Time to torpedo the Boat Race?

Chances are, if you are in any way normal, you'll be heading to the pub to catch up with friends, venturing out into the countryside for a brisk stroll and a consort with nature, or simply gorging on chocolate eggs until you rupture.

One thing I know I won't be doing is 'setting aside several hours of the afternoon to enjoy the full build-up to, and execution of, the University Boat Race'. Viewing figures, about which more later, suggest I may be grievously misreading the priorities of the nation but... do any of us care about it any more?

Personally, having studied the form of the two competing teams, taken in predicted weather conditions on the day and pondered the tidal flow of the Thames on Sunday afternoon as it relates to the lunar cycle, I can confidently say that one of Oxford or Cambridge is going to win again. And, if I care one way or the other as to which side actually does, I can tune in to enjoy twenty minutes' footage of sixteen men rowing quite fast, while a team of commentators attempt gamely to make it all seem quite interesting.

Of course, I don't care, in much the same way that I don't care about the outcome of other limited-appeal niche sports like mixed martial arts and Scottish football either. I'm from Wolverhampton, I went to a state school, got expelled from a state school and ended up at a northern polytechnic back when such things existed – my affiliations on Boat Race day can be decided by the toss of a coin.

As one-off traditional sporting spectacles go, the Boat Race has to be unique only in its tedium. With The Grand National, there's the drama of man and beast pushed to their limits, the possibility of a betting windfall or, at the very least, victory in the office sweepstake. With the London Marathon, there's the drama of man and running shoe pushed to their limits, the possibility of seeing someone you know, and the general feelgood atmosphere that seems to permeate the nation for the entire day.

I'd even argue that the annual Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling in Gloucester (next event: May 30) offers more spectacular action, because at least that's a bunch of lunatics chasing a massive cheese down a hill.

But the Boat Race? A starting pistol goes off, some burly fellows in a long canoe thrust a paddle back and forth for a bit, one lot of them does so faster than the other and they are declared the winner. And then they throw their cox into the Thames. In fact, the bit when the teams dunk their cox – stop sniggering at the back there – is often the most entertaining moment in the whole thing.

Now, at this point, Clare Balding, who is presumably paid handsomely to get excited about all this, would argue that the Boat Race is all about tradition and ceremony. What she really means is that it's very old – 187 years old, to be precise. She could point out that last year, six and a half million people watched the Boat Race, but 2015 viewing figures show that other major sporting one-offs, like the Wimbledon final (in which there was no British interest), like the FA Cup final, like the Grand National, should expect nine million viewers as a minimum – and the latter two of those events will have been enjoyed by many millions more in pubs and bookmakers.

The problem with the Boat Race, for me, is that it absolutely hums to high Heaven of privilege, as indeed any sporting event that only involves the Oxbridge universities would do. Because it is so heavily steeped in tradition, so utterly inflexible, it is a captor event for a captive audience (I'd argue that of that 6.6 million total, a good five million were only watching because there's nothing else on telly on a weekend afternoon). I'm not suggesting that there might be an Oxbridge bias at the BBC, but I'd imagine that a meeting about the possibility of downsizing coverage of the Boat Race would last about two minutes.

And you also can't escape the strong whiff of 'admission doping' – to put it another way, you can't help but think that a few of those Oxbridge alumni on the teams may have found passage into their universities eased a tad, on the grounds of their skills with the rowing blade rather than the equation. Now, it should be said here that to artificially boost one's ranks with top-banana oarsmen is strictly forbidden by the code of the race. It should also be noted that the race has spawned seven Olympic gold medal winners in the 21st century, and four-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Matthew Pinsent rowed for Oxford three times.

What it also does is provide those of us who despair of the BBC, with yet another brickbat with which to beat them. As major sporting events continue to migrate to other broadcasters, what should be a diverting annual curio has actually become one of the channel's flagship events.

And that's terrible, really.

Now, this is an opinion piece, and the thing about opinions is that they are a) personal and b) prone to being horribly wrong-headed and daft. If you think I am wrong about the Boat Race, then please use my email address (it's under that rather unflattering photo of me at the top of the piece) to let me know.

If enough people tell me that I am rowing against the current in choppy waters of ignorance, then I will punt up the canal wearing sackcloth, ashes and a dunce's cap.

On the same day as the Boat Race, at London's Spitalfields Market, they also hold the Oxford vs Cambridge Goat Race. Now THAT I would tune in to watch...