Moonbear said:
Well, if ESPN can call poker a sport, I guess Scrabble and Battleship can count as sports too. Yes, I think the word "sport" is over-used and televised sports are especially over-rated!
ESPN is over rated as a judge of sports. I've yet to see a televised Crud match and that has to be one of the most entertaining sports around.
*For the uninitiated, Crud is a sport that was designed by two 6-year-olds left unattended at a pool table. You play with two balls: a target (usually the 8-ball) and a cue ball. You roll the cue ball at the target ball with your hand. If you knock the target ball into one of the pockets, you win a point. If you don't your opponent must grab the cue ball and shoot at the now moving target ball before the target has stopped rolling. If the player misses the target ball with the cue ball, he/she gets more chances to shoot as long as the target is still rolling. If the target comes to rest before the player hits it, their opponent gets a point. If the cue ball knocks the target into a pocket, the shooter gets a point. The last player to hit the target ball before it falls into a pocket gets credit for knocking the target into the pocket (in other words, a very quick player can steal his opponents point with a quick shot before the target actually drops into the pocket). If either the cue ball or the target ball fly off the table, the opponent of the player that knocked the balls off the table gets a point.
Of course, 7-year-olds had to come along and complicate the game. The shooter can only shoot at the target when they're between the two pockets at the narrow ends of the table. The minimum portion of a shooter's body that has to be in the shooting area for a legal shot can vary. At a minimum, the cue ball has to start from the end of the table - most require at least a foot to be in the legal shooting area - some require the entire body to be within the shooting area. An opponent can block a shooter from reaching either the cue ball or from reaching the legal shooting area. The amount of contact allowed is highly variable. At a minimum, the defender can remain stationary, forcing the shooter to go around them - in all-out full-contact games, the defender can knock the shooter into the second row of tables (knocking them through a plate glass window or into the third row is a penalty for uneccesary roughness).
Full-contact, team Crud is the most entertaining. Each team has anywhere from 2 to 64 players. It's best if there's only two teams, but it's not a strict requirement. Each player is assigned a nickname and has to go in their assigned order or the opponents get a point. When a player's turn to shoot comes up, they must quickly set down their beer, try to retrieve the cue ball, and shoot before the target ball comes to rest. A shooter then becomes the defender for his team (this usually gives the defense a distinct advantage in full contact Crud, hence the use of nicknames - the defender, unable to remember his oppenents' nicknames, will be unsure from which direction the next shooter will enter the area from). In team Crud, instead of accumulating points, each individual player is usually penalized a point each time his opponent scores (elimination method of scoring). After being penalized 3 points, a player is out of the game. This allows a team falling behind to dump their weakest players and make a dramatic comeback. The last team still having a player or players remaining wins the match.
No helmets are allowed, but it is recommended that players wear old clothes (the corners of the tables tend to catch and rip clothing right off the players). The game definitely requires a referee - running into the referee results in a point for the other team (or a penalty point for the player running into the referee if using the elimination method of scoring).
