The Sport Thread

I know, but it's not really related to the broadcasting of it, is it? Admittedly I'm pretty touchy about this because it's hard enough being a fan in this country without having to bat away the same old comments, but I just thought we could not do that here

I suppose you could argue that packaging the sport differently could make the game more interesting to your casual viewer.

the FA Cup draw gets a 7pm slot on BBC Two this evening: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06mvy6k

It's no longer getting a BT Sport simulcast due to the lack of nightly sports news programme.

It's not a sport.

Although it cost the BBC peanuts for the rights it does bug me that this weekend they've been showing NFL when the British Gymnastics teams qualification events for Rio hasn't even been aired online.

It is a sport - you might not like it, you might think the BBC should show other sports instead, but saying it isn't a sport won't help your argument. It's not WWE.

One is full of scripted and pre-planned moves in ridiculous outfits. The other is WWE.

You may want to check the difference between the definitions of 'script' and 'tactics'.

I actually laughed that was pretty funny.

But yeah, saying it's not a sport when it came out of the same roots as football and rugby is asinine.

PS: People say it's not football because you use your hands, forgetting that the full title of rugby is "Rugby Football".

There's Canadian football too.

Indeed, but isn't that just a silly modification of the rules?

A bit like Rugby League

Less of a difference even. Three downs instead of four, an extra player on the field, and a much larger playing field (with the goalposts on the goal line) are the main differences. The rest of the game is recognisably American football, though the changes do mean "big plays" are more important.

I don't know why it has to be one or the other. They're showing live coverage from the World Gymnastics Championships for five days, on four of those days in primetime. They presumably think that is the acceptable quality and quantity of gymnastics to show. Even online you can argue it's diluting the coverage, better to do very good coverage of one event than half-arsed coverage of two. I know it's public service and all that, but it's not a charity and if they don't think it's worth covering, they won't.

If it was that important another channel would have picked it up, surely? But they haven't.

The Events earlier in the week were Qualification contests for the World Finals which are now being shown. I can't recall that stage, outside of an Olympics, ever being shown before, yes these worlds are in Scotland, but some proportion as to what the event is would be handy. This stage of the four year cycle so happening coincidentally with Rio qualification.