Published on: 2026-01-22
Written by Nathan P
Maybe this is just me but the sports above just have this air of coolness to them that can’t be stripped away. There isn’t really an insult that sticks or drags them down. I am not saying other sports aren’t cool or fun but there’s always some defensiveness from the arbiters of the sports when the common insults to a given sport are thrown around. Baseball is slow and boring. Soccer and basketball are full of babies flopping all over the place for penalty calls. American football, where the feet never touch the ball and an average of 11 minutes of actual game play per 4 hour game(? idk I don’t watch it). Maybe you agree with some of these critiques, maybe your eyebrows furl up when you read one or all of those and your brain began to come to the defense of your beloved sport. If the latter was your reaction, that is kind of my point.
When I was a kid I remember going to this chain restauraunt called Islands. It was, well, island themed. All the servers wore shorts and floral shirts, tiki decor all over, those palm leaf roofed awnings were outside things like that. They also had TVs throughout which constantly played surfing videos. Big wave surfing, people doing tricks, retro videos, any type of surfing video you could think of. Something different every time. You would constantly see these insane wipeouts. In fact, that was often a major part of the videos - the failed attempts.
Similarly, skate videos were extremely popular in my youth and honestly they are still one of the most fun videos to watch. Skaters trying to master a trick. Video cuts in quick succession showing each of their failed attempts while you steadily watch them improve and get slightly closer to achieving whatever insane feat they’re trying, the whole time their buddies are ooing and ahhhing at how close that try was. Usually, there is a triumphant moment where the skater manages to pull it off and all the buddies scream and cheer or rush out to tackle the person down congratulating them. These videos just always seemed so fucking cool.
I’ll add a side note at this point that I am certainly not a skater nor a surfer. Maybe you thought the big reveal here was that I think these sports are cool because I do them and of course I am a cool guy and you’re a dweeb. Not quite though. Although, I cannot make that claim for climbing, which I do partake in. This is a sport I only really appreciated later in life. I didn’t grow up seeing any videos of climbing or watching documentaries about it. I started climbing because my college had a rock wall and I had a friend that worked there. It quickly became addicting and then I began to watch the videos and documentaries about it. When I did, I got this same sense that there’s just this coolness about it like surfing, skating, and snowboarding. The extremely obvious connection between all of these sports are that they are solo sports. The competition is between single individuals, not entire teams but I don’t think that is what makes them cool. If you haven’t connected the dots here I think these sports all celebrate, highlight and encourage failure. Failure is not only part of the sport, it is central to it. It is celebrated. No one is going to talk shit on you for messing up, because that is how you get better. Of course that is true of every single activity on the planet, but the sentiment is not always glorified as it is in these sports. All of these sports make the process of improvement a central point in all of them. And I think that is what makes them cool.
I am a bit nervous about posting this because I am not sure if people share this sentiment of these sports being undeniably cool - but it is something I have thought since I saw these sports. I can’t be the only one right?
I have thought about this idea for at least a few years, but I was inspired to finally write this out due to this post. Thanks dog.