Fitting conclusion

So Travis Pastrana won the final event held at the X Games -- the bronze medal in the Rally Car racing final. Pastrana, who finished first in his semifinal thanks to a brilliant turn about 70 yards from the finish line, was disqualified because of an inadvertent collision he caused on the final turn, only about 20 yards from the checkered flag. So instead of going for gold, he settled on the bronze.

Still, the slew of spinouts he performed as a celebration made it seem like he had just won a crown. And the fan reaction -- about two-thirds of the seats were filled -- was in the same vein. Pastrana and Shaun White and Tony Hawk and now Jake Brown and a bunch of the other athletes (right, Jaime?) get props from the fans no matter what their official finish (White - 1st, Pastana - 3rd, Hawk - no scored events, Brown - 2nd). And that might be one of the best things about X Games. These guys who are the favorites have proved themselves, but they're respected no matter how they finish in a given event, so long as they try.

Based on the overall attendance, X Games 13 was a success. I think the concept of a split-stadium format could be taken away, but all-in-all it worked quite well. They certainly sold enough seats in Staples to merit the extra venue, and the plan is to keep events there next year, as well.

The crowd has cleared out fairly quickly since the end of the Rally Car races, and the spirit of X Games (rough, fun, fast, intense) is getting going. There are a couple of things we'll need to think about in the future:

1. Waste. X Games made a conscious effort this year to promote its "environmentality," but the amount of excess fuel used in these events will always make eco-friendly watchers cringe. In response, the X Games has set up clearly labeled compost (food, paper), recycling (cans, bottles) and trash (plates, utensils) bins. Last year, X Games reports, "12.71% of event waste was diverted from the landfill. This year, the "X Rider" program gave token rewards to those who carpooled with four riders or more. And the dirt used in Moto X will be reused, they say.

That's a good start, but long-distance transporting of 360 truckloads of soil can be worse for the environment than simply restoring the dirt to its initial place. One action that worries me more, however, is that the X Games will be planting "5,000 trees in California this year to assist with reforestation efforts following [the] devastating fires in the region." Many, if not most, environmentalists, however, would criticize that drive simply because, while wildfires can be human-caused, most are actually beneficial in restoring and revitalizing the ecosystem of struggling natural systems. For the same reason forest-thinning is controversial, so would be a plan to artificially exponent the growth of vulnerable forests.

2. EXPN.com. The Web site that runs all the information for the X Games is so far behind ESPN's flagship Web site that the two are hardly comparable. Part of the reason X Games doesn't get more coverage in newspapers nationally is because of the limited knowledge of the sports, the difficulty in analyzing the maneuvers pulled off by the athletes and comparing current performances to the past. In fact, a quick search of past X Games results shows that ESPN only has top-3 finishers for the first decade of the X Games or so. The media guide is barely 30 pages. Compare that with, say, college football, whose media guides the NCAA had to limit to about 200 pages a few years back because they were becoming to big (partly because they were becoming recruiting guides). Still, in the local paper in upstate New York and central Kansas and the panhandle of Florida, X Games typically gets reserved for the "briefs." That's not where it wants to be. Better access to print media would probably help ESPN draw more viewers who would then read about the events, but the biggest issue is information on the Web. If there were a one-stop-shop for action sports history like there were for, again, college football (College Football Data Warehouse), then X Games could draw some bigger TV numbers.

3. Injuries. This is where the events are only going to get worse. While the spectacular crashes can lead to a ratings bonanza (more than 2 million people have watched Jake Brown's fall on YouTube), it is also going to throw horror into the minds of fans and could lead to the dreaded government investigations. (Remember, there was a time when Teddy Roosevelt's administration was all but ready to demand the end of football when more than a dozen players died in a year. The result, which has been ruining college sports since 1906, was the NCAA. The organization was known as the IAAUS until 1910.) Hopefully, we don't see a life-long injury or a death out here at the X Games, but I'm not optimistic. The ramps here are the biggest ones of the year. About 25% higher ramps in the park events and a mega-ramp with the sports' most prestigious medals on the line are combinations for disaster. We nearly saw one with Brown's fall.

But the summer X Games are still in a good place. Unlike winter X, which still struggles mightily to attract advertisers, according to this internal ESPN memo, provided by Deadspin:

We have an ongoing communication among marketing, production and programming designed to ensure that when we have lower demand we give advertising inventory to promotion. Winter X Games being a prime example of that process in action.

Hopefully, X Games can evolve and mature at a gradual pace and become a staple of the sports scene. It would be good for everyone. (And, hopefully we might see the day when parking-price gouging is abandoned because ESPN and AEG realize that their practices simply aren't right.)

But this week, it was positive. It was good. And it's a very, very nice sign to see that X Games haven't peaked. Because if it had, ESPN's decade-and-a-half investment in action sports -- a good thing in itself -- inevitably would have gone to waste.

But, thankfully, that's not the case.

-- Ken Fowler