Confession time--I am male, and have 0 interest in sports

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

And I mean, any sports. Name a sport–I don’t give a shit. I don’t hate sports, I just genuinely fail to see the attraction. I find it genuinely puzzling that what are essentially schoolyard games somehow ingrain themselves into human culture and become more than just games. As a kid, my dad never watched sports. He always read novels or listened to music. I was never taken to a ball game, nor did I ever play any sports as a kid. I’ve generally felt this same amazement of the hold that sports have over people for my entire life.

Right now, the only sport that’s even slightly on my radar is college football, mostly because it seems that everyone will either talk about school or about football. It’s basically inescapable, so I do pick up some tidbits here and there. Right now, I know who our coach is, and who we’re playing next week. That’s it. I couldn’t name a player, or assistant coach, on our team with a gun to my head.

One thing about college football that irks me is that these players are supposed to be students first, right? Yeah, right. Talk to any one of us who has had one in our class, and see how much studying is going on between games. I can’t believe some people actually believe that these athletes have academics on their minds over football. They’re there to play ball. Period. And that should be okay! They shouldn’t have to go on with this charade that they’re really interested in being students. I say, let them work as full-time football players for the university, and remove the student requirement. Hell, that’s practically what happens with many of them. They get a university studies degree (i.e., just collect 120 hours by taking random classes), and then come and get a second degree because they actually want to find a job.

It seems this has turned into a mini rant about college football, but that’s not really what I intended. My purpose in starting this is just to say “out-loud” that I have 0 interest in any sports, and see if there’s anyone out there in Dope land with a similar “affliction.” Here in Football Land, saying you just couldn’t care less about your school’s team is just a little bit frowned upon. I needed to get it off my chest.

Thanks.

2

I’m going to agree with you at least 95%. Living here in the hinterlands, you basically have to care about Husker football. If you don’t then you’re viewed as a Communist or alien. With that being said, feigning interest in sports has been a good social mechanism for me. It’s gotten me out and I’ve made some very good friends. Even though I don’t really care that much about the games proper, I love being part of the community and tailgating crowd at Husker games. As a result, I have generated some slight but real interest in the game.

Add in some interest in certain motorsports (noticeably rally driving) and I barely get my guy certification.

3

Yeah, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that if I want any friends, I need to feign interest. I did that last night, in fact, at a friend’s birthday party. He’s into betting, so he had a whole list of the college games last night and was ticking off the games he’d won money on.

In another life, I was a radio DJ in a small town, and one of our duties was to produce sports broadcasts for all the high school teams in the area. After 6 years of that, I learned enough of the lingo and rules to blend in to a sports-loving crowd. Even now, I can blend in fairly well, but it is exhausting sometimes because the games are so boring to me.

4

When I saw the thread title, my first reaction was “so?” but then I actually read the OP. I feel your pain. I go to a Big Ten university and have no interest in its athletic endeavors. I don’t usually go around proclaiming this, but on occasion it comes up that I have never been to a football game or something like that, and people are just in disbelief. One friend of mine actually became angry with me. I am not kidding - he started challenging me and all of my reasons for not being interested. (Which don’t come to much besides “I don’t care”, but he was not satisfied.)

However, I will note that a friend of mine in my program was a student athlete during our first year, which was his last year of NCAA eligibility. He was the captain of the basketball team and the only games I’ve watched our school participate in were when he and the team were competing in March Madness last year. (They got knocked out in the second round.) He took his academic success extremely seriously - he knew he was never going to be drafted into the NBA or anything - and I seriously have no idea how he managed to do both school and basketball at the same time. To top it off, he’s one of the most genuinely kind people I’ve ever known. So, I don’t know any other student athletes, but my experience with a limited sample size has been positive.

5

Count me in. Growing up in Chicago in the 60s and 70s, I learned the futility of being a sports fan of any sort. Ever since then, I have had absolutely zero interest in any sports, unless you count women’s jello wrestling.

6

In talking with a newly minted professor acquaintance of mine, I found out that in most colleges, the football program supports all the other sports programs, and that the other programs operate at a loss. At my university, I’ve heard, the seats in the basketball arena are rarely filled, even those reserved for season ticket holders. Football is king here. So maybe, if that’s the general way college sports goes, the students not playing football are made more aware by their coaches that this is about has high as most of them are ever going to get. The basketball players I’ve met are usually pretty nice, but the football players act as if rules of civilized society don’t apply to them. A couple of our football players several years ago were arrested and charged with burglary even.

People who played baseball and golf were always good students too, maybe because they garner even less attention than basketball players.

7

I understand, statsman1982. I’m female and have 0 interest in shoes. In fact, if the world were designed so it was possible to be barefoot 100% of the time, I’d be happier. Other women gush over how they’re so happy they found the perfect shoes, and how you can never have too many, and it’s awesome if they match an outfit you wear once a year max, and I’m left standing there thinking “what are you talking about? how can you possibly care so much about something whose primary purpose is to protect your feet from sharp objects and animal scat?” It sort of makes you feel like an outsider to not get something so commonly admired by your own gender, doesn’t it?

8

I’m indifferent enough to homegrown sports, but try being an American in a part of the world that follows “futbol.” If your society simply has to have these masturbatory aggression outlets by jingoistic proxy, I think actually going to war makes more sense than wrapping your national pride in that kind of stupidity.

9

It’s the same reason that athletes endorse products for men while models endorse products for women: the viewer wants to be them or be with them. If you have no desire for either, that’s fine, but that’s like saying you don’t believe in evolution.

10

I feel the same. I just don’t get excited about football.
Here in Boston, every day there is something about NE Patriots QB Tom Brady…his new contract, his car accident, his wife Giselle, their baby, what the baby wore…etc., etc.
I mean, I can understand a geniune fan’s interest, but all this Brady stuff simply leaves me scratching my head and wondering…:smack:

11

I agree, I am male, 49 and care nothing for sports, never have.

What funny is that a professioal football player is a pal of mine, we’ve had dinner at each other’s houses (my definition of “pal”) swell family.

However, I did like to watch the olympic kayak racing as a child I remember.

12

I’m in the non-sports camp, as well. I really couldn’t care less about any professional sport. I don’t watch baseball or football. I don’t watch the Superbowl. Or the Olympics.

I do like participating in sports - I’ve played on baseball teams when i was a kid, and on into grad school. Also organized team sports like softball, soccer, water polo, and ultimate frisbee. And i like solo sports like cycling, swimming, and skiing. But I don’t like watching even the ones I enjoy or television, or even in person.

13

Never have understood why everyone gets so excited. I’ll watch the Superbowl for the commercials. If the World Series goes to 7 games, I might watch the 7th, unless I can cut the lawn - which is more interesting.

When friends talk sports I usually ask, “is that the game with the round ball, the pointy ball or the sharp pointed sticks?”.

14

I don’t like Team Sports. Not a one and I don’t watch any, not even for the commercials. In fact if there is a ball in it, I don’t watch it, even bowling and golf which I guess and not team sports. Hmm? Maybe I will just say I don’t watch sports involving a ball of some kind.

Pretty much everthing I watch is fighting of some kind; boxing, wrestling, MMA, kickboxing, etc.

Don’t get me too wrong, I play sports, bowl, golf, basketball, softball almost anything, but I don’t like watching other people do them.

15

Count me in.

We had a similar thread a few months ago.

16

A man with zero interest in sports, I can believe—but a statsman with zero interest in sports? :slight_smile:

I think college football (and basketball) should be similar to college baseball: an option for players with or without pro aspirations who actually want a college education, but not a necessary stepping stone to a pro career, and not Big Business.

17

Up until eight years ago or so, I would have agreed with just about everything in your post. My father (and later, my stepfather) never watched sports. Both did encourage me to play some team sports (T-ball, elementary school flag football, and Little League), but each time I played, it was a miserable experience for me. I was terrible, and my teammates made sure I knew it. I never played each of these sports for more than a season. (Much later, in high school, I did have moderate success as a competitive swimmer.)

Anyway, professional sports were a complete bore to me. I could never get into it, and was pretty well isolated in conversation with other guys because of it. College sports weren’t any better. It wasn’t helped by the fact that my college football team was pretty bad (but the Rice Marching Owl Band (MOB) was a great show. We used to say, “OK, the game starts at noon, so we’ll get there by 1 p.m. to catch the MOB, and be out of there by 2 p.m. at the latest.” :wink: )

March madness was a complete snore for me–and still is.

When I moved to New England as an adult, and the Patriots later won their first Superbowl, I still really didn’t care at that point. I don’t even remember watching the game.

But something changed for me around 2002. After the Patriots won their first Superbowl, my wife started watching most of their games, so I started watching them, too. To my surprise, once I learned the players and the game better, I actually started to enjoy watching football. I started catching more games, and got even more into it. When TiVo-type boxes came out, and I could rewind the action for things I’d missed, it helped even more.

Now I never miss a Patriots game. Go figure. I never would have guessed that I’d get so much into a sport.

I still can’t get into baseball, basketball, hockey, or soccer, though. We sometimes get free tickets and go to a local minor league baseball game about once a year, but just for the hot dogs and beer. Watching the game itself is like watching paint dry, IMHO.

See above. Tom Brady is awesome. Plus, he’s a real rags-to-riches story. He was a backup quarterback in college who never became the starter. In the NFL, he was a sixth-round draft pick who started his first season as the 4th-string quarterback. That first season, he completed 1 of 3 passes for a grand total of 6 yards. The next season he had advanced to the #2 position, but still languished in the background until Drew Bledsoe (the starting QB) got injured, at which point Brady took over and took the team on to win its first Superbowl.

P.S. I didn’t learn any of this until a couple of years after the fact. :wink:

18

I feel exactly the same. I would much rather go outside and do something than sit and watch any sporting event. I haven’t been to a super bowl party in years, but I’d usually end up in the kitchen talking with whoever was there and spent no time watching the game.

I do enjoy going out and inline skating, bike riding, walking and the like but can’t sit and watch others do it.

The one thing I used to like about the super bowl when I lived in the DFW area was when the Cowboys were in during the 90’s, the bike trails were practically deserted on the day of the game. It was awesome.

19

Hell, I have zero interest in watching ‘other people’ doing sports.

20

Amen, brother.