BY DC CUEVA
It is summer time and for the second straight year, DCBLOG is presenting Summer of Sports, as we devote a season of posts looking at aspects of my longtime passion for sports. Last year during a summer which saw the U.S. Women's National Team, American Pharoah, the Warriors, Spieth and Serena dominate the headlines, we brought you articles looking at soccer's Premier League and UEFA Champions League, golf's major championships, Wimbledon, the UFC, the Tour de France, World Series of Poker, Aussie rules football, and NFL Films.
This year, we'll have more of the same featured here, from these dedicated posts to mini-articles in the ExtraTime portion of our MTV Trifecta coverage, as you've seen in a few of them in our posts covering The Challenge Rivals III. And a good number of our sports posts this year will center around the year's biggest summer blockbuster: the Rio Olympic Games, and we'll have regular posts during the August fortnight. This is all part of a summer that's seen an improbable NBA title run and two major international soccer tournaments. But today, we begin with something fun and off-the-wall.
The category that covers trick shot artists on Wiki does not cover sports outside of billiards, referring to other categories when warranted. But if there's one group who have made this art of trick shots mainstream, it's not one, but a group of five guys from outside this relatively genteel part of our sports world. And unlike those trick shot artists who hone their craft in the subdued environment of a room lit only by lamps above pool tables, these people practice their shots on camera and with great energy.
It's true that YouTube has had a profound impact on the way all of us get to view our world as the screens we get to view our favorite shows and content has shrunk down from large HD sets to smartphones that allow us to watch video in the palm of our hands. There are numerous people who have become YouTube stars over the years as the reality TV way of making regular people like us famous in making internet videos in the comfort of their own home, and making a career out of it. And in this age, videos and stars can become viral sensations and capture the world's attention almost at the speed of light.
But no single group of people have become as widely popular in this newfound world of internet stars as the five guys who call themselves Dude Perfect. With making the impossible look possible with their trick shots, their infectious energy and total views of their videos numbering in the 10 figures, this phenomenon has truly become the darlings of the digital age.
