Throughout the past two months, without live sports to broadcast, the sports networks have been digging in their archives to show classic games. However, this past weekend, ESPN went beyond the usually classic sports format. The sports network aired some of the weirdest sports offerings you’ve ever seen.

As was stated on the ESPN website – “It’s a very strange time to be a sports fan, and it’s about to get even more unusual. ESPN 8: The Ocho will take over ESPN (the flagship network) on Saturday, featuring an 11-hour slate of seldom-seen sports.”

Well, they weren’t kidding. My wife and I tuned in just in time to catch the end of the 12th annual World Sign Spinning Championship in Las Vegas, held sometime last year. There have been 12 years of this competition, and this is the first I’ve heard of it? In case you were wondering, Matthew Doolan took home the coveted first place sign.

 “It was the first time that I actually showed up to a competition, and had as much fun as I could, and I did it,” Doolan said. “After nine different tries and being here 15 years, I finally won. Everybody said that I was gonna win, and this is the first year I went into it with no expectations and I did it. I really did it.”

He had some advice for the all the young aspiring sign spinners out there.

 “If there’s one thing I could give anybody and everybody within the sign spinning competitive community is, you can’t stop, you can’t give up,” Doolan said. “You can’t throw in the towel because you didn’t win the competition. You can’t be like, ‘okay, I’m never gonna win,’ because if I had done that, I wouldn’t be here right now. You can’t give up. You can’t throw away your dream, you can’t just throw away your goal. You can’t just cross that off you list and go ‘well, maybe I should make a new goal.’ That’s the goal I’ve had since I was 17 years old, when we had our first competition in 2007, and I did it. If you keep trying and you do it long enough, you’re going to achieve what you want to achieve.”

Doolan said going into the 2019 competition he thought it would be his last, but now that he won, he’s changed his mind.

 “I’m definitely going for it again,” he said. “Next year I’m going to be 30, I shouldn’t still be competition, but I’ve got to defend my title. How could I not? Plus, I think the title Mr. Back-To-Back suits me really well, and I have that confidence and I have that juice and energy in me to where I think I can push myself to do it again. It’s worth a shot.”

Some sage advice from a sign spinner.

The 2020 World Sign Spinning Championship was held in January, and Doolan did not repeat as champion. Kendric Washington was crowned the winner of the 13th annual event.

Another one of the events was Jelle’s Marble Runs, featuring Olympic type spoofs of marbles competing as athletes on several different tracks. Watching marbles compete on obstacle courses and dirt tracks, is quite entertaining, however, the deadpan delivery by the play-by-play announcer, made this even more fun to watch.

That was followed by lawnmower racing, and as the owner of a rider mower, I caught myself looking at my wife and asking, “I wonder how fast my mower can go?”

The mowers in these races ranged from the yard variety, stock mowers, that top out at about 5-7 miles per hour, to the souped-up racers that can reach up to 91 mph.

Next up, was the first ever slippery stairs competition from the Orange County Fairgrounds in California. A vinyl staircase was made slippery with buckets of lubricant. The object of the game was to get to the top of the stairs and ring the bell, by avoiding the other competitors, and without sliding back to the bottom. This one really made us laugh. It looked like something that might actually be a lot of fun to try.

The last weird sport of the evening was the Death Diving World Championship, from Norway, where it is known as “Dodsing.” This is not one that we have any interest in trying. Competitors jump from a 10-meter platform and remain rigid as long as possible before splashing into the water.

I really miss baseball, but thanks to ESPN for entertaining us for an evening, with what was a pleasant diversion from the norm.