Aside from being great places to watch sports, drink beer, hide from spouses, kids, and other mundane responsibilities, then eventually, at the last possible moment, call an Uber to go home, sports bars are great places to become unreasonably competitive while flaunting unique skillsets like dart throwing, skeeball rolling, table shuffleboard puck sliding, and loud, violent Golden Tee trackball spinning.
The same can be said for local fraternities. Still, eventually, one is deemed too old and creepy, “out of place,” repeatedly kicked out, eventually denied entry, and ultimately banned from campus entirely.
Several yellowed, cracked, and ancient documents buried deep within the bowels of The National Archives and Records Administration confirm the progenitor of all sports bars opened in Long Beach, California in 1979, the brainchild of former L.A. Rams offensive lineman Dennis Harrah and a teeny tiny little nine-year-old Snoop Dog. Originally called “Real Sticky Icky,” Harrah leveraged his 51% stake (Snoop only scanned the partnership agreement, reading his 49% ownership as “499%” thanks to copious amounts of marijuana smoke clouding his vision) to select the more appropriate, sports-related name of “Legends,” thereby saving the sports bar genre from obscurity and securing the world a future filled with 1,279 Buffalo Wild Wings locations and, more regionally specific, one McGillacuddy’s Sports Bar & Grill, and one Sluggers next to T-Mobile Park.
Legends Sports Bar created an environment where patrons could enjoy various sports broadcasts while surrounded by one of the largest private collections of sports memorabilia – from autographed baseballs by the likes of Ted Williams to Mohamed Ali’s signed gloves – allowing them to temporarily forget their various, crushing responsibilities, including constantly guessing what their significant other is actually saying, looking busy at work, keeping up with various Joneses, and maintaining the new sports car purchased to offset the lameness of the sensible mini-van.
Of course, the sports bar genre has evolved quite a bit since then. Which you know, as you’re likely sitting at one right now, possibly having a lunch featuring wings and curly fries, watching your phone repeatedly glow and vibrate as you ignore call after frantic call from your project manager who’s wondering where the deliverable is. It’s fine. Just tell them, “Relax, it takes as long as it takes,” then invite them over for a wing and a beer. Well, maybe a Diet Coke. You are at work.
Modern sports bars run the gamut of experiences, from super fancy to super smutty to super gimmicky to super divvy and everything in between. But what makes a sports bar great is not the availability of wagyu beef burgers, Hooters Girls, bartenders in referee jerseys, or cracked leather stools and dirty bathrooms, respectively. No, it’s the ready availability of those mindless games that provide a stage for we humans to demonstrate mastery – i.e., our confidence, capability, and overall talent – to successfully win a mate (or keep the mate we have), regardless of everyone’s gender identity or sexual orientation.
This, for example, is accomplished by throwing a 6 by 6-inch, double-seamed fabric bag filled with 16 ounces of corn kernels through a 6-inch hole centered 9 inches from the top of a raised, 2-foot by 4-foot, angled wooden platform, approximately 33-feet away, a.k.a. the unfortunately, but originally-it-made-sense named field/bar/lawn game, “Cornhole.”
Cornhole is a courtship ritual, a mating call, a display of ability and thus virility, designed to spawn hundreds of offspring successfully and simultaneously suggest a willingness to take care of them unless something more interesting pops up, like an invitation from some friends to go to a sports bar and play more games, which obviously continues this cycle of life and (thankfully) propagates our species.
Obviously, cornhole isn’t the only cool, procreation-inspiring sports bar game available to the American and European public. In fact, there are lots of awesome games worth getting really good at to show overall mental and physical prowess and thereby claim a coupling partner (or further impress an existing one, especially from some long crazy relationship like marriage where it just goes on and on and on, and they’re so used to constant bodily noises and the preference for walking around in threadbare underwear that it’s hard to remind them that, underneath the slovenliness, a real avant-garde, charming, sophisticated, risk-handling, cool, nonchalant but still caring and able-to-make-babies-type person exists. Like Maverick from Top Gun).
In fact, extensive, slightly buzzed research shows the following sports bar games (in addition to the ones previously listed) are cool and lead to widespread, frenetic copulating, thereby increasing regional birth rates by as much as 44.5% per 1,000 inhabitants of places with sports bars:
- Duffleboard (table-top mix between shuffleboard and mini-golf)
- Mini golf (a.k.a. Putt Putt)
- Pinball (enough said, it’s ‘cause of “The Who”)
- Pool (nothing displays slick, overconfident smugness and subsequent baby-making ability like winning at pool)
- Ping Pong, as well as Foosball (speaking to the latter, no other bar sport provides for such absolute, merciless, public humiliation of opponents)
- Axe Throwing (which is an ill-advised, but increasingly popular activity nowadays)
Of course, there are some dud sports bar games. Nothing discourages rampant, passionate sex more than:
- Karaoke
- Checkers
- Dance Dance Revolution
- Chess
- Big Ol’ Coin-Op Arcade Games (excluding Golden Tee)
- “How Many Free Drinks Can We Get from The Losers Watching Sports” (played exclusively by girls)
In fact, studies reveal these dud games decrease birth rates within the continental United States by 79%. The only thing more effective at shutting down human procreative biology is hanging out with friends who just had a baby due to screaming, crying, and pooping. By the baby.
So there you have it. Go flaunt your stuff at the local sports bar and get with the getting on of gaming. It’s an important part of our natural world, an important mating ritual, not unlike male peacocks unfolding their glorious feathers or female praying mantises using pheromones to lure in the dopey guy mantises, then biting off their heads and eating them. Which, come to think of it, sounds a lot like the “Free Drinks” game.
Either way, get on out there. Our species is counting on you.
