The Lunatic Fringe

True Story:

When I was looking for a job five years ago, I got an interview with a pretty big company (if you play video games, you know them) as a writer.  Turns out many of them were big sports fans.  Big.  We did our interviews in a place that was a sports shrine, filled with all sorts of sports and autographed memorabilia.  It was great.

The first interviewer came in, and between serious questions, we got off topic talking sports.  He confessed to me he wasn’t a big hockey fan.  He couldn’t understand the game.  That’s why he always turned off rule enforcement when playing hockey video games.   Icing came up.  So I explained it, along with offsides.

Apparently, that was a popular question.  Somehow, the next guy who came in asked me about it as well.  The third interview led off with the question.

It still didn’t get me the job.

But the longstanding frustration with hockey, and why it is far-and-away the fourth of the four professional sports, has been with the difficulty in people understanding it.  It’s made some big gains the last few years.

But seriously, a trapezoid?  Sports is filled with simple shapes.  Squares.  Rectangles.  Circles.  Right angles.  Maybe an oblong in football.  But trapezoids?  I can’t think of anywhere else other than international basketball you find them.  And even there, it feels wrong.