XFL – take note! – THIS could be your ticket back in…

 

Above: Ralph Lauren, inventor of Polo, Water Polo and Cool Water Polo, disappointed he didn't think to include an alternate pachyderm insignia design on his iconic pull-overs...

 

Yesterday, my colleague SpiralFlag wrote an article in which he enlightened us to a sport he stumbled upon called “Octopush.”

I took this to heart and told myself, “Self, you should make more of an effort to talk about sports most people don’t care about.” With that objective in the forefront of my mind, I traversed the bowels of the internet (more colloquially known as “Google News”). Nothing interesting on tennis. Already did boxing yesterday. Golf’s media gold now with Tiger Woods plowing everything except the snow on my sidewalk.

And then I stubbed my proverbial big toe on something so remarkable I wish Jodie Foster discovered this for me so she could wish that a lyrical wordsmith could have discovered it for her: POLO WITH ELEPHANTS.

[[Editors note: yes, you read that right.]]

How the hell do you play this, you ask? It’s polo, except with elephants. How do you play polo? Like everyone on the planet, I haven’t the foggiest, but here’s what I can tell you:

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

 

The game is played on a field (or “pitch”, as it’s quaintly called in the rest of the world) roughly the same size as football field. Everyone gets four players, (though this rule is not strictly adhered to; a cursory look at the teams listed with the World Elephant Polo Association has team Queen Victoria’s Own with five players, the British Ghurkas have ten, and National Parks is just a lone dude named Ram Pritt… he’s the team captain). This isn’t even the strangest thing about the sport. What is strange is that elephant polo has been around for over two decades and I’ve only just found out about it.

You may even be surprised to learn that there’s a US team: New York Blue. You may even be more surprised to learn that said New York team won the silver trophy in last year’s world championship.

Of course, it’s not a perfect game like baseball or hot dog eating, for example.

It’s still a game Prince Charles picks up women at, and (presumably because the pachyderms will go pachy-apeshit) games are limited to twenty minutes. On the other hand, it has elephants, and—and—the rules have no restrictions on the weight or height of said elephants. I applaud these fine folks for taking initiative in making a dull high-society sport into something less equestrian and more elephantine. I bet you anything ESPN would cover a wider variety of sports if—fucking, I don’t know—soccer teams were allowed to have a tiger or two on the field pitch per team. I guarantee ratings and a menagerie of complaints from PETA (and if you don’t think being on PETA’s hit list will improve your career, think again).

Put your hand down.

For more information on this sport, check out the World Elephant Polo Association web site or visit your local library…’s internet-enabled computer.