I think men who don’t like sports are the male version of women (like me) who are disinterested in shoes. I think we’re lacking a gene or something.
My hubby just turned 50. On occasion (meaning maybe twice) we’ve lucked into free tickets to see the Orioles play baseball in Baltimore (when we lived in the area), and have gone and enjoyed ourselves. If his best friend has a Super Bowl party, he’ll go, and even spring for a 12-pack of beer (even though he hates beer). But otherwise, his idea of ‘watching sports’ consists of watching DVR’d episodes of Leverage, where Elliott kicks the crap out of somebody.
Another guy who doesn’t like sports, and this in the UK where premiership football has pretty much replaced religion as the focus of the population’s energy and devotion. But then I am gay so it pretty much goes with the territory.
In my house, I’m the football and NASCAR widow. I’m not allowed to touch the remote or alter the tuning schedule, either.
I watch a lot of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies from Netflix Instant on my PC to compensate, however.
You’re all fags, you know. KIDDING! 
I like sports, but am not limited to them. I think you hit on it re: guys just not knowing what else to talk about, plus there’s lots of things guys shouldn’t talk about in a business/social situation, i.e. politics, religion, etc. Sports not only provides a relatively neutral topic, but there’s also the mock warfare aspect of it, so that men can talk like ersatz warriors in terms of the analogies, etc.
I don’t care about following any professional sports. I don’t watch the Superbowl. I don’t watch the Olympics,
I do like participating – I play racquetball and ski. I’ve played baseball, softball, and ultimate frisbee on teams. But I don’t even like watching other people play ythe sports i myself play. And especially not on TV.
Hey, I find it hard to trust people who don’t like dogs. And if someone told me they didn’t like music, I’d look at them as if they had 2 heads.
All sport is, is theatre for those who like their scripts to follow a rigid format.
I like playing sports well enough but just can’t get into watching them. When I’m hanging around and the topic turns to professional sports I have to just mumble … “err, I’m not into [fill in sport type]”. I have to hope that I picked the correct sport based on the names mentioned.
As **An Arky **says, it provides a neutral topic and it also allows guys to challenge each other in a safe and friendly way. But I can’t bring myself to bother.
I love you all, my new support group!
Good to see some other very similar views. Someone made a comment about the time involved to follow sports, and I agree. I never have to read the sports section of the paper (biggest section in our local rag), and when the sports segment comes on during the local news, I have plenty of time to do the dishes.
An Arky made a comparison to war, and I think he hit it. I guess it is how we beat our chests when we are not out hunting and gathering.
I never did get the “My city is better than your city” thing either. If fact, none of these teams have anything to do with geography, and I don’t think they “represent” my city. They are simply businesses competing with each other. I can almost see a Monty Python type sketch: “I bet Walmart is going to kick Target’s ASS this weekend, HUZZAH!” 
What he said.
I can fully relate to it from the vicarious living aspect, but I too think people take sports far too seriously. Both the participants and the spectators. If there was the same amount of organisational time put into solving this planet’s problems, just think what could be achieved.
Still, it keeps our minds off the front pages of our newspapers.
sigh You are just amazing.
I’m female, but I’ve always felt like there is something essential lacking in me because I not only don’t like sports, I can’t comprehend people who do. It’s obvious that they’re not faking it, and there’s so many of them that I must be the freak, but it’s just alien to me.
I know a middle aged man who used to get totally baked and sit watching football on TV, bag of cheese doodles and Diet Coke on hand. When he quit his habit, he said sitting in front of the tube for hours watching The Game lost all of its appeal - he realized there were better uses of his time. Now he looks at the game for a brief time, just out of curiosity, but really has no more burning interest in it.
You, my dear, are anything but a freak.
But I won’t mind if you want to get a little freaky.
I can comprehend that others do, in that I’m aware there are things I’m very interested in that other people couldn’t give a shit about so it’s easy to imagine what it must be like to be into sports and encounter someone who isn’t. What I can’t do it get why someone would be into sports at a fanatic level, particularly those who follows sports wider than a particular team and memorise statistics, transfer details, batting/goal histories or whatever for individual players. Why why why??? 
I think the thing I understand least about following sports is the idea of sports journalism. Whenever I glance at articles in the sports pages over someone’s shoulder its a recounting of a game or event (seriously, that’s interesting to read?) or paragraphs of speculation about what might happen later in a season if this or that happens (snore).
49yo male here.
Don’t care about organized sports either. Basketball playoff time drives me nuts. It never seems to end.
I like playing sports, but watching a sporting event is, for me, less of a thrilling adventure than watching paint dry.
My wife, on the other hand, loves to watch football.
As a kid, I used to nap on the couch while my mom watched football… so now, whenever I hear that ambient crowd roar, I immediately start yawning.
During March Madness the local CBS affiliate shifted most of their prime time programming to 2-5 AM so they could show the basketball games live. Of course, the shows did not are exactly at the scheduled times even then, so I ended up missing the last ten minutes of them until I caught on and reprogrammed my DVR to record longer than usual.
30 year old male, I could care less as well. I enjoy going to a live game, but have no interest in televised games, following teams, or care who’s beating who. Basketball isn’t too bad locally unless it’s the playoffs, but football season in the bane of my existence. TV, radio, everything is highjacked by the NFL for what seems like an eternity of boring analysis and armchair quarterbacking. ugh. I have no problem telling people that I don’t know or care about it, but they always think i’m weird. Since that’s par for course with me, it doesn’t cause too much fuss.
Count me in. I am totally disinterested in sports and even more so in the chauvinism (local, national, whatever) that comes with it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a cricket (and I’m not even British) or football game if they are exciting enough. Ice hockey, on the other hand, is just plain boring (not to mention baseball or American football).