Cherry-pit spitting and marble races? ESPN is airing obscure sports amid coronavirus
Normally, a lot of us would be watching March Madness and furiously watching our brackets bust.
But these aren’t normal times.
Major sporting events have ground to a halt, with the NCAA, MLB, NBA, NHL, NASCAR and other leagues canceling or suspending contests. There’s only so much to say about Tom Brady leaving New England.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed daily lives in ways many couldn’t have imagined just a couple of weeks ago. What’s a sports-loving person who’s socially distancing supposed to watch on TV?
Enter ESPN8: The Ocho.
ESPN announced Thursday that it’s bringing back the TV programming inspired by the movie “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.”
That means hours and hours of obscure sports you probably haven’t heard of and definitely wouldn’t watch under typical circumstances. Sports such as cherry pit spitting, marble racing, death diving and sign spinning.
“No, it’s not the eighth of August, or the eighth of anything or even August at all,” ESPN said in a news release. “That is the magic ESPN8: The Ocho. There is always a place for a full 24-hours of seldom seen sports.”
Here are a few examples from the lineup of sports airing all day Sunday on ESPN2.
• Cherry pit spitting: The 46th annual Cherry Pit-Spitting Competition held last year in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
• Sign spinning: The 12th annual World Sign Spinning Championship, which brought together top talent from 50 cities and a dozen countries last year in Las Vegas.
• Marble races: Jelle’s Marble Runs has races for marbles on rugged sandy courses and smooth, winding tracks such as Formula 1.
• Death diving: The 2019 Death Diving World Championship featured amateur divers flying from a 10-meter platform into a swimming pool. It’s nothing like the Olympics.
This story was originally published March 19, 2020 at 4:23 PM.