At some point, spelling became this national pasttime. Why? OK, we get it – education is important and athletics ultimately aren’t. And for some, seeing the National Spelling Bee become this big, all-caps EVENT is kind of a big deal. But we don’t agree. We have zero interest in seeing Kavya Shivashankar win the event spelling huge words like “laodicean.” We have even less interest in looking for drama to be found out of kids spelling big words. It seems like spelling shouldn’t play on the same type of field as football. We got 2nd place in our third-grade spelling bee. Maybe we’re bitter because of that. source