Daily Dirt: The St. Louis Slide vs. the Chicago Drift? You read it here first, snowboard fans!

Daily Dirt for Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022

I really think there could be a place for professional snowboarding, and I would like to be in charge of public relations for the St. Louis Slide … Welcome to today’s three thoughts and Vol. 214 of The Daily Dirt.

1. Obviously, I have been watching a lot of Olympic coverage over the past week or so.

Therefore, I have come up with the following three ideas as the result:

• I think we need some sort of professional snowboarding league in the U.S., televised weekly during the winter months and featuring men, women and mixed competitions. Snowboarding has emerged as the most exciting part of the Olympics and I think weekly prime-time competition (say, every Tuesday night on ESPN?) would be boffo box office. Another concept tied to this would be having franchises, allowing league standings, etc. Tonight, live on ESPN: the St. Louis Slide vs. the Chicago Drift! Who’s with me on this?
• Move basketball to the Winter Olympics. Yes, I realize it might require shutting down the NBA for a month, but I think watching the U.S. vs. Russia for a gold medal in February sounds more exciting than the same matchup in the middle of the summer.
• Bowling should be added to the Olympics, preferably the Winter Olympics. If curling and that wacky biathlon can be Olympic sports, why not bowling? Think of the possibilities — men’s, women’s and mixed competitions on a number of platforms: singles, doubles and team.

2. Let’s see what’s happening on Facebook this week. Here are five of the favorite posts I found:

• “The scariest things on Earth: 6. The dark, 5. Clowns, 4. Sharks, 3. Serial killers, 2. Death … 1. Highway Patrol doing a U-turn.” (Can’t argue with this one bit.)
• “Do women ever sit back and think, ‘My man sure does know a lot, maybe I should just be quiet and listen to him.” (No way I’m touching this one …)
• “It turns out the answer to my problems was not at the bottom of that pint of ice cream. But the important thing is I tried.” (Excellent point.)
• “And just like that, 1982 was 40 years ago.” (No kidding!!)
• “You know when you buy a bag of salad and it gets all brown and soggy? Cookies don’t do that.” (Another excellent, excellent point.)

3. If you question why Super Bowl commercials this year cost as much as $7 million per 30-second ad, or wonder why the network televising the game each year never has a problem selling all of its advertising space, consider these numbers:

• This year’s game attracted an average of 112.3 million viewers, who watched the Rams edge the Bengals 23-20. The NFL average for a regular-season game this year was 17.1 million.
• The Super Bowl record for viewers, according to the Nielsen ratings, was 114 million in 2015 when the Patriots defeated the Seahawks 28-24.
• Last year’s Super Bowl, which saw the Buccaneers down the Chiefs 31-9, drew 96.4 million, which was a 14-year low.

Steve Thought O’ The Day — Back to those Facebook posts for a second. Never in my life have I bought a bag of salad, soggy or otherwise.

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. Don’t ever tell him the Urban Dictionary meaning of “Tossed Salad”.