Stephen A. Smith Collapses to Floor in Disgust at Mad Dog Russo's Claim That Curling is Hard

Wednesday was Mad Dog day over on the First Take set and they had a fresh new angle for the radio host to take. As they do weekly, Chris Russo was asked to list a top-five. During the football season these were usually top-five NFL team rankings but that's over and done with and the NBA is a month and a half out from being interesting. So, instead, the production crew asked Russo to list his top-five hardest sports to play after tennis player Frances Tiafoe made the case that tennis was, in fact, the hardest sport to play.

With Stephen A. Smith lurking on the peripherary and ready to fire off opinions, Mad Dog put football as his fifth-hardest sport to play. Not very controversial, although most would probably have it a few ticks higher because it is definitely one of the most physically taxing sports in the world. Then Russo listed curling. Which was... unexpected. And caused Smith to collapse in disgust and disbelief and lay there while Molly Qerim questioned the choice. The swooning takes place at the 1:37 mark.

While Stephen A.'s theatrics are often entertaining and worthy of discussion on their own this is actually quite an interesting topic for losers like me who think anything is worth debating. Curling is not very hard to play, generally speaking. Anybody who is capable of standing on ice with shoes on can curl and sling those stones down the rink. But curling is hard to play well. As Mad Dog insists in the face of his co-host's laughter, it's shuffleboard on ice. You have to put in thousands of hours to consistently get the stones near the center of the ring, much less duel with the other team.

In short, I support Russo. Curling is very hard and we should all have a greater appreciation for that during the next winter Olympics.