Speed-climbing: A GO Games sport with an X-Games feel.

Ask a city kid sometime what he thinks of the Great Outdoor Games and wait for the blank stare to roll in.

Fact is, the Outdoor Games aren't a household name, not yet anyway, at least not for millions of Americans bottled up in concrete jungles. If it's an Outdoor Games conversation you want, you've got to be explicit. Start by describing them as lumberjack Olympics — a crude label, maybe, but we're dealing with civilians here. If there's a faint spark of recognition, go ahead and ask, "You know, on ESPN, sometimes you'll see those guys sawing logs and racing dogs through obstacle courses...?"

And that's when they remember. Sure, they'll recall, they saw that once. They had no idea what it was, but they couldn't change the channel, at least not until they figured out what was going on and who those amazing dogs were.

An exotic appeal

The Outdoor Games have that allure. With the games entering their third year, people still find them fascinating without quite knowing what they are, like tiramisu or Teletubbies. Enough people are so detached from forests and fishing that the act of sawing a log has become exotic, if the sight of a burly New Zealander hacking a log into mulch with an axe can be considered exotic. The same people who take photos of themselves next to their rented sport utility vehicles at the Grand Canyon and Yosemite's giant redwoods when they go on road trips, those are the folks who find themselves strangely drawn to the Outdoor Games without ever connecting with them.

America was built with trees that had to be chopped down, and Americans have long fed themselves fish and animals they hunted with their dogs. But at some point the familiar fabric became foreign. You can take the pioneers out of the woods, and that apparently takes most of the woods out of the pioneers' great-great-grandchildren.

Kids these days, and most evenings, have turned their attention elsewhere. There's a reason Sprite commercials have rap soundtracks. It's the same reason why the Notorious B.I.G. ever became notorious, and why high schoolers across the country give props to their peeps back in the hood.

It's because hip-hop culture, alternately called "urban" culture, is the major pop-culture force of the last 15 years. Bigger even than the Olsen twins, if you can believe it, yo. And seemingly everyone trying to sell anything to kids lays down a tight track and spins its cap around backwards. How else you gonna be down with the little homies?

The anti-trendy sports

The Outdoor Games, bless 'em, don't fall into that category, and in fact may be the furthest thing from it. They still earn their street cred the hard way: by catching huge fish, firing arrows, racing nimble dogs and mauling timber. They don't try to be something they're not, and for that virtue they maintain an eerie timelessness, like watching a chainsaw in super-slow motion.

		With the games entering their third year, people still find them fascinating without quite knowing what they are, like tiramisu or Teletubbies.

That anti-trendiness may be keeping them from burrowing into the national consciousness like, say, the X-Games, a showcase for tattooed, spottily shaved skaters and bikers. Those are sports played out on pavement, ramps, rails — an urban environment. And while they're not really a product of hip-hop culture, there's enough cross-pollination that X-Games manage to be cool, def, phat, dope or hype — pick your slang. X-Games athletes (who tend to be, appropriately, from Generation X) land endorsement deals, signature video games, an IMAX movie. The teenagers… they eat that stuff up.

In fairness, the X-Games have now run seven summers and six winters, for a total of 13 separate X-Games. They've got momentum. And both sets of Games share a strength in their what-in-tarnation-am-I-seeing aspect. Auto racing? Well, everyone has seen cars go fast. We've seen every variation possible on guys smacking balls with sticks. Traditional sports have become rote enough to seem sensible. But have you ever seen a street luge? Or log rolling? What are those guys thinking? Anything? And does it matter as long as it looks so awesome?

Just as there's no replacement for watching teenagers hurtle down streets or up skateboard ramps, there's no other way to watch bear-sized men with saws tear into trees, or superdogs launch themselves off a dock. The oddly-ancient, sometimes-dangerous, thoroughly raw Outdoor Games give us the same tingle as watching "Jurassic Park," as though we're viewing a world that would happily chew on our bones, if it were given the chance.

Real-world skills

Therein lies one distinct advantage the Outdoor Games have over the X-Games, and most other sports. Even city kids know they're never going to need to, say, motocross somewhere. But, man, if you were stuck in the woods, you might have to chop down a tree, or catch a fish, or shoot your food. That takes serious skills, honest, primal skills that don't offer much practical value if you live at the corner of 41st and 115th but nonetheless used to be fairly important. Exaggerated though they are, the Outdoor Games tickle that forest-instinct that hasn't totally died within us. They let us think for a brief moment that hundreds of years ago, we too could have lived that outdoors life.

For that reason, the Outdoor Games aren't cutting edge. Far from it. In fact they're so blatantly uncool, such a brazen throwback, that they might be one of the hippest sporting events on TV. Sure, they're stuck in a bit of a niche, but at least they're carving it out with chainsaws.