Miscount

Volleyball has arrived in the country. At least for the women. A record 24,459 fans watched live game two of the country s premiere volleyball league at the iconic coliseum. The finals between the Cool Smashers and the Flying Titans did not disappoint. The edge-of-seat epic went the distance, but Sisi Rondina did not run the farthest, she flew the highest. The Cebuana defies gravity even as she defies logic why she focuses on beach volleyball against the region s best. The volleyball team needs her lethal skills to at least bring back the country to a podium finish.

The rising popularity of women s volleyball in the country attests to the stereotype volleyball is for women and basketball is for men, be it in the professional or collegiate league. But that is another issue altogether. In the meantime, the 24,459 attendance is a good sign for the sport. And it s the all-Filipino conference finals. The league does not need imports to lure the fans back to where the live action is amidst the digital platform.

Just as Harry Potter books brought back the young to reading by flipping crisp pages of the book written by a woman who was broke. Still nothing replaces the experience of reading a hard copy of a newspaper over a cup of coffee, or even if you don t drink any. But the rise and rise of digitalized information at least saves trees, only to be cut for non-educative ends.

Of course the quarter of a hundred thousand live spectators is low, but not slow, compared to at least six figure record crowds in wrestling, football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey. And virtually negligible compared to an estimated twelve million who watched the Tour de France over a period of three weeks in 2012, the same year its biggest star was stripped of his seven titles because of doping.

Sports statisticians correctly measure record by the number of attendees and not by the revenues. For obviously, if sales were the gauge, the record books will be rewritten not by the head but by the increasing ticket prices. The count should be how many attended, not how much was paid. Otherwise, records are easily broken. And they lose meaning when they are. Setting a record in sports is about breaking the unbreakable, not surpassing the pass.

Exactly why when a new box office record is established for movies, no one from before is impressed. There are no long queues that cue patronage, the kind of throng that went to watch Titanic or Diehard for several weeks, even months. But that was the time when movies were the cheapest and hippest form of entertainment. Free even, if you watch TV. But not really, the commercial break seduces the audience to buy things they do not need. It s even more pricey. But today entertainment has moved from the idiot box to the misleading and treacherous information superhighway where falsity is at everyone s fingertip. It largely factors in how the queue to the polls decides, counted per head that do not think alike. Or right.