I finally cleared off some of the old Formula 1 races I’ve been keeping on the ol’ Tivo so there has been some room for it to record some of its suggestions. Tonight, it had two episodes of the Drew Carey Show. I watched one of them tonight while I was cleaning up the kitchen. I’ve always liked Drew. I used to watch his show when it was still on for its first run. I even read his biography. I like him a lot and think he could be someone I’d get along with great.

As most of you know, (you’d have to be living under a rock if you didn’t), last year’s FIFA 2006 World Cup was in Germany. We had originally planned to go and entered ourselves into the lottery. My brother-in-law is from Germany and he was thinking it might be a tough place to take the kids so we planned on the guys going to see the games. His village is near Stuttgart, which was one of the main venues.

We didn’t get tickets in the first round. There was a lot of controversy around the tickets, heck there was a lot of controversy around the whole World Cup. First, there were a total of 2.1 million tickets available. Of that 2.1 million, only 800k were release to the public for purchase. The remaining amount was for promotions, corporations, sponsors, etc. So people were horked off on that. Second, Anheuser-Busch won some sort of exclusive contract to be the only beer served in the stadiums. My sister-in-law was in Munich when this was announced and she said it was almost rioting in the streets. Later, they changed their tune allowing local brews to be served inside the stadiums but had exclusive advertising rights to something like 3km around each stadium. Then there was a whole bunch of other minor things that kept popping up trying to rain on those who got to go to the parade.

Aside from the games that where televised themselves, there really wasn’t much insight as to what was going on inside Germany during the games on TV. I wanted to be there so bad I could taste it. I watched as much and as many of the games as I could.

Then, I just happened, literally by flipping channels to catch a short glimpse of some show Drew Carey was doing on the World Cup inside of Germany. I set up a Tivo seasons pass and manages to snag the last three episodes. How I wished I knew of this beforehand.

Lo and behold, I give you Drew Carey’s Sporting Adventures:

Here’s a link to higher menu on the show. Strangely, I can’t find it directly on the Travel Channel’s website:

• http://travel.discovery.com/fansites/drewcarey/videoupload/index.html

This was a great show. The combination of soccer, Drew Carey, stuff going on inside Germany, the other people who came to be part of it… it was a wonderful, underrated show.

Drew was traveling and working as a professional sports photographer. He didn’t have access to all the games, just a few of them. The show consisted of about 10% of him taking picture and the rest of the show was about things to do or exhibits to see or Drew hanging out and talking to the foreigners who came for the games.

First, I was surprised at how family orientated it was over there. Germany really went all out on setting up safe areas to watch the matches and make sure that violence was kept to a minimum. Second, everyone was really nice and friendly. Drew was funny and approachable and you really got a flavor for what was really going on there. It wasn’t just about the soccer, but also the people and cultures that make our world interesting and fun to be part of. There was no politics, no anti-American sentiments. Just people uniting for the lover of the game. I loved it.

In some of the episodes, Drew was accompanied by his friend Greg Proops. If you’ve seen Who’s Line is it Anyways, you will remember him. Greg also does the voice for Bob the Builder. I like Greg. Again, I imagine him someone with whom I’d get along with. They sure had fun.

I was really bummed that I didn’t see the first three episodes. It did not appear that the Travel Channel was going to replay them. I did manage to find them using Bitorrent. There wasn’t many sharing it so it took a long time to download, but I am glad I got them.

I hope Drew does more shows like this. He was really great and people seems really willing to talk with him. The show was great but more or less unheard of when I talked to people about it. I hope you have a chance to check it out sometime. Maybe the Travel Channel will replay it sometime.