Good morning Hank, its Tuesday. I greatly enjoyed your video about sports that ought to be included in the Olympics but there was one big problem with it which is that the Olympics only occur once every four years. And I, for one, am not willing to wait until 2020 to watch some live, televised HEADIS - the head-centric version of ping-pong.

HEADIS, Muggle Quidditch, The Settlers of Catan World Championships, human back flip racing, demolition derby soccer featuring an excavator serving as goalie! All these amazing sports share one commonality, Hank. Their brilliance goes largely untelevised.

I mean, Hank, If I cant watch one man wriggling beneath two other men while all three men are simultaneously jumping rope why do I even have cable? I mean here is an incomplete list of the 24 hour sports networks currently available in my area and yet somehow I've never been able to watch live, professional double mini trampolining. And that's just a travesty. 

So in the 2004 movie Dodgeball, the Dodgeball World Championships are broadcast on a fictional sports network called ESPN 8 The "Ocho". In real life of course, the Dodgeball World Championships are not televised at all and there is no ESPN 8 although, for the record, ESPN does own 8 cable networks.

But there is a subreddit called "The Ocho" where you can find highlights of lesser known sports from remote controlled truck racing to tug-of-oars, a sport that despite being born from a pun, is incredibly entertaining. Let me submit that The Ocho would be a wildly popular cable network/streaming service. It could be your TV home for everything from well established niche sports like the ones in the Olympics to, you know, competitive log rolling which requires amazing balance or foot billiards which, yes, exists and, yes, is awesome.

I just wanna highlight three more sports that I think would be awesome viewing on The Ocho. First, far leaping which is a very popular sport in the Dutch province of Friesland. Far leaping is essentially an exaggerated pole vault over a moat and it is terrifying and beautiful and I love it! Why is there no television program called Far Leaping Weekly?

Then there's cup-stacking, an exciting sport that's also very fast paced. Like, while I've been talking about it, you watched someone set the world record. We should be talking about the stars of cup-stacking every night on sports centre!

And lastly, ultimate frisbee. It's the best part of football plus the best parts of basketball and it happens to be the sport that I played in high school to get out of my physical education requirement. But I'm not gonna lie, I mostly want ultimate frisbee to receive more attention because dogs are pretty good at it which makes it the sport most likely to inspire the new Air Bud sequel our dark and broken world so desperately needs.

Hank, with our super abundance of sports media, you'd think there would be room for more than four or five sports but there isn't, at least not in the US. And that bothers me because sports with a cult following are loved deeply even when they aren't loved broadly, like anything with a cult following. The internet has been pretty good at building homes for communities like that, from primitive technology YouTube channels to bands that sing about Harry Potter. But for reasons I don't really understand, that hasn't happened with sports yet. If it ever does by the way, I suspect it will be known not as ESPN 8 The "Ocho" but instead as "YouTube Sports". I can't help but hope that maybe, someday, I'll find my true calling as the color commentator at the Far Leaping World Championships.

Hank, I'll see you on Friday.