The perfect Winter Olympics sport: curling... really

At present, our sports-affections are as narrow in kind as they are vast in expenditures of time and money. Years ago we sampled many more types of sport on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” where Jim McKay brought us the “thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat” from around the globe. Today not much penetrates non-Olympic airwaves beyond baseball, basketball, football, and hockey.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Anything can be packaged for TV audiences. Combine dramatic camerawork, enthusiastic competitors, bottom-of-the-screen details, and the right music, and you can make anything popular.

Witness, for example, the success of competitive cooking on the Food Channel. Now look at endless hours of poker, fishing, and golf. Or consider why ESPN gives more time to the Scripps National Spelling Bee or domino competition than to the Boston and New York marathons combined. Sports Illustrated even used to have a regular column on bridge.

Millions play the expensive other Scottish-born sport, golf. And if curling’s evil twin, ice hockey, can develop a national TV audience and be played in warm regions, there is every reason curling could do the same.

In fact, curling clubs already exist in Texas and at least 20 other US states. The US Curling Association reports that there are more than 13,000 curlers and 135 curling clubs in the country. There are probably many more curler-wannabes. New York Times writer Alessandra Stanley calls curling “a favorite Olympic guilty pleasure.” We need curling not as a guilty pleasure, but as a sporting opportunity.

This year’s US men’s team won’t bring home a bronze medal like they did in 2006, but with more support, they and the women will be more successful in 2014.

Take a peek at the curling semifinals on Feb. 25 and the medal games on Feb. 26 and 27. Give curling a chance: You might just fall in love with what you see.

Robert Myers has curled but mainly teaches cultural anthropology at Alfred University.

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