The Sports Networks?

All of them are guilty. Not one of them is exempt. They call themselves sports networks, yet they continually show poker. It is bad enough that they show professional wrestling, which is anything but sport.

Tell me, what conditioning do poker players have to go through to be top competitors? None. Oh, I’m sure that some of them will tell how they work out and eat a special diet to stay sharp, but it is a game of chance. I would rather watch a game of Trivial Pursuit than watch people I don’t know do something I have no control over.

Seriously, I could get a bunch of friends over, have them dress up as different characters, videotape the game and sell it. It might even be better if I scripted it like WWE wrestling. Why would I do that? So the most popular player would win most of the time, thus increasing the television ratings. How can we be sure that this isn’t happening already?

There are several good reasons I consider television poker a waste of time.

The first is that you can get your poker fix anytime you want on the Internet.

Next, poker is gambling. Many people are getting hooked on it and the result is that lives and families are being ruined.

But the best reason of all is that we are becoming a sedentary nation. Why? One reason is our glorification of activities that don’t require any sweat.

Remember the Olympics just a month ago? Many of us were glued to our television sets watching athletes compete for glory. Do you think that they hibernate for the next four years and emerge again for the next Olympics? No, there are competitions everywhere for them. If the competitions aren’t televised already, then the sports networks could do so.

I think it is time for the Canadian Radio and Television Commission to look at what sports networks are offering the public. Are they encouraging Canadians to get out of their armchairs and become fitter or are they doing the opposite? By the amount of poker I see, I think it is the latter.