The Norman Scale by Frank Povah

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Mind-Numbing Sports

The Norman Scale

by Frank Povah | 2, Add your Comment | Sep 18, 2012

In a comment on one of my pieces, a reader opined that he or she suspected I may not be a fan of American Football. That reader was right, and I suppose I could have just admitted the fact and left it at that. But I didn’t, it’s not in me, and I’ve had to get off my bike and say so even at the risk of tarring and feathering and possible loss of my Green Card the application for which asked me if I was intending to overthrow the Government of the United States. If Mitt the Oxymormon gets to see this, I’m buggered.

Greg Norman at the 2008 Open Championships,
Royal Birkdale Golf Club (Steven Newton)

No, H-town, I am not a fan of American football. It is as slow as golf but made just a shade less boring by the make up tastes and hair styles of the ra ra girls and the fact that the referees feel obligated to explain their decisions to the crowd. I hasten to add that I find soccer laughable – nor am I a devotee of Rugby League or its cousin Rugby Union, aka cross-country bum-sniffing. No, it’s Aussie Rules first, last and right up the comic cuts.

I am presently working on a graduated scale by which to rate sports. Based on the metric Helen Scale, more of which later, it compares the sport being graded to golf and for this reason is to be named the Norman Scale, the Australian Greg Norman being among the most unremittingly boring exponents of one of the most mind-numbing sports on earth. Being based on golf, it is arse about and would operate thus:

One round of the US, British or Australian opens is 1 Norman (N); A college football match would be 1 centinorman (cN) or one tenth as boring; pro football 5 millinormans (mN). A “Highlights of the US Open” reel would be 1 kilonorman (kN); ”Highlights from St Andrews” 1 meganorman (MN) and “The Shark: The Public Philanthropy of Greg Norman” would rate 1 giganorman (GN). The World Cup of Soccer would be around 60N, slightly less if it featured an Australian women’s team with a Muslim goalie.

The inspiration came from the Povah/Robinson Helen Scale of Beauty, conceived by these intellectual giants when they were still in their early teens. It was based on the assertion that Helen of Troy’s face launched a thousand ships, therefore a face that would launch one ship was rated at 1 millihelen (mH). Tony rated my sister Kerry – who was, and is, beautiful but my sister – at 5H, I gave her 5mH.

Blame H-town: he (or she) asked me.

###

Frank Povah

Arriving in the USA in late 2008, Frank Povah moved to Stamping Ground, Kentucky in mid 2009. Passionate about the written and spoken word and constantly bewildered by non-verbs and neo-nouns, Frank trained as a typesetter - though he has worked at many things - and later branched out into proofreading, writing and editing. For many years he has been copy editor, consultant and columnist with a prestigious Australian quarterly along with running his own editorial and typesetting business. His other interests are many and include traditional music, especially that of the south, folklore, natural history, and pigeons.

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H-town

Cross-country bum-sniffing, eh!?!?!?! Is there a Comcast channel covering this sport? Perhaps a crosscountrybumsniffing.com website, at the very least? The real question, though, is does cross-country bum-sniffing.have its own version of Tim Tebow?
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