What’s the next big high school sport?
I was thinking the other day that I wonder what the next big high school sport will be? I mean – I feel like it’s about time for a newer sport to come into the conversation around high school athletics.
I suppose some would say it’s soccer, but that’s not really “new” so much as it is just finally getting popular. It couldn’t be lacrosse, because we’re not all rich.
It could be rugby, but it’s hard to see it gaining a foothold in the U.S. while we already have football.
Then I thought, well maybe with baseball on the decline, we can get another big racket sport like cricket. I looked up cricket to see if that might be something that could catch hold in the U.S.
After reading up on the rules and things around the sport, I went outside and viciously beat my head against a brick wall because I thought that would probably give me less of a headache.
Needless to say, cricket is out.
Maybe handball could catch on in the U.S.A., but it seems a bit too similar to soccer to catch people’s attention. Doesn’t really have the ol’ razzle dazzle to pull people in, if you understand my meaning.
Water polo is out because – well, I mean it’s water polo. Just look at it.
Racquetball would be a fun sport, but I’m afraid I can’t really come up with the funds or the justification to get a country club membership, and it seems like the two go hand in hand together. It seems rather like golf in that regard, honestly.
Besides, it’s hard to imagine struggling schools investing in racquetball courts when half of them have to share tennis courts or use public ones.
I had dreams that squash might one day catch on, but those dreams were unfortunately squashed when it never did. One man wrote to me saying he thinks professional whistling might be the next big thing, but, after talking to him, I realized he was nothing more than a blowhard.
Another man asked to talk to me about how he thought sailing might be the next big American sport if it could gain a foothold, but when I went to talk to him, the security guard in the gated community wouldn’t let me in, so I never got the chance to hear him out. I had an unfortunately similar experience with a woman who wanted to talk to me about croquet, which really disappointed me because I thought croquet would be a fantastic sport in an ironic sort of way.
Hockey seems like a good up-and-comer with its surging popularity, especially in Tennessee with the success of the Nashville Predators. Variations that don’t require any kind of ice might catch on in the coming years as ice becomes a shrinking commodity what with the world slowly catching on fire. Then I remembered that if people are worried about their kids playing football because of the “violent nature” of it, then they’re certainly going to hate hockey.
Then the answer came to me suddenly, like it had been staring me in the face the whole time. We all know what the next big sport will be, because it’s the simplest sport and it’s one of the only sports one can play with a beer in their hand: cornhole.
With a population getting fatter and less athletic by the year and alcohol consumption going up year by year, as well as a larger and larger focus on political correctness and “genderless” sports, it’s only a matter of time before we’re all sitting around telling our grandkids about how their old granddad nearly cinched the state cornhole tournament for the school if only his old elbow hadn’t gone out on the last throw, or how grandma was close to playing cornhole for the University but got snubbed and had to play for community college. If that thought depresses you, grab a beer and let’s talk about it while we play some cornhole.