Marble League 2020 comes to an end
***Apologies if you already received this email; I’m having problems with Substack today so I’m re-sending this just in case***
Last Sunday, the 2020 Marble League competition came to a close over on the Jelle’s Marble Runs YouTube channel. The Savage Speeders won the league overall, while my beloved Raspberry Racers came in the middle of the pack at tenth. If you’d told me six months ago that I’d become an avid watcher of marble racing and other marble-themed sports events, I would… well, actually, I’d probably have been like, “Oh, cool.” But still. Even if you’re not a sports person, this shit is engrossing.
The channel has blown up during the pandemic because of the lack of people sports — here’s a great Sports Illustrated piece by Jessica Smetana about the channel that was published back in March. While the tweet that went viral featured the sand races, the Marble League has Olympic-inspired events like the high jump, the marathon, the halfpipe, etc. (The Marble League used to be called the Marblelympics, but had to change the name due to legal issues with the actual Olympics.)
The production value on these events is just excellent, and with Greg Woods’ on-point commentary, it’s easy to forget that these are inanimate marbles and the results are all random chance. (I can’t count the number of times I said, “Oh, come ON, get it together” during some of the Raspberry Racers’ worst events. I can’t even explain to you why they’re “my” team.)
I gotta hand it to the Savage Speeders, who snatched the overall trophy away from the O’Rangers just within the last couple of events; for the last several weeks, the O’Rangers seemed unbeatable.
I can’t lie: In addition to waiting impatiently for each new event to premiere every week, I’ve spent quite a lot of time discussing the Marble League events over on the r/JellesMarbleRuns subreddit. It’s been great to watch everyone mock the Oceanics for sucking in every water-based event, and have most people cheer when the O’Rangers wouldn’t win a medal.
If you didn’t catch the Marble League, I definitely recommend heading over to the YouTube channel and watching them all in order. My sweet Raspberry Racers may not have come out on top this year, but there’s always 2021. In the meantime, the channel will be posting some Marbula 1 races, which are sure to scratch that marble sports itch that I’ve now developed.
If you know someone who might like this newsletter, please forward it to them! If you like my newsletter and would like to show your appreciation monetarily, click the button below to get a paid subscription and throw some money in the tip jar.
You can follow me on Twitter here, and Instagram here. *All typos and other errors were included specifically to bother you.*