Article:Rockstar Curling

I was listening to Prime Time Sports on the Fan 590 the other day when I heard a very interesting concept for a TV show. The show is tenetively entitled Rockstar Curling. The premise for the show is that curling talent scouts will go all over America performing open tryouts for a curling team. Two teams will be hand picked, a mens team and a womens team. Then the two teams will go in to an intense training program to condition for an Olympic tryout. If they make the tryout, then obviously they will train further for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. All you have to do to sign up for a tryout is go to their website and find the closest city they will be touring.

Now when I first heard this idea I was skeptical about the amount of interest there would be in American curling. I was surprised to here that curling has the 3rd highest ratings of any Winter Olympic sport, with only hockey and figure skating above it, in the USA. NBC has shown a lot of interest in this concept and they believe that it has the ability to be a hit.

Why curling you ask?

Well, curling is probably the only Olympic Event, that the average person could become a master at in under a year of vigorous training. It does not take the same level of physical ability as the other sports. Also, the Americans typically do not have that many world class teams that compete in the tryouts for Team USA. In fact there is a ten team tryout for both men and womens, and last year there were only seven teams that even signed up on the womens side. The creators of Rockstar Curling feel that they could have a legitimate chance at making the Olympics and representing the US.

Rockstar Curling has the ability to become an entertaining and captivating show, although as a Canadian I will obviously have mixed emotions watching these guys and girls train to take on the world.