A recent poll by the Pew Center’s Waste of Funds Project shows that Americans think this summer in sports “sucks less than most summers.” The people are right.

Summer sports quality is inversely proportional to the coverage of eating contests and kids screaming letters of the alphabet. The 2010 FIFA World Cup helped bring the highlights back to sports, as the Spanish La Roja beat the Dutch Oranje. Please note this does not mean the Spaniards made a drink mix.

One key product advertised during the World Cup broadcasts was the Castrol line of motor oils. Castrol got a lot of commercial airtime because many do not know they are BP. This brings us to my next point…

A Reuters.com report put BP’s cleanup efforts at $6 million per day. This is amazing, considering its major achievement is a plug.

To put this in perspective, a July 8, 2010, event raised $5.6 million. More than $5 million of this is providing children with education, life skills, and fitness at Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Observe:

What a difference a day makes, in two very different worlds!

A couple weeks ago, door-to-door collection people woke me up (I was working nights) to ask for oil leak relief money. Isn’t the Louisiana Do Not Call List supposed to account for things like that? Or is that just the list of guys who are in my phone?

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. Maybe soon we can make LeBron James (F, Miami) the CEO of BP. That way, the oil leak will finally get the analysis, blocking, and role players it needs.

Local sports have also been exciting, with WAFB sports anchor Jacques Doucet’s charity softball tournament raising well over $20,000.

Red Shtick Magazine was at the celebrity opener to get all the box scores and stats. This is a task I couldn’t do alone, so I teamed up with our publisher, Jeremy White.

Jeremy’s scorecard was complete, down to the mound-loogie. (My scorecard may or may not have been covered with ballplayer guys’ phone numbers.)

But at the end of the day, we got the important events, like we knew who was going to be singing the national anthem because she was the only person wearing cowboy boots. Also, game-show model Rachel Reynolds Dellucci ran to first on a hit and stayed there, despite the base coaches waving her on.

Lastly, we made retired Saints wide receiver Joe Horn pose for a picture with my cell phone. This is because I am a loser and still have a phone that “folds.”

We must remember that a stadium is like a family reunion. The stadium is a place for sports, but sports don’t show up without their weird cousin, fitness. To illustrate the concept of sports plus fitness, we’ll use Jeremy, who is still trapped in this column.

JEREMY: Can you let me out? I haven’t updated my Facebook in, like, half an hour…

ME: Hang on!

Jeremy is a real-life football official. Although he is not the biggest guy on the field, he has to be able to keep up with them. Hence the need for fitness. 

Jeremy utilizes a particular program known as CrossFit, in which participants lift cars and toss boulders as many times as they can within a minute, or until the exercise kills them. You know CrossFit is good because it is the only fitness program that requires a vomit bucket.

How do I know this? Recently, I cheered on Jeremy during a CrossFit competition, and it gave me an idea. The Intense Fitness Guys who hang around at CrossFit gyms are a great market! You know the guys I’m talking about — they have shaved heads, tattoos (often on the shaved heads), wear clothing with “flame” patterns, and like to watch MMA events. And most of all, they love to work out using the next most-insane trend.

For this reason, I am introducing my own line of gyms — Crossing Over Fit. At Crossing Over Fit, you know you’ll be ready for anything if the workout doesn’t kill you.

We don’t bother with buckets, because the building’s got a shark moat. Wondering where to find the bridge? At Crossing Over Fit, we believe that bridges never help you get fit … Nancy! So join and SIGN THE WAIVER today!