Hit it hard, hit it fast. And live a little…
The first tour event starts in a few weeks. Wipe off the anticipatory saliva and bite in.
Is Gabriel a one-shot champ or is this is the start of an Andy Irons or, even, Kelly Slater-esque rule? Filipe? How’s his huck this year? Is John John interested in Snapper’s three-foot runners enough to fire his guns? Was Julian’s end-of-season form in Hawaii a sign that he’s shucked off his terrible form of early 2014?
And Joel, Mick, Kelly? Where do they fit in?
Excited? Yeah, we should be. So why does the thought of 12, 30-minute round one heats, the round two heats that soak up another half day, lay-days, women’s heats thrown in hither and thither, fill me with horror?
It shouldn’t be like this. The best surfing happens on tour. But the tour is flawed. Like a good-looking woman with poor dress sense and permanent tension in her mouth.
You want five ways to improve the tour, right now?
1. Reduce the tour from 34 to 12
Truth is, unless you have some kinda personal contact or affinity with anyone outside the top dozen, watching ’em tag waves to the beach does nothing for you, for me, or for the supposed greater audience the World Surf League is chasing. Sure, having 34 surfers guarantees a career for men who, let’s face it, ain’t Stevie Hawkings and would therefore be laying concrete or slapping paint on walls, but it ain’t taking the game forward. It’s making up numbers. And making up numbers means…
2. You’ve gotta finish an event in two days, max
Four days for men, three days for women. Two-week waiting periods. Endless calls. Endless standbys. It’s the most lurid tempo! No wonder such a ferocious sex hunger develops around tour events. You want to see an exciting sport. Go to Speedway. Three hours. A few heats and a winner-takes-all final. Spectators with no interest in motor sports are captivated. Surfing needs a full-day super jam, two if conditions turn to grease. Which means…
3. Forget combining men’s and women’s events
Oh! You get to use the same infrastructure thereby reducing costs? How ideal! It’s an uneasy coexistence. How many joints do you know can deliver a week of good waves within a two or three-week period, across all tides? It don’t happen. And so you’re left with crucial heats running in the crummiest and most inconsistent closeouts.
Speaking of tides and inconsistent closeouts…
4. Portugal has to be iced
What should be a sideshow of tuberiding and shorebreak tumbling has become the event where world title hopes and dreams of victory are dashed upon Supertubos’ shallow sandbank. Kelly knows. And Jordy Smith, the best surfer there last year, sat in a miserable ocean and caught one wave in the final (Click on the play button to watch). That ain’t sport at its best.
5. Live a little
Bottom line, y’ain’t ever going to get even a slice of the football or soccer or basketball crowds. Surfing is too subjective, too hard to understand. So, live a little. Let the guys on the mic, all of whom know a thing or two, loosen up.
If you don’t terrorise, it’s not surfing.
@disqus_brAxrXlj5E:disqus is on the right track here I think.
So to work similarly to Skateboarding and Snowboarding, which have their “extreme” competition types; Street league in the case of skateboarding and Snowboard Cross in the case of snowboarding. So we need Surfcross AKA SurfX. Competition would take place on a rounded track, similar to a SnowX or MotoX course but scaled down significantly, that would also obviously be self contained and full of water. The water is forced to move at high speeds in a continuous loop around the track, like a small lazy river combined with the power and shit of a wave pool. You would also need an underwater surface that had give to it, like a soft foam surfaced with waterproof material so you would have the ability to shape the water and guide it around without having to use concrete like most water parks do.
So there would be small “hills” and such, to allow for airs and slides, grabs, etc, but like all nX events it would be a race rather than a ripoff of something like a slopestyle in Snowboarding or a freeskate in Skateboarding, which are scored based on tricks, rather than speed and racing ability. You would have 4 surfers on the track at a time, just like SBX and SkiX, because having the 6-12 that are present in SnoX and MotoX would be way too dangerous for unpadded surfers and surfboards. Recognizing that danger, however, there would still be mild contact allowed, like in the other Xcross events. This event would probably have to be done with boards with straps, like the strapped tow boards that some guys use when they’re using the shorter tow boards in big surf, and go from there.
Obviously there is a lot of refinement needed here and, honestly, I don’t even know if it’s technologically possible to keep that much water flowing as fast as it would need to be, ideally you probably want these guys moving at a decent clip, at least as fast as they’re normally moving on a fast wave. Aside from all that though, I think John is on the right track with the need for different formats and this is just a surfing adapted version of my favorite snow sports, which are SkiX, SnoX(SnowmobileX) and SnowboardX. Can you imagine how insanely awesome it would be to watch someone like JOB chuck a secret dog turd he smuggled in his board shorts to huck at JJF, distract him, and manage to slip by him as he goes flying into the air off his board, and then it is JOB for the win.
Thoughts?
http://youtu.be/okMuq-NSq0M
Now that I’ve got you onboard the plan for my new sport, I’ll appoint you as head money collector so that we can build the first course and such. So yeah, that’s on you. Get choppin’!
Love the top 12 idea. Shorter events, shorter windows, better waves would go a long way to making the product better. It would also increase the marketability of those 12 guys and therefore the tour.
Another easy fix is pulling in better wildcards. The current system sucks. Why not have fans vote a la the Hurley Trestles Pro for every event? Can restrict it to legit contenders by only allowing entry to guys with footage at the particular stop on tour.
Snowboarding and skateboarding (who have TV deals in the US) have multiple event formats – freestyle, half pipe, big air. Why not try some new formats for surfing? Structure contests to encourage stuff like Kelly’s “540” or JJF’s air at Backdoor when the HD cameras are on. Easier for casual fans to understand, easier for judges to score, easier for announcers to call, better footage to circulate after the fact and a very digestible event time.
First step toward all these ideas: take the top 10 guys on tour plus 2 wildcards from the remaining 24 as voted on by fans and run two 6 man “best wave” heats, biggest/deepest tube or biggest air or whatever the conditions dictate at every stop on tour this year.
How about The Superlative White Eunuch tour!
It’s a bit much for your average surf fan to parse, but I’m okay with it. Wonder if Graham cares what we think?
G is actually an adorable man, despite the jibes we sling. Cute as a button too! But no Chas, if we’re to be honest…
I wouldn’t know! Maybe it is demonstrative of my American macho attitude that I make fun of him despite the fact that I’ll never likely meet him. But, honestly, it’s hard not to make fun of someone who doesn’t even attempt to fight back when they’re attacked and then follows that up by hiring private security..
But that’s just me! I’m really a bad person, so there’s plenty of fodder to talk shit about me!
#6 – Change the name again because “World Surf League” is the most godawful, minty, fucking name I can think of. Almost anything would be better. Hell, they could have just officially changed the name to “The Dream Tour” and then the name would be condescending, but at least it wouldn’t be shitty.