If there has even been a sporting event which captures the imagination of the American audience less than the American Cup, I'd like to know what it is. No regular guy can own a horse but at least we feel like we can gamble on it. I cannot believe the amount of coverage this thing has gotten over the last week, with people calling it maybe the greatest comeback of all time, topping the RedSox 3-0 deficit to the Yankees, the Bills beating Houston or Reggie Miller breaking the hearts of every Knicks fan.
The WSJ had a front page article yesterday and have been featuring it for a month, and honestly I can't think of a single person who gives a sh!t. Obviously this the Journal's ultimate ass-kiss to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, because you just know that if the owner of this crew had been Mazin El Manahi or Chris Kuchar, it wouldn't even have made the online edition.
As for the comeback, from everything you read it was a combination of a lot of luck, some crazy wind currents and probably a bunch of shenanigans.. but then again if it's corporate greed, this country's financial media all ignore it.
I didn't even know the America's Cup was going on until I went up to the SF Bay Area from Sept. 13 - 15 for the Cal-Ohio State football game and then the Raiders-Jaguars game. When I was a kid, I used to actually keep track of this crap, too, especially when Dennis Connor was America's best skipper and finding ways to beat (i.e., cheat) on and against rivals from Australia, New Zealand, and the like. A friend of mine in summer camp on Catalina Island in the Boy Scouts was in the San Diego Yacht Club, and told me that Dennis Connor was an asshole.
ReplyDeleteI knew I'd be a Dennis Connor fan for life after that. You betcha.
But now, I didn't even know WTF was going on.
On Friday the 13th, a friend and I -- on our drive between lunch and Mitchell Brothers -- drove past a bunch of America's Cup-looking yachts near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Who knew that the America's Cup was even being held in San Francisco??
Again, I blame this blog for not keeping me informed until now.