It's called "the Brier".
And I don't get it. It's the Canadian men's curling championship.
Curling. It's where you slide a rock with a handle on it down an ice rink and try to land on a target. In curling parlance that rock is called a "rock".
Curling tends to be the domain of small-town white Canadians. A rink (oh, that's curling jargon for a "team") has just as good a chance if they come from Bootscrape Saskatchewan, population 432, as they do if they came from Toronto.
Historically curling was a keep-busy activity that was a perfect fit for the nine month winters typical in many Canadian small towns. The locals would gather at the curling rink and play a few ends (an "end" is curling jargon for a game) while imbibing vast quantities of beer and smoking lots of cigarettes.
That was the appeal of curling. You could play the game while having a smoke and a beer. A bit like golf in that respect.
You'd think that curling would be struggling in the modern age. It doesn't seem to attract a lot of new Canadians. Not too many Indo-Canadians or Somali-Canadians on the pro curling circuit.
In fact, it's hard to find a "pro" curling circuit. Not too many top-ranked curlers don't have to hold down a day job.
So you'd think there wouldn't be much of an audience for something this lame. You'd be wrong.
The Brier is the second most watched sports event in Canadian television, right next to the NHL playoffs.
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