Hey WSL: “Get your shit together!”

Is the World Surf League sleeping on the job?

These days of near perfection are starting to weigh on me. Every morning I wake up, bleary-headed, begging for respite. Begging for a break in the professional surf action. And every morning I learn that the just wrapped J-Bay day was somehow, in some way, bigger/better/crazier than the day before.

I pull myself out of bed, press a cup of coffee and get to it.

But would you like to know who stays in bed nestled like a little joey in mama kangaroo’s pouch?

The World Surf League!

It’s true!

www.worldsurfleague.com is my first stop of the day and there is nothing there, even by 8:00 AM California time. Nothing but the entire event being played on a long, unnecessary loop. Some mornings it’ll have a daily wrap show posted by 9:30 AM. Sometimes 10:00 AM. Its youtube channel slow drips heats throughout the day. By evening most everything is up.

Usually.

And that ain’t fast enough for this surf journalist. I want it packaged into digestible morsels right away. I want it all right there first thing, west coast time, in both video and prose form. I want the daily wrap from the event and also a different nuanced take from other surf experts shot in the WSL’s Santa Monica studio. And I want it by 5:30 AM. The exact moment Reveille for Surf Journalists rattles me awake.

It is cruel to ask for more, no? Professional surfing has never looked better but… I don’t know. Maybe it is the determination of this particular event and its distance from both Australia and California. Maybe its near perfection has awoken the Kraken of Relentless Poking that sleeps on my medulla oblongata.

But, and then again, it was this very same Kraken that chewed up ex-WSL CEO Paul Speaker and spat him out. I think we were 45% responsible for his departure. Maybe even 48%. And I think him packing his Lacoste bags, folding up the NFL polos and the nonsense talk and getting out of town is why professional surfing has never looked better.

In any case, one thing I do like about the League’s retardation is that the first thing I read is Steve “Longtom” Shearer’s analysis as I post it. He has taken this event. He has beaten Nick Carroll, who was tapped on the shoulder by Sean Doherty because maybe Sean’s rapier got bent in Fiji. It may be some of the best professional surf contest coverage of all time even if he is too much of a chickenshit to go hisself to South Africa and face Sixto Rodriguez’s music.