Duplex Deli Sandwich Club 004
What is a Sport? 🤔
Welcome back to another edition of Duplex Deli Sandwich Club. We hope the early holiday season has been good to you and you haven’t gone blind trying to watch the NBA In-Season Tournament as it reimagines what a basketball court should look like (it worked, Adam.)
It’s been a great year for Duplex Deli. Well, it’s been the only year for Duplex Deli thus far, but we couldn’t be more excited about where things are going. Our We Are King project recently found a buyer (huzzah!), more on that soon, and we’ve got a few really exciting film and TV projects in various stages of production and development. On the commercial side, we have a great set of brand partners who are all ambitious, make great products, and love sports! To any marketers out there who need best-in-class sports content, you know who to call (or which email to reply to: this one.)
So we’re gearing up for 2024 and we have one mission in mind: be the best damn sports content company on earth. Total domination. We want to be the Jordan + Lebron of this thing baby, the greatest individual seasons ever seen strung together over an impossibly long stretch. Tiger without the injuries. Serena without the haters. We want to be Siren.
Who?
Ah yes, Siren. The greatest Whiplash player of all time on the American Gladiators circuit and a tragic hero of our childhoods. Why do we know so much about Siren? Thanks to a special Duplex Deli project you can learn more about in THE MEAT. And one of the most fun aspects of that project is the debates it sparked at Duplex Deli about whether Gladiator competition is, technically, a sport. Is what we pitched a sports doc or something else? As a matter of fact, what is a sport? And that existential question is the topic of:
THE BREAD
What is a sport?
The first rule of debate club: you must have two sides. So we have taken the proverbial angel and devil off the sports enthusiast’s shoulders: the 'gatekeepers,' staunch defenders of traditional sports values, and the 'inclusivists,' who are ready to hand out sports badges to just about any activity with a hint of competition. Stop for a moment, and pick a side. Now prepare to question all of your preciously held beliefs as we move through what we’ll call (fuck it) the Official Duplex Deli Criteria for Sport.
Criteria 1: Does the activity involve “technical athleticism?”
Athleticism is necessary for a lot of non-sporting activities: childrearing, catching the bus, farm labor, etc. But to become sport, athleticism must be combined with a level of learned technical skill that creates a singularly unique ability. For example, ‘throwing’ is a skill that combines athleticism with aim and precision and underpins many of our most beloved sports. But throwing has been around since monkeys started hawking poop at each other millions of years ago, and became integral to humans not through friendly competition but through hunting and warfare.
So while Criteria 1 is the first and most important question you should ask, it demands a follow-up:
Criteria 2: Can you (literally) keep score?
Keeping score is something we do ambiently within this so-called “game of life” that we all play. How nice is my car compared to the next guy’s? How far apart on the career ladder are me and my pals? Am I tall enough? It’s a wonderfully unhealthy way to live, designed to drive you mad because at the end of the day the score is something abstract that you make up in your own mind and share with no one. Sports, on the other hand, have hard and fast rules and scores, so that you can effectively quantify your self-worth in comparison to others. Chopping down a tree so you have firewood to keep your family warm? Admirable, sexy even, but not sports. Chopping down a tree at the Lumberjack World Championships so you can prove you’re better than the guy or gal next to you? Sports, for sure.
Criteria 3: Has Duplex Deli covered it?
Alright, this is a cheap one. In fact, we’re cheating. But as diehard sports consumers with instincts honed over a disturbing amount of collective hours watching all manner of sport, in person and on broadcast, at all hours day or night, we are going to give ourselves (and our partners) the leeway to make judgment calls based on what amazing stories and projects come across the Duplex Deli desks. Many of them are about the good ol’ stick-and-ball sports but a lot of them are weirder, more niche, less obviously ‘sports’ to the untrained eye. Keg tossing, cricket fighting, medieval MMA and the like.
Our verdict: if it’s a yes to let’s say 2 of these 3 Criteria, you’ve got yourself a sport. That’s our highly scientific, hard-and-fast rubric to help you in those desperate moments when you find yourself having to determine the sporting efficacy of any physical activity. Please reach out with any questions, stories, or reactionary takes, especially if they concern some weird niche could-be-sports activity we haven’t heard of yet. And this is a timely topic because…
THE SAUCE
You may have heard that the Olympics are integrating several new sports at the upcoming Summer Games in Paris. One that has generated some controversy is breakdancing. Is that a sport? Let’s run it against the criteria:
Does it involve technical athleticism? Check.
Can you (literally) keep score? Check (although Duplex notes that the topic of objective scoring e.g. time vs subjective scoring by judges is fraught and perhaps worthy of another newsletter.)
Has Duplex Deli covered it? Not YET. But Duplex Deli did go down a frankly unexpectedly deep rabbit hole of dance videos while pondering the weighty question above. And so for this edition of THE SAUCE, we challenge you not to ooh and aah as you watch one of YouTube’s finest non-Duplex Deli-produced videos, “Dance Rounds worth Watching 100 Times 🔥”
(Trust me we didn’t know we needed to watch that 100 times either.)
THE MEAT
The recently released 2-parter from ESPN’s 30 for 30 collection about the American Gladiators is one that we dreamed up (with some talented friends at MinusL Network) about half a decade ago at VICE. Produced by VICE Studios, it not only hits a sweet spot of nostalgia but also features the largely unknown Caan and Abel story of two cofounders in small-town America that broke apart at the seams leaving one wondering “what if?” while the other cashed in. It’s a tale of betrayal, exploitation, and how ugly things get when the folks with the money start acting like gladiators themselves. (That also happens to describe the story behind the doc itself, but you’ll have to buy us a sandwich to hear that one.) You can stream the doc here and check out the trailer below:
#IRLSANDWICH
Friends, we’re coming up on the end of the year and it’s got us a little misty-eyed thinking about all of the amazing stories told and sandwiches eaten in 2023. (There should be a Spotify Wrapped for sandwiches, no?) One sandwich, however, stood above all the others. It was consumed in what Duplex Deli is controversially yet officially declaring the Sandwich Capital of the World: Florence, Italy. The city has a long and storied history of street food, with little Medicis snagging their daily panino at lunch stands all over the city while they birthed the Renaissance. Duplex Deli proprietor Jon took a trip out there a few months ago and set a new sandwich PR with four in one day. The best was La Summer at the famous All’antico Vinao: prosciutto, fior di latte mozzarella cheese, tomato and basil on perfect panini bread. Best enjoyed in front of the giant Statue of David at the Piazzale Michelangelo with a large Peroni by your side.
Lucky for us New Yorkers there are also locations in Midtown and Greenwich Village where you can enjoy your La Summer in front of a less prestigious statue with brown-bagged Miller Lite. Take that, old country.
Duplex Deli hopes you have a wonderful holiday season, with time to watch all the sports (all of them), and we’ll see you back here at Sandwich Club with more stories, sandwiches and some exciting announcements at the top of the year.
and outfits, Sport requires coordinated clothes
Terrific Read!