There is a social aspect a lot of people don’t think of. My sports watching days pretty much ended when I moved out of Texas. None of my friends watch or keep track of sports though they make an exception for the Olympics. I’m not having people at my house or going to theirs during football season to watch the game, and I kind of lost interest.
It is unusual for me to go to a movie with strong hopes/expectations for one protagonist and no knowledge of what will happen.
Didn’t intend to suggest we watched them for excitement. And acknowledged that tastes differ.
If you were a Bears fan, was the first half enjoyable? And the question is - what about it was enjoyable to you? Watching the ads? Waiting through injury timeouts?
The one I loved was when the Packer made the interception on the Bears 4th - essentially losing his team 20+ yards! But acting like he did something amazing.
I guess I wonder about calling it an exciting game, when 1/2-3/4 of it was boring to frustrating. As the Bears stank up the 1st half, were you saying, “This is exciting!”?
Then don’t watch.
Yeah, the OP is insufferable.
You don’t like football. We get it; it’s not an accomplishment.
I thought that was a very exciting game. I was mildly rooting for the Bears, and in the first half was interesting to see how poorly they played, and how good the Packers looked. The come from behind victory was the stuff of legends.
However, I cannot watch football or baseball live on TV. It is unwatchable. But waiting about an h our past kickoff and turning on the game so all commercials can be skipped (and halftime) is pure joy. We live in a magical time.
It is insufferable to attempt to understand what goes into people thinking differently than I do? Are you incapable of explaining what you enjoy about it?
At no point did I say anyone ought not enjoy it. Why on earth would it be insufferable to be asked to explain why you enjoy what you enjoy? If you were truly interested in my opinion, and said you did not enjoy watching or playing golf, or playing or listening to bluegrass music, I would be happy to explain to you why I enjoy those. I might suggest how you might wish to give them a try - as I did with the football yesterday. But I would not say they were better than whatever you enjoy. And if you simply said they were not your cup of tea, I would be fine with that and would not think any the less of you.
While, yes, there’s an element of “if you don’t like, it, just don’t watch it,” I have some sympathy with the OP’s questions.
I’ve been a football fan for pretty much my entire life. I grew up in Green Bay, where the Packers are close to a state religion, and, frankly, one of the only things that’s going on there. I am currently the holder of Packer season tickets, which have been in my family since the 1950s. I am a Packers shareholder.
Until fairly recently, I was an avid Packers fan, and an avid fan of professional football. I’m not anymore.
I still pay attention to whether the Packers win or lose, and why, but that is primarily so that, when I talk with my 92-year-old father, I can talk with him about the game (or the draft, or whatever). I haven’t watched a complete Packers game in over two years, and I didn’t watch a single play of last night’s loss to the Bears (though I checked the score online from time to time).
There are a couple of reasons for this, which I’ve shared in other threads here in recent years:
- I used to get very emotionally invested and wound up while I watched a Packer game, and frustrated, to the point of anger, when they did poorly. I realized, for my own sanity and blood pressure, that I just couldn’t do that anymore. (Were I still in that sort of mindset, last night’s collapse would have gotten me extremely upset.)
- It’s always been a commercialized sport, but the NFL’s relentless push for more exposure, and more money, have gotten really tiresome to me. They’ve made the scouting combine, and the draft, into multi-day media extravaganzas. Putting games on Thursday nights every week, and playing more and more games outside of the U.S., weaken the quality of play (less time to recover after a game, long air travel, etc.). Placing games on streaming services has made the league a ton of money, but makes it harder and more expensive for fans to watch. And, within the game, they have hyper-commercialized every moment of the game.
- Related to this: the NFL is now fully in bed with the sports wagering companies. This makes yet more money for the league, while it also means that the league is openly endorsing gambling (after decades of maintaining a distance from it), which is often a pernicious, addictive pastime. We’ve already seen players getting into trouble due to gambling, and that’s just going to grow; it’s only a matter of time before we discover that NFL players are attempting to affect the results of games for gambling purposes.
- It has always been a brutal sport, and continues to be so, with young men paying the price, with their bodies and their future health, for our entertainment. What we’ve learned about head trauma from playing football is tremendously tragic, but IMO, there’s no way to avoid that without radically changing the sport. Better helmets are good, but I believe that they are just a band-aid, at best; even with those, players are still enduring hundreds or thousands of sub-concussive hits as they play, and a significant number will still be developing mental and cognitive issues from playing the game.
A small bit of advice for anyone who is surrounded by a family/social group that loves a sport and you find it boring: Learn the Game. If you still hate it, that’s ok, but at least you won’t be bored because you’re confused or lost. You’ll be bored because you’re genuinely bored.
My mother, as did her own mother, hated football. Both women married men who ate, lived and breathed football. Grandma was resentful about it even until the day she died. Mom, on the other hand, decided, when my brother started playing on a team, that if she was going to be watching football every Friday/Saturday, she might as well learn the game. She did, and she grew to love football, and was a diehard Bears and Saints fan when she died last week. It’s too bad she didn’t get to see last night’s game. It was one for the ages.
On a personal note, I grew up absolutely hating that other kind of football 
. Then in 1994 the US hosted the World Cup, I decided to learn the game, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
I’ll also concede that there’s a lot not to like about the NFL. Their shameless appeal to toxic masculinity, their refusal to deal with CTE, their being in bed with the sports gambling industry, and yes, so much standing around (and this is coming from a fan).
Nevertheless, different strokes and all that.
Remember when it was the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, etc. Nwt every college bowl game is sponsored by a company. And NFL stadiums didn’t always come with naming rights. And the MLB putting corporate patches on player and officials’ uniforms. It’s all gross.
However, last night’s came was very entertaining. I’m sure it sucks for Packers fans, but that’s part of the allure. Someone wins and advances, and someone else loses and packs for the off season.
I am a fan of neither the Packers or Bears. I was not emotionally invested. With the huge improbable comeback the game was exciting and dramatic when taken as a whole. Trying to explain how the game as a whole was entertaining when minute 6 in the first quarter wasn’t is an exercise in futility.
I can relate to losing patience with pro sports as I got older. In my younger days I followed Tigers baseball and the Pistons; at least for the Pistons, in true fair weather fan fashion I watched and followed avidly when they won back to back championships in’89 and ‘90. Not so much after that. I tried to enjoy the run when the Red Wings had their dynasty years in the late 90s / early 2000s, but for whatever reason could not really get into it.
But as I got older, the sheer interminable length of the season and amount of regular season games for all but football just exhausted me. Especially baseball— what are there, like 160 games and change? 
But Pro football, there were a mere 16, now 17, regular season games. A fraction of the baseball season marathon. Every NFL game counts. Lose game one of the opener, you’re already in a hole you need to fight out of. Every play of every game matters more.
Sure, there’s downtime within a game, but I just pick up my iPad and check out the SDMB or something. When I played guitar more often, I’d mute the commercials and play until the game came back on. If someone gives me free tickets to a Tigers game, sure, I’ll enjoy a Summer day at the ballpark. But mostly I have patience for no other pro sports but football these days.
Why? I would have little difficulty trying to explain why I like a certain ice cream, breed of dog, or author, or do not like musicals or a certain architectural styles. And I would not be the least bit insulted, offended, or threatened if any of you felt differently than I. We could still engage in a discussion.
And you do not need to exaggerate to absurdism (minute 6 in the first quarter) to make your point. I watched over 1/2 hour of the telecast, covering 7-8 out of 60 minutes. From what I hear, the Bears did little throughout the entire 1st half - and into the 3d qtr.
When younger, I was a big fan of pro and college football and basketball. Watched pretty much every minute of the Bears SuperBowl season and consistently ran weekly pools in my office. Watched many a high school and college games while my 3kids were in marching band. I could explain to you why I enjoyed those sports then and why I do not now. I find it curious when people seem so defensive and aggressive by simply being asked why they enjoy one thing.
As a non-sports fan, I have to admit I am fascinated by the technology and skill involved in broadcasting a game. The long zoom lenses that are able to follow the ball from quite a distance, the cameras on wires above the field, etc. It’s all very impressive.
Since this is the only actual question in your OP, I will answer. Your internet connection wasn’t very good.
I’m in it for the bragging rights and the storylines. Packers vs Bears had great storylines throughout: new coach with the Bears: can he bring around a shitty/mediocre team to their first playoff win in years? To become the first Bears coach ever to win a playoff game his first year there? Will the out-for-blood Packers avenge their improbable loss to the Bears in the last game? Will the Bears pull off another crazy upset after being down 21-3 at the half against their bitter rivals? This was Caleb Williams’ first NFL playoff game – how will he fare? Bears haven’t won a playoff game since 2015 … can they finally break through again? And so on and so forth. There’s lots of great storylines going on in the game. And it was a cracker of a game to watch! Bears had only a 3% chance of winning at one point; last Packers game they were as low as 0.5% probability. A great coming back despite long odds against their fiercest rival. Plus Packers fans in my life can shut the fuck up for a moment, finally. I mean, it was awesome.
I’ll respectfully disagree (though it’s certainly possible).
I have a very good internet connection, and nearly never have any issues with streaming high-quality video through the Fire stick attached to my TV, including Amazon Prime video content. But, that’s not the case for me, for the live NFL games on Prime; the video quality nearly always seems considerably poorer than anything else I watch through my stick, as well as what I see on cable TV.
The feed Is almost never a problem for me. It certainly wasn’t last night.
My answer as a professional is that if you have quality issues with a streaming service and your cable or broadcast television is better, the most likely answer is that your connection has a bottleneck somewhere that is making it difficult to download the feed fast enough to buffer properly, causing it to downgrade the quality.
It’s not the only possible reason, but without more troubleshooting it’s the simplest and most likely reason.
I’ll defer to your expertise, @Atamasama , but it strikes me as odd that the only sort of video which has this problem on my stick is Amazon’s streaming NFL games.
That is one thing my wife marvels at as well.
I also marvel at the essentially superhuman feats displayed. For example, a receiver going up high for a fingertip catch while keeping both toes inbounds is as beautiful as many songs/works of art.
We both make some effort to expose ourselves to cultural phenomena that is very popular, but does not appeal to us, simply to have at least minimal exposure to what so many others feel important. And allow the possibility of amending our opinions. Much of popular music is a similar example.
Sure - if you care to ignore the title of the thread…
I find it curious - and amusing - that folk seem so defensive when simply asked to explain why they enjoy something. Oh - and when we turned the game off, streaming a program on Prime - the same platform - was flawless.
See, that is the kind of troubleshooting I’m talking about. 
If you test other streams on the same platform, and they are fine, then it’s clearly a different issue, not the internet.
But just given two data points, where streaming is poor but other television isn’t, then the internet seems the simplest reason.