Overcoming The Monster
Rags To Riches
The Quest
Voyage and Return
Comedy
Tragedy
Rebirth
That's it. Sure, within these seven basic plots there are infinite and myriad twists and turns, plot variations, and characterizations. You can even mash them up, but in the end it's still a Rags to Riches story that's comedic, or a Quest with tragedy along the way. But we enjoy those variations... that's why we read the books and see the movies.
Team sports are the same. Except there are only three basic games in sports:
Score a Goal
Ha! You Missed
Round the Bases
Score a Goal: This category encompasses most sports. Football, soccer, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, polo, water polo, rugby. They all take place on a rectangular playing field (indoors or out) with a goal at either end. The surfaces may be different but the object is the same... to get your ball or puck or whatever into your opponent's goal. It's pretty simple. The goal may be defended by a specific player or not but it is always defended by the entire team, who play defensively to stop their opponent from scoring. Pretty simple.
Ha! You Missed: These sports are played with a racquet, which is used to hit an implement like a ball or a shuttlecock over a net or against a wall. Sometimes the racquet is an actual racquet, sometimes it's the player's hands or arms. Players score points by making their opponents miss a shot or hit the ball out of bounds. These sports include tennis, ping pong, badminton, squash, racquetball, handball, volleyball. We often don't think of most of these as team sports, but volleyball definitely is, and you can play doubles in most of the others, so I think that counts.
Round the Bases: Baseball, softball, cricket... hit a ball with a bat and run the bases. You get it.
There are lots of other sports that don't seem to fall within these parameters, but they do. Curling, shuffleboard, lawn bowling and bocce are all the same game, and all of them variations of Score a Goal. Even golf... everybody's going to get their ball in the goal 18 times, you defend against your opponents by doing it in fewer strokes.
So all that said, why is World Cup not for me?
Because soccer is boring.
There, I said it.
Look, I know these guys are great athletes, with incredible stamina and strength, and I respect their ball handling skill and athleticism. But frankly, the only time soccer is exciting is when a team is near the goal, close to scoring. Add all that time up and it's about 5 minutes per match. Watching these guys run the ball up and down the field for the other 85 minutes is simplyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Sorry, I nodded off just thinking about it.
So what's the point? The point is that if I'm going to invest more than an hour watching a sporting event where only 3 or 4 points are scored for the entire game, I'll watch hockey or basketball. They're the same damn game, but with tons more action and excitement.
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