A joke from 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is finally becoming reality. That film features a dodgeball tournament televised on “ESPN8: The Ocho,” which has the channel mantra of “Bringing you the Finest in Seldom Seen Sports.” ESPN is actually going to have an eighth linear channel (counting their conference networks) once the ACC Network fully launches in 2019, so we’ve already made Ocho jokes, but the company itself has made even a better one. On August 8, 8/8, ESPNU will turn into “The Ocho” for one day only, and show a bunch of weird sports, from ultimate trampoline dodgeball to roller derby to cornhole to kabaddi to ultimate frisbee. Here’s the short “special presentation” trailer they came up with:
ESPN8: The Ocho from ESPNFrontRow on Vimeo.
And some highlights of some of these oddball sports, such as cornhole. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton; we’ll see how it works out for them. The full list of programming is available here.