Good, Clean, Violence – The Good People Of Australia Have Taken The Oklahoma Drill And Made A Whole Sport Out Of It Called, 'Runnation'

Personally, as a man, it's a no for me. God did not bless me with whatever gene it is that makes people crave violent physical contact. I've never gotten drunk and wanted to wrestle. I've never felt the urge to prove to anyone (not even a raucous crowd of Australian meatheads) that I am the biggest bad ass in the room. I guess that's probably because I've never been anywhere close to the biggest bad ass in the room. But regardless, I will not be joining any adult recreational Runnation leagues in the near or distant future. 

Although I would love attend one as a fan. Honestly, an adult recreational Runnation league in central Ohio might be even more of a spectacle than this "professional" Australian one. Everybody in this professional league seems built for it. They all seem like roughly the same person. I bet they all have a healthy respect for each other. But if you opened this sport up to the public for a bunch of amateurs, the potential for chaos would be off the charts. The whole thing is liable to turn into one fist fight between all the competitors. That's something I'd pay to watch. 

Anyways, I love a good contact sport, but my favorite things about contact sports typically involve the avoidance of contact.

The big hits are pretty fucking awesome too. But it's the player's ability to avoid contact that makes the times when contact is made so special. When you build the whole sport out of contact, it loses its luster a bit. Football stunk out loud before they opened up the game. It was so boring (and dangerous), that the President of the United States had to step in. Teddy Roosevelt got so fed up watching three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-broken-clavicles that he invented the forward pass (kind of). It saved the game of football.

I've got nothing against watching big jacked Australians run full speed at each other and knocking 5-10 years off their life. If I ever find myself in Sydney at the time of a Runnation event, and somebody happens to offer me free tickets, and I don't have any plans that night, and the event is within walking distance of my hotel, I'd surely attend. But I feel like the sport needs just one more element. It might behoove Runnation to give their competitors an option to throw in a juke. Not every time. But maybe at the start of each match, all the competitors draw numbers out of a hat, and one of them awarded a secret juke. At the start of every run, you have no idea if the angry screaming man sprinting at your face might step aside and send you flying out the side of the building reverse Kool-Aid Man style. 

Or go barreling directly into the face of whoever filmed this.

Good stuff though, Australia. I like where their heads are at. Runnation to football (or rugby) is kinda like Power Slap is to the UFC. They take one of the best parts of their sport (full speed head-on collisions… or getting clocked in the face) and make an entire new sport out of it. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they don't need another element for the sport to have legs. Maybe it's only a matter of time before Dana White buys Runnation for millions of dollars and turns it into the sport of the future. I bet Dana's already kicking himself that he didn't think of it first.