ball, and the tightness created by playing in the biggest sporting event in the US. There won’t be any blown coverage, active mistakes, or poor defensive strategy. You have two great football minds developing a game play that eliminates each team’s x-factors. For the last two weeks, these players have been held under the microscope and both scrutinized and cherished for one game. The time has finally come for these teams as their beginning of the year goal is in a touchdowns reach.

Patriots (-3) vs. the Giants- As much as Tom Brady irks every element of my body, you can’t hate his game. The man has skills, what else can you say, and while I think that history does not usually dictate a game in the future, you know this man, has been waiting in a dark cellar thinking about how they lost to the big blue in spectacular fashion.

Giants (+1) vs. Patriots in the first half- The Giants are going to come out strong. Watch as their defense will be making Tom Brady’s life a nightmare in the first half until Belichick and Brady start making game adjustments. Simple outs to Gronk, rushing more, and having Welker run a shit load of slants should eliminate the pressure. Either way, the Giants should feel good about their first half.

PLAYER PROP

Longest touchdown of the game (U 49.5) - We all know that each team has x-factors that can simply change the dynamic of game by one cut-back or broken tackle. Even with players such as Brady, Gronk, Cruz, Welker, Manning, and Nicks the defenses will be too structured and tentative to screw up and allow a large play. It has been ingrained in each defensive player’s mind to maintain control by simply not allowing an air show. The running backs on both teams do not have the ability to break away too often so it is simply up to challenging them vertically.

- Kyle

The Future of Athletics is X-Rated, part 2: Innovation and Revolution

(Continued from Part 1: X-Games Recap)

Good. That’s done. Now let’s get to the fun part. The future.

Because extreme sports are still evolving, they have the greatest ability to adapt to the changing whims of society and culture as culture and hipness is vaunted to such high levels of all-consuming importance. Even more, with humanity’s attention span at an all-time low, you need to be able to keep it interesting. And finally, these sports are all about pushing forth what the individual man (or woman) can do.

Baseball hasn’t much changed since it was invented. The field’s still the same. Still hit a ball with a bat and run in a diamond. Still have 9 people in the field and one at bat, runners notwithstanding. Yes the bats have changed, strategies have changed, but the only innovations that can occur is doing more of something in less time. More home runs, more steals, so on, zzzzzzzzzz. Hell, MONEYBALL proves you can boil the sport down to statistics, math, and people become chess pieces.

In general most of the innovations in mainstream team sports are little more than an increase in size and speed of the players. Football field’s still 100 yards long. Football’s still a foot. A basketball court’s a wood rectangle with a 10-foot hoop on each end, arcs on each line and a circle in the middle. In fact, most mainstream team sports are confined by neat little rectangles, square. A baseball diamond is a distorted square. Hard corners. Like the walls of a jail cell.

As for getting creative? That’s reserved for the coach, coming up with new formations and whatnot but in the end, as for the individual it’s just about doing the same things but trying to do them much moreso. Some people are enamored with the idea that you can get creative with the rearrangement of people. But America was founded on the progression and push of a brilliant few leading the conforming many. Individual exploration, reaching to new heights as far as what a human can do, that's the ticket.

Let’s look at other solo sports, ones perhaps more similar to extreme sports. Figure skating comes to mind simply because it's judged, its a blend of artistic expression and athleticism (and cold ice) and it's somewhat marginalized. When was the last time a new move was invented in Olympic figure Skating? Can’t remember? That’s because it isn’t about trying to push the sport forward. Maybe adding an extra spin to a lutz or sowcow but it’s more about perfecting what already exists than inventing something new. Maybe this is because ice skating, centuries old, has already hit its terminal velocity and there’s no further to go. Or maybe it’s because the industry of ice skating is so geared to taking an elite few and training them vigorously and, during this process, they get limited by what their instructors think is good (versus extreme sports, in which any kid with a board and a dream is responsible for teaching himself up to a point – look at somebody like John Jackson, who’s become arguably one of the best riders on the planet by doing nothing but smoking mad dank and riding back-country pow – plenty of pro snowboarders do this, inventing moves and techniques that would be eschewed by an earlier generation). Or maybe it’s because, as said before, this is about doing a perfect performance of what already exists instead of trying to explore what else you can do.

Either way, this leads me to the 2 things that have gotten me most excited about this X Games.

1. Real Snow

No, I’m not talking about the fact that there was some real snow falling in Aspen while the rest of us suffer through a drought of monumental proportions. No, I’m talking about Real Snow, a new contest format invented to keep up with not only what’s happening in culture but also with a large part of the snowboarding world. See, in most professional sports you can’t be a pro athlete unless you play in some sort of organized, structured league. That is where action or “Extreme” sports differ. For every Shaun White, who spends his life within perfectly-groomed halfpipes and terrain parks, there is a Travis Rice, a man who lives in the uncharted backcountry, turning cliff hucks and random tree jibs into his playground and filming it to inspire all us regular riders to get out there and do something unique and life-affirming (note: Snowboarder magazine named Travis its rider of the year while Shaun didn’t even make the top 10).

Along those lines, Real Snow doesn’t take place in a contest zone. It takes place on video. This first round, Real Snow rails, was a bracket of video parts. People voted on whose were the best, allowing these people to showcase their innovation in everything from camera angles to the uniqueness and difficulty of their features (parks have begun putting staircases next to their rails to replicate this) to the 30-foot-drop wallrides, all mixed in with the heaviest cringe-inducing falls and some of the most frighteningly surreal visuals a fan could imagine. even more, in accessing the new phenomenon of the everyday man having an impact on his favorite sports, they crowned a fan favorite based on votes too. This would be like a contest in which they take highlight reels of the best football players and, a la the Face Smash program at the beginning of SOCIAL NETWORK, set them 1 against the other in several rounds of elimination. Pretty innovative in that it combines literally everything cutting edge in entertainment, sports, and snowboarding. By the way, the big jib trick is the re-direct, watch these videos and you’ll see what I mean.

And here's Louif (Louis-Felix) Paradis

In the Tignes European XGames next month, they’re gonna launch Real Snow Backcountry, starring the likes of luminaries like John Jackson and Gigi Ruf, among others.  This changes the rules, changes the field, changes everything. No innovation or new idea in mainstream sports even comes close.

2. Red Bull Supernatural

Speaking of Travis Rice, I’m gonna leave you with his Red Bull Supernatural Contest, set to drop some time between today and next Thursday, February 9^th. This shit promises to be the future of snowboarding contests and, well, T.Rice always delivers his promises.

Travis is the current king of the snowboard world. Anybody and everybody in it stares at him in awe as he  launches 150 foot triple corks off monster cliffs into deep pow and lands without even a stutter. He also slays it in the pipe, when he wants to ride it (though he prefers stylish, though not competition-worthy, handplants to Big Macs). And he's even won a few Big Air and Slopestyle contests. Oh yeah, and remember that double cork that was all the fad last Olympics? Rice threw the first one, back in '04. Now he's making his own contests and these just may be the future, bringing together every aspect of modern snowboarding into one unfathomable format.

A few years ago he threw together his first such contest, the Quiksilver Natural Selection shootout, a pow/kicker run through Jackson Hole's legendary banked Dick's Ditch. It was basically little more than a few big mountain guys hitting mini-booters in a somewhat flat run with a few steeps and a ditch at the bottom, though it caught a lot of attention. He was trying to do something different and in this world that's all that matters - or at leats doing something different and looking good doing it (one way it's similar to basketball - they're all about the steez).

Now he's taking it to the next level with the Red Bull Supernatural Contest. What does this have to do with the XGames? Sage Kotsenburg and Mark McMorris, by winning gold and silver in slopestyle, are the final two riders to be invited. Shaun White was invited but for some reason I didn't see his name on the roster of riders (maybe it's because the runs aren't groomed to his specifications - or at all).

Included in the riders is Terje Haakonsen. If Travis is the top knight in the realm, slaying mountains with strength and grace, Terje is the king. He was the man Travis grew up admiring and he still rips. Even more, to see him compete is nothing less than a rarity in today's increasingly corporate contest environment. Terje was one of the most vocal opponents to snowboard halfpipe being included in the Olympics. In fact, there are a lot of heads in the Snowboard world who don't want to see it in the once-every-4-year hoopla alongside Downhill and the Long Jump.

His reason was pretty basic - the IOC snowsports are governed by the FIS or the International Ski Federation. This includes snowboarding. So essentially snowboarders in the Olympics are being ruled over and regulated by a bunch of old skiers. The Tea Party would have a fit over this.

Then there's the other reason, part of why snowboarding is so cool, so hip, so strong with the kids. As one up-and-coming shredder said in his recent session of Fresh and Tracked (a segment in which Snowboarder has riders list what's "Fresh", or "Cool", and what's "Tracked" or played out) about Olympic Snowboarding (he put it in the Tracked Section): "Great, just what I want to do, talk about snowboarding with my friend's mom." Call it juvenile, people still complain when they find their parents on Facebook. They're youth sports, youth culture, leave it to the people who know it and live it, right? It's all about rebellion. And given the fact that this year was the year of the protester, sports should adjust accordingly.


So anyway, what's the Supernatural? A big mountain run filled with movie-part kickers and tree jibs dug into a 45-degree mountainside in Baldface Lodge, BC, a backcountry spot with its own dedicated snowcat team to take you to the steep and deep. Just like a  surf contest, it has a window when it can occur based on best conditions since it's all natural snow, not the fake stuff like in the XGames park. These riders will have open reign to design their own runs with near-limitless lines, features, and options to express themselves via their individual specialties and preferences. Essentially, it's a contest without limits. In a way riding with your friends is always a contest - when you session a run or a kicker, it always ends up with everybody trying to one-up the other. But now Rice has figured out a way to blend that fun, innovative progression within some parameters of what makes up a modern contest where, like, people can win money and stuff.

Here, just watch the damn trailer for it:

So in a few days, the craziest motherfuckers on earth will be launching themselves off a snow-covered Ewok village and pushing the envelope as far as what's possible when we talk about "professional, organized competition".


That's what I'm talking about. Here's another take on it:

Seriously, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. This is innovation, progression. The hell with Occupy, this is true Revolution, the liberation of athletics from the boundaries, restrictions, limits and rules we've been so obsessed with placing upon them.

This is the future. As culture and art and entertainment and sports blend more and more, the old ballgames won't do. As today's youth tires of the establishment, they're going to tire of the establishment's atavistic approach to sporting events as well.

The future will be X-Rated, my friends. You can either join these freaks or get left behind with grampa and his Ted Williams stories.

- Ryan

The Future of Athletics is X-Rated, part 1: X-Games Recap

Winter X games just finished on Sunday. Some of you watched it. A lot of you watched the highlights on SportsCenter, possibly even rewound some of the dirtier spins and flips just to try and comprehend what the fuck they were doing. And the rest of you probably scoffed and went up to get a beer as you waited for basketball and hockey highlights. 

For those of you in the third category I can only feel pity. Not only because you’re missing the most exciting, artistic, and captivating athletes performing today but also because of the fact that in 50 years these sports will be dominating the airwaves while MLB and NBA desperately struggle to come up with gimmicks that’ll bring in enough money to cover their disgustingly bloated player contracts. You wanna be able to talk to your grandkids about how their favorite sports were back in your day? Then you better start watching the X Games.

First off, in full disclosure I have to admit I didn't like watching organized sports growing up. It never made sense, watching a bunch of dudes run around in this arbitrary square. I'd rather be doing something myself. It never inspired anything in me like the adrenaline rush I get from watching a snow or surf flick. Maybe some of it has to do with the fact that I grew up in Baltimore, without a football team and with a baseball team who, even during its glory days, was never gonna win a world series (Why not?). Or maybe because I was one of the new mutants, the kids coming up on punk rock skate videos and MTV's attention-span-erasing in your face visuals. Maybe it was because I was too pale to go to my local basketball court in downtown Baltimore but I could skate around Fells Point with a freedom most kids only dream of, a new urban warrior practicing his acid drops and tic-tacs back in the dawn of the new era. Whatever the reason, I admit I've never been able to spend all Sunday watching football - or more than 5 minutes watching a televised baseball game. Still, maybe that's even more of a reason why these new sports are the way of the future. Maybe I'm not a freak but a hint of what's to come. I mean, hell, how many reality shows are there about baseball players? There've already been 2 about skaters, 1 about surfers, and there's gonna be one about snowboarders coming down the pipeline - and that doesn't count all the shows on FuelTV. If MTV defines youth culture, then you have either unscripted shows about wild kids (drinking or having babies) or extreme sports athletes (anything by Jeff Tremaine).

Now I’ve already rambled on so many times about how these sports are the future, about how they’re combining culture, lifestyle, and art with athleticism so I won’t go into that again here. For you standard sports fans, in case you missed it, here’s a quick rundown of a few select wins in a standard “Sports world” way. If you caught the Games but feel like reading a quick recap with that Ariano color commentary special sauce, read on. But if you're looking for the part about how these sports are evolving into something new, blazing a path towards the future, check here for part 2.

Though seriously, these vids below are pretty sick.

SLOPESTYLE

Tom Wallisch killed it in skier Slopestyle. 

Mark McMorris killed it in snowboard slopestyle, though Sage Kotsenburg, the silver medalist, was pretty sick as well. In the end, it came down to McMorris’ rail section, much more technical and difficult than Sage’s.

 Pay attention, this is an event that will be featured prominently in the 2014 Winter Olympics given all the hype and attention lavished on “The Flying Tomato” (and yes, that’s the lamest nickname any suit-wearing geek with a headset EVER came up with). 

Slopestyle is my favorite XGames event because it combines so many elements. First off they have the street jibs, rails and wallrides which emphasize exact balance – your board or skis need to be perfectly in line with the rail or wall or else it’s like trying to balance on a knife wearing ice skates. The secret is learning to let go while sliding, let your motion and speed going onto the feature carry you through, with a final pop off the end allowing you to throw in a little special steeze. Next come the “aerials”, the jump section with guys flying between 60 and 100 feet spinning in unbelievable off-axis rotations and then flawlessly landing back on their feet. 

$$$ THE MONEY BOOTER $$$

At the bottom is the money-booter, where people like Tom Wallisch throw switch leftside double cork 1260’s (his run set the new record, by the way - and to explain, a 1260 is 3 and a half full rotations, a full rotation being a 360, 360 degrees, so on ...).  A few years ago Shaun White won by giving a clinic, spinning every possible 900 off each of the four jumps (take off regular, do 2 and a half rotations spinning one way, which leads to a blind landing, switch; take off switch, reverse it, so on . . .). Basically, this is an event that’s only as limited as your imagination and the rail part changes every year so evolution is forced on at least one section. Imagine how much more interesting baseball would be if first base was moved from game to game? Now imagine if Ozzie Smith had implemented rules that baseball players had to do flips between bases like he did. Then imagine if the goal was to get between the bases with the most style, not to just hammer a ball away? Perhaps then it wouldn’t be filled with overweight “athletes”, right? No, then it wouldn’t be baseball. Still, it might do a better job keeping the kids interested enough for them to make it through a game with you without whining about how slow and boring the damn thing is.

SNOWMOBILE BIG AIR

Then there was snowmobile big air. I remember seeing Jim Rippey bust a backflip in Standard Films’ TB10. That was 2001. And on Sunday, Heath Frisby landed the first ever frontflip. 

Just imagine a couple-hundred ton gasoline powered death machine. Then imagine somehow pushing it counter to the direction in which it’s traveling. Then imagine landing it completely blind, just having to sense where the ground is under you. Yeah, that’s what he did. In the run just before, his buddy Justin Hoyer, attempting a double backflip (which was landed previously by Levi Lavallee) under-rotated and slid down the hill with the smoking hunk of metal on top of him.  

 

Imagine if your sport involved manipulating a dead piece of metal while 6 stories in the air with the very real chance of death or serious injury literally in every play. Makes football sound kinda soft, right?

BIG AIR

Then snowboard and skier big air. Bobby Brown killed it on his skis, taking the gold back (he won it 2 years ago).

and Mark McMorris won this one too with a TRIPLE cork 1440 (and you thought that double cork was dangerous), making him 2 for 2 in X Games gold. 

Big air is like the NBA All-Star dunk contest. Except all the players are closer to Spud Webb height. And instead of going 3 or 4 feet in the air and spinning around once they go hundreds of feet in the air and spin 3 or 4 times, while flipping concurrently. And instead of landing on their feet they land on slick pieces of wood and resin latched onto their feet. And seriously, when was the last time you saw anything truly new and innovative in the dunk contest, the East Bay Funk Dunk? No, instead of bouncing the ball off the backboard they’re grabbing and spinning their legs while flying through the air in said impossible acrobatic feats. 

Now, let’s get to the sports in the Olympics.

SkierX and BoarderX – not my cup of tea.

They’re races. Rowdy races but races, nonetheless. I think they lack the creativity and the push for innovation inherent in the other sports and it’ll be surprising if they remain in the XGames ad infinitum. And if they do, they’ll certainly be joined by this, which is much more extreme.

Actually Monoski’s pretty fucking sick. Watch Sam Danniels, a wildman if ever I've seen one, kill it to take the gold this year.

But the others – as freestyle ski legend Tanner Hall once said about downhill skiing (which he did before becoming the freeskiing king he is - and I think this was directed at 2-plank drunk douchebag Bode Miller ) it’s one thing to fly downhill at 60 MPH. It’s another to take that speed and then huck yourself several hundred feet in the air, flying around in a goddamn atomic tornado and somehow maintaining your composure to land flawlessly.

Still, SkierX/BoarderX are INFINITELY more entertaining than any track or pool race. Sorry Phelps.

HALFPIPE

This is the big one. Ever since a spunky little red-head channeled Robert Plant in tight black leather and threw down the most insane pipe run anybody has ever seen during his VICTORY LAP in the 2010 Olympics, Halfpipe has been touted as the great crossover hope, the place where snowboarders and main-streamers can finally begin to bridge the gap in understanding that has for so long existed between them.

Let’s start off by saying there is nothing scarier or burlier than a snowboard halfpipe. With 20-foot walls of unforgiving ice rising on either side of you, you can seriously fuck yourself up on the pipe (see SarahBurke and Kevin Pearce). I’d rather huck my meat off a 30-foot cliff than session a halfpipe and one of my friends, a pro skier and former US National Team member, comfortable spinning inverted 540’s in the middle of a mogul field, stays away from them “Either you pop too much one way and slam on the deck or too much the other wall and you fall 10 feet to flat.” As such, I hold these athletes in utmost respect. 

Of course the thread running through these games was that everything was being done in honor and remembrance of Sarah Burke, even to the opening celebration held in her honor through the pipe. 

As such, it was fitting that Women’s Skier Superpipe was won by none other than her longtime friend and Team Canada teammate Roz Groenewoud, “Sarah” in red cursive emblazoned across her forehead. This is as moving and emotional as an athletics victory can be, winning by setting a new record in honor of your best friend who had single-handedly pushed your very sport forward and into the international spotlight.

 In Skier men’s, young rookie David Wise nailed his run, bringing the Gold back to America for the first time since Tanner Hall in 2008, setting the groundwork for what will be a mind-blowing Winter Olympics in Sochi as Men’s skier pipe takes front and center. Skiers, having less surface area and twice as many edges as snowboarders, (and ergo twice as much control and ability to regulate speed) bust huge and hugely complex airs. This will be the new “It” sport of the next Winter Olympics, I guarantee it.

 On boards, Kelly Clark won, like, her 100^th XGames medal, this time another gold.

 

 And then it’s time for the big show. I remember the first time I went to the Winter X Games in Aspen, back in 2002. This little punk named Shaun White was 16 and blowing my mind. I was there cheering for Danny Kass. Neither Kass or the little punk kid did a damn thing. The next year, White would win gold in both Slopestyle and Pipe. And go on to change the world of extreme sports.

On Sunday he made history again, scoring the first ever perfect score in the history of Snowboard Pipe, a 100, on his victory lap, of course, with back to back double corks and a 1260 Big Mac (that mind-boggling spin-flip he threw in the Olympics). 

I have to give credit not to White for winning but for everybody else who come out knowing they’re gonna lose. And to Iouri Podlatchikov, the 2^nd place finisher, who busts a switch double McTwist (the Big Mac) and has the epic nickname I-Pod.

But of Course White won, looking ever like the rock star and I can’t take credit away from him, he is the best Pipe-riding snowboarder in the universe. So if he's the here and the now, where the fuck are we going? We're going beyond the limits, where there are no roads . . .

To be continued in "The Future of Athletics is X-Rated, Part 2: Innovation and Revolution"

- Ryan