Fictional future sports

With a new football season on the brink, it makes this speculative fiction writer ponder the various sports ideas imagined for future worlds.

The wildest idea that I've read recently is Centrifugal Bumble-puppy in Huxley's Brave New World. The game is described as: "A ball thrown up as to land on a platform at the top of a tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught." Sounds like a mix of batting cages combined with a carnival game.

Huxley also has more sporting fun in the form of obstacle golf. These ideas of his were quite amusing...and they differ quite a bit from my take on sports of the future.

In my book, Darwin's Orphans, I reflect on the future of sports here and there...but more from various practical perspectives. Over recent decades, one interesting aspect that's been changing rapidly is television coverage. In football, for example, there were no cameras draped over the field roughly a decade ago, nor was there a yellow line superimposed on the screen indicating the first down marker. I also explore the television coverage of the Olympics in my book...there have been huge strides in coverage over the past few decades. There is likely to be much more in coming decades as well with such a broad spectrum of sports.

With regards to football itself, I muse on the likelihood of another great quarterback coming from the cradle of great professional quarterbacks: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rather dry stuff but still interesting to some enthusiasts. By comparison, Huxley reminds one that a speculative fiction writer can have lots more fun with the less practical aspects. Centrifugal Bumble-puppy sounds like a hoot...I wonder what the television coverage would be like?