Chairmen Of The Bored

It's feast time for TV sports gluttons: The baseball playoffs are under way, the NFL is going full tilt, the NHL season's about to begin, the NBA preseason is on its way. Yet despite all the prime (time) cuts on the TV buffet table, our appetite for athletics remains unslaked. Not long ago those turned off by the greed and grim solemnity of pro sports could turn to extreme sports like snowboarding and speed climbing. But now, many of the extremists, propped up by huge sponsorship contracts, are just as dollar-driven and take themselves just as seriously. That's why we're heartened to hear of the extremely extreme sports, in which competitors compete for the sheer fun of it, and the game itself is insignificant, irrelevant and still a glorious lark.

Among these mildly sardonic showdowns are the Great Bathtub Race in Nome, the World Championship Rotary Tiller Races in Emerson, Ark, and England's World Black-Pudding Tossing Championship, in which combatants try to dislodge 21 Yorkshire puddings by pelting them with congealed pigs' blood. Demanding events, to be sure, and none muddled by salary disputes or anabolic steroids.

Last month 80 competitors from 10 nations went to Germany for the first world championship of Extreme Ironing, a hot new board sport that combines the adrenaline buzz of surfing with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt. Challenged to let off steam in perilous settings—from mountain peaks to rapids—contestants were judged on the difficulty of their athletic undertaking and the quality of the creases in their clothing. The victorious British squad pressed ahead by steering an inner tube through white water while warbling God Save the Queen. When was the last time you heard an NFL quarterback whistle while he worked?

Blub blub is the plaintive sound of mountain bike bog-snorkeling, a murky pastime whose world championships are played out each summer in the vowel-deprived Welsh hamlet of Llanwrtyd Wells. The rules are so clear even Bud Selig could follow them: Don snorkel, mount cycle, pedal into six-foot-deep peat bog, turn at white pole, return to starting line. The tires of the bog bike are filled with water; the frame is filled with lead shot. Bog-bikers are so passionate for peat that this year's champ, Gerry Martin of Dublin, went snorkel-less, coming up every 17 seconds for air.

Competitors at England's Cooper Hill Cheese Rolling championship, in which the aim is to catch up with an eight-pound cheese wheel plummeting down a 45-degree slope, are especially upbeat. That two cheese chasers were hospitalized and 13 others treated by paramedics at this year's event has done nothing to dim enthusiasm for next year's. As one well-ripened vet has said, "If you can't get completely blotto and hurl yourself down a hill in pursuit of a Double Gloucester, what's the point of living?"

It's not too late to get off your couch and into the fun, sports spuds. You can head to next month's Punkin Chunkin World Championships in Lewes, Del., where pumpkins will be heaved over a soybean field by contraptions made out of everything from tree trunks to giant rubber bands. Two years ago an air-cannon squad squashed the competition with a shot of 4,085 feet after a team that had chucked even farther was disqualified for having used helium to propel their pumpkin. In extremely extreme sports, that's about as close to controversy as you get.