The American Bobsled Association (ABA) is into its fifteenth week of lockout, and still nothing has happened to try and bring back the sport. Seriously. Nothing has happened.
Fans have been lined up outside the ABA headquarters in Alaska for twenty-two days now with at least three or four protesters outside the luge parking lot. When asked about the lockout, Allen Harper replied “I wish they’d start playing games again so that I could have some background noise when I’m working around the house.”
Others have even less interest in the sport. “I honestly don’t even know what this is about. I thought we were protesting our cable bills so I was like ‘why not?’” said veteran protestor Kalle Lasn. “I haven’t been to a good protest in a while so it’s good to get back into the swing of things.”
We went to AMA itself to see just what was taking them so long to start. Robert Grand, President of the ABA replied “Frankly, a lot of us are busy right now.” The other forty or so members agreed with Grand, citing that some had a lot of laundry to catch up on, or that they’ve been meaning to watch the new season of The Walking Dead.
Throughout February most members were busy preparing Superbowl and Grammy parties. “Now that those are done with, I can personally give you my word that we will, probably, do something about that lockout sometime next week,” replied Grand.
It was difficult to find the athletes because while on a typical day the superstars might be busy practicing for a big match, or posing for local newspapers or the back of store brand cereal boxes, they were nowhere to be found. After an hour they were all located in the locker room/lounge playing FIFA.
None of them were very helpful either.
When asked if he was upset that he couldn’t play right now, superstar Dristin Frasserogger replied “Not really, Freese and I have been stuck in this soccer match for a couple days and Feweff called winner, so we can’t return to bobsledding until that’s over.” Fellow superstars Freese and Feweff agreed with him then proceeded to kick me out because I was interrupting their “training.”
Grand concluded his interview saying, “Money’s pretty important…and…yeah injuries are bad in the league, so we’d like to stop those. The biggest problem though the logo. The owners want to add a blue tinge to the logo next to the bobsled, but the players won’t stand for it….yeah I don’t see this ending anytime soon.”
Chris Thomas is a freshman TVR major who’s watching Cool Runnings until the association starts up again. Email him at cthomas5[at]ithaca[dot]edu