The X-Games is easily my favorite sporting event of the year. Every summer I count down the start to the Extreme Sports Festival of the year, as I prefer to watch the Summer X-Games versus the Winter X-Games.

It continues to blow my mind the tricks that those ATHLETES are able to do on a skateboard, BMX-bike, dirt bike, and/or a surfboard. Those guys go out and perform death-defying stunts on a daily basis, yet the majority of people probably don’t even know they exist. And that is just saddening-they deserve more recognition for their work.

The various athletes who compete in each year’s X-Games work unbelievably hard year round in order to master that one eye-popping, gravity-defying stunt that might win them the attention of the public who just catches the highlights of the X-Games on ESPN.

They ride down a 21-foot vertical ramp with a skateboard and wearing nothing more than a t-shirt, board shorts, and a little plastic helmet, and they make it seem as if it’s nothing when they come to the bottom of the quarter pipe and pop a trick and land it with grace.

Just last summer a 12-year-old kid named Tom Schaar rode down the 21′ tall vert and landed the first 1080 ever recorded in X-Games history. A 12-year-old kid took a huge risk and made history, and I’m sure you had no clue that that even happened. Where is that kid’s recognition?

Those guys risk their lives every time they take a seat on their bike or step onto their board, and they barely get paid more than the average Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Yet they continue to take those risks, do what they love, and put on a show for their few fans.

It’s because unlike most of our beloved football and basketball players, they don’t care about the money and the fame. They do it purely for the love of the sport, and that’s the mindset that every athlete should have.

Unfortunately we don’t live in an oceanside city where skating and surfing are considered to be a lifestyle. But still, that is no excuse to be apart of the vast group of people who don’t even know what the X-Games are. I promise you, few moments in sports are as exciting to watch as Travis Pastrana lands the first recorded double backflip on a dirt-bike.

I honestly wish I could do half of the things that those athletes are able to do. They are the true talents of the sports world.