Simple and free.
Let us be very frank and honest with each other. The World Surf League is so bad in its role as the “global home of surfing” that it has even stripped the joy out of fun making. Everything, and I mean everything, is wrong with the farcical show other than the fact that it airs to YouTube for free. Or airs to YouTube for free until final’s days which are magically ported to the worldsurfleague.com and its wonky funk.
It is unnecessary to recount the bloat, missing multiple live waves every single heat, inane booth chatter etc. but what regularly gets me is that none of it ever changes. The various World Surf League chiefs treat it all as if God, after handing Moses the Ten Commandments atop Mt. Sinai, also passed along the Official Rules and Regulations of Professional Surfing at its Highest Level Never to be Altered or Touched by Human Hands.
Asinine and made perpetually more so when other niche sports do themselves proud by experimenting with stale formats, bending the “established ways” to fit what makes them unique and special as opposed to the other way around.
And let us take snowboarding. As you know, I am currently in Canada searching for depressed Erin Brooks fans. Natural Selection, the core lord snowboarding event, just so happens to be in town and likely running tomorrow. Now, like many bracketed competitions, riders go head to head, sans repechage, but how to seed? In the old ways wherein highest ranked goes against lowest ranked because that is the way God intended?
No.
Natural Selection hosts an event at the kickoff of the window, introducing all riders then randomly selecting a name. The winner gets to choose when he/she wants to drop. At the beginning, it is mostly about timing but as the draw fills, it becomes about whom the selected think she/he can beat.
The glove slap across face receiving oooohs and aaaaahs from a captive audience.
But what if professional surfing plagiarized? How much more fun would it be to see John John Florence pick his foe instead of simply going up against some low ranked cannon fodder? To see Italo Ferreira dancing the samba while pointing at Griffin Colapinto?
Too bad the World Surf League cannot change anything.
Ever.