A new "sport"

I saw something recently that really made me laugh. I saw a video of college students playing Quiddatch. yes, the same Quiddatch that is played on broomsticks in the Harry Potter series created by J.K. Rowling. Oh, with one minor exception: they were not flying through the air; they were running on the ground. Holding broomsticks between their legs. It was ludicrous. Now, of course they can't fly through the air, because of that sometimes unfortunate force called gravity. So why play Quiddatch, then? Why stick a broomstick awkwardly in your crotch? Play rugby or dodgeball. Because that's exactly what this was. A cross between rugby and dodgeball. With broomsticks that serve no purpose except to make their riders look like the characters from Harry Potter and enable them to swat away balls thrown at them. But these people didn't look like Harry Potter characters. They looked like a bunch of idiots dressed in wizard hats, running around like mad. And it gets worse. There's a player called a "snitch." The snitch runs around with a sock hanging from the rear of his waist which contains a small ball, to represent the "snitch" in the popular book series. Are you kidding me? So, basically, you've got a bunch of twenty-year-old geek extraordinaires running around with wooden sticks thrust between their legs, pushing each other over and throwing dodgeballs at each other, all the while trying to throw a soccer ball through a hoop and grab a ball dangling from somebody's ass. Sound like fun? Go for it. My alma mater, Boston University, played valiantly at the Intercollegiate Quiddatch World Cup, or so I'm told from the article I read. I couldn't really tell who was on which team from the video, because it looked like a bunch of overgrown wizard wannabes prodding one another with large wooden phalli. I can't tell you how proud this makes me of my school. A large young man dressed as the rugged Hagred put it best when he said, "I love Harry Potter. I really do. I love being Hagred. But grown-ass people playing Quiddatch is the most foolish thing I've ever seen." These Quiddatch players take their "sport" seriously, too. I even heard the word "strategy" mentioned by a girl wearing safety goggles, to her team of Quiddatchians in their tent. The only good thing about this bastardized, real-life form of Quiddatch is that you get to hit people with your body and with dodgeballs. So I say, dispense with the godawful broomsticks--which are more apt to render someone blind or sterile than add any kind of enjoyment whatsoever to the game--and the hanging "snitch"--I'm not even gonna go there--and call it "Dugby" or "Rodgeball"--a dodgeball-rugby hybrid. I think it'll create a nice bond between the Germans and the Scottish, the inventors of each sport (I think, but perhaps that fact just isn't true at all). I think you need to do some serious self-reflection if you're in college and you're still running around pretending you can fly like the wizard children in the fantasy books you read. I'm all for imagination, believe me--but Quiddatch? And I thought "handball" was bad when I watched it on the Olympics. Just wait until Quiddatch is part of the games. Then you'll see some really proud geeks. Broomsticks, away!