Fast curling: It's curling, only faster.

I love checking in on the sport every four years. In the curling world, this is known as “thinking time,” and there is too much of it: 38 minutes per team per match. In a February 2021 article in the Curling News, Kevin Palmer declared that he was “not in the camp of fundamentally changing a sport to benefit those who only watch it every four years.” And when I asked curling analytics guru Gerry Geurts how curling might change if each match were to be limited to 90 minutes, he said that “90 minutes isn’t possible.” Fair enough! “You still wouldn’t be able to talk nearly as much as in a regular game, and you’d definitely have calls that are rushed and second-guess them afterwards.” Curling faster would require thinking faster. You could promote the sport with a bunch of new slogans, like “Fast Curling: It’s Curling, Only Faster,” or “Fast Curling: Now It Takes Much Less Time Than Saving Private Ryan,” or “Fast Curling: Not the Sort of Fast Where You Don’t Eat.” If that last slogan catches on, we could probably get Tim Horton’s as a sponsor, which would push Fast Curling over the top.