Resolved: Beach volleyball is good.
Arguing the affirmative is Justin Peters. Arguing the negative is Jacob Brogan.
Affirmative: I love beach volleyball. It is one of my favorite Olympic sports, and I am very glad that NBC covers it so diligently whenever the Olympic Games come around. It is easy to understand. The players are very fit. It takes place on a beach, which means I do not have to worry about the combatants skinning their knees when diving for a ball. Unlike some other Olympic sports, everyone always looks like they are having fun.
Beach volleyball is no weightlifting—the best Olympic sport there is—but it is fun and dramatic and looks good on television. You can tune into a match halfway through and immediately get caught up in the action. (Beach volleyball is almost all action—action and hugging.) Within two minutes, you are bound to see a good spike, and there is nothing better than a powerful and cathartic spike. Within three minutes, you are bound to see someone fully extend her body to dive for a ball, and that might be even more exciting than a good spike. Beach volleyball offers near-instant gratification. Beach volleyball is great.
It is very simple, much simpler than actual volleyball, a sport I have no interest in watching for two weeks every four years. Beach volleyball involves two players on each side, a net, a ball, and a beach. After a serve, each side gets three touches before they must send the ball back over the net. (There is no stalling in beach volleyball. This is a very quick game.) Points are scored when the ball touches the opponents’ sand. I have never played beach volleyball in my life, and yet I was able to deduce these rules instantly. I still have no idea how hockey works, and I’ve been watching hockey for 30 years.
There is continuity in beach volleyball, which is what you want as a casual fan. Kerri Walsh Jennings has been on every American Olympic beach volleyball team since 1948. I recognize her when I see her every four years, and I do not get tired of her the rest of the time, because there is no “rest of the time” when it comes to beach volleyball.
Sure, beach volleyball would be better if it really tried to live up to the “this is happening on a beach” concept, and play was periodically interrupted by rogue Frisbees and garrulous children. But that’s just not how the game works, and I’ve made my peace with that. I like to watch beach volleyball on television. Does that make me a monster? No, it does not. It makes me an American. God bless America, God bless the Olympics, and God bless beach volleyball. I yield back the balance of my time.
Negative: There is no Olympic sport more tedious than beach volleyball. I suspect no one is more aware of this fact than the athletes who play it, and by way of evidence I point to their incessant celebrations after every point. I appreciate their fervor—these are, in spite of everything, talented performers—but I have a cynical reading of those shows of enthusiasm. I think they’re actively working to convince us that this bad sport is worth watching—trying to trick us into thinking they’re having a good time and that we should too.
If you’ve seen one Olympic beach volleyball match, you’ve seen every Olympic beach volleyball match. Drop in for a few minutes, and you might witness something cool; tune in for the whole show and you’ll watch the same sequences unfold again and again and again until they’ve been drained of any joy. The first time you see a player sprint to stop a ball just before it hits the ground you’re impressed. By the 15th time, you’re Googling kinesio tape while wondering why this damn sport is on every hour of every day.
There’s no real story to be told about the proceedings, just the harried back and forth of the ball as hours stretch into days. The players hustle, sure, and sometimes they switch positions, but it’s all really just an endless parade of serving and spiking. More often than not, one team pulls ahead early and maintains its lead throughout. No one point feels particularly consequential, which makes the endless parade of hugs and hollering feel that much more suspicious.
I might not mind beach volleyball quite so much were it not the centerpiece of NBC’s coverage of the games. There’s so much going on in Rio de Janeiro—let us tune in to something, anything, everything else. On Monday, I watched with a sliver of pleasure as the United States’ Nick Lucena and Phil Dalhausser lost to a Brazilian duo. To be clear, I didn’t thrill in that defeat because I want the U.S. to go down but because I want beach volleyball to get off my television.
Whatever its slight pleasures—the dramatic dives and sudden saves—this is not a sport we watch during the Olympics because it is objectively good and entertaining but one we watch because we know Kerri Walsh Jennings and whoever she’s partnered with are going to win. And win we do: In fact, we win so much at beach volleyball that—to paraphrase Donald Trump—I’m getting tired of winning.
Affirmative: Sailing. Field hockey. Open-water swimming. Triathlon. These Olympic sports are all far more tedious than beach volleyball. Golf is more tedious than beach volleyball. Golfers always look like they would rather be at the library. The next time a golfer gets visibly excited about hitting a good shot will be the first time a golfer gets visibly excited about hitting a good shot. Water polo is more tedious than beach volleyball. You can’t watch water polo without remembering how hard it is to tread water for great lengths of time. I tried to watch water polo the other day, and within three minutes I started to feel physically ill. Beach volleyball will never make you nauseous. There is no such thing as a repressed “beach-volleyball clap.”
Beach volleyballers are extroverts. I choose to take their excitement at face value. I choose to be heartened rather than repulsed by their frequent hugging. “Those two, right there, they’ve got each other’s backs,” I tell myself when Walsh Jennings and April Ross hug after a point. “Wouldn’t it be nice if the entire world was as demonstrably supportive of good effort as those two right there?” If their enthusiasm is insincere, if they are indeed actors—anything’s possible—then they are good ones, and I applaud their performance.
I believe there is indeed a story to be told about the proceedings in a beach volleyball match. The story, perhaps, goes like this: You are on a beach. The sun is hot and bright. Your cares are many miles away. There is a beach volleyball game going on to your left. The ball goes back and forth over the net, again and again. It is almost hypnotic in its rhythm. As you watch, the minutes stretch to hours, the hours to days. You do not care. You are on a beach. The sun is hot and bright. Your cares are many miles away. Basically, when you watch beach volleyball, you are living inside a Corona commercial. There are worse places to be than inside a Corona commercial.
Is beach volleyball a complicated sport? No, it is not. But its repetitive simplicity is part of its charm. Beach volleyball is exciting enough to command my attention for a few minutes, yet unimportant enough that I do not feel resentful when NBC switches over to diving or something like that. It is exactly the sport I want to binge-watch for two weeks every four years and then ignore completely for the rest of my life.
Negative: You say beach volleyball is enough to command your attention for a few minutes. On that, we agree. The trouble is NBC doesn’t cut away after that attention has faded. Where beach volleyball deserves to be treated like all those other boring sports you mention, it instead takes up an inordinate proportion of the nightly primetime broadcast. This is not a day on the beach with a Corona; it is imprisonment on a ship in the doldrums, your water supply dwindling as you await the winds that will carry you to more populous seas.
The problem of beach volleyball is, in other words, a problem of agency: Confronted with beach volleyball, day in and day out, I am left feeling helpless, adrift. Kerri Walsh Jennings plays a significant role in that, not least because she’s so damn good at what she does. An accomplished Olympic athlete like Walsh Jennings should inspire, but instead she just kind of bums me out. Track, where anything can happen, makes for a telling counterpoint. Usain Bolt is exciting in large part because you’re not always sure he’s going to win, even though he always eventually does. Fast as his 100-meter dash is, his notoriously slow starts give you just enough time to wonder whether he’ll pull it off. That’s why NBC spends so much talking about those bad starts. It helps viewers weave a story while the event is unfolding—and lets us tell it to ourselves again each time the network replays that 10-second clip.
When I turn on the Olympics, I like to see those stories, which is why I’d rather watch almost anything other than beach volleyball. Watch a few hours of weightlifting or diving or race walking and you’ll start to figure out what’s going on. You’ll discover who the real champions are and find underdogs to cheer on. And then, four years later, having forgotten everything you learned, you’ll do it all over again. With Walsh Jennings, and beach volleyball more generally, you neither learn nor forget. You just confront the maddening fact of mastery, day after day, year after year.
Affirmative: I enjoy sporting mastery. I am untroubled by its existential implications. And, anyway, though Ross and Walsh Jennings win almost every match they play, the matches themselves are rarely blowouts. One can enjoy them without falling prey to ennui. I enjoy beach volleyball. The players are very fit.
Negative: Anyone who claims to like beach volleyball should be obliged to watch some of the matches in which any country other than the United States is playing. I did, and they were just as boring as the ones we see in primetime. If you love the Olympics as much as I do—and I know you do, Justin—you should hate beach volleyball. And even if you don’t hate beach volleyball, you should hope the U.S. loses—this year, and in 2020, and forever after, until we stop pretending we have to care about it.
See more of Slate’s Olympics coverage.