I’m not a sports fan, but I think too often saying it is akin to saying “Oh, I never watch TV.” I get the feeling that there’s a bit of sneak bragging going on when people say it in certain circumstances-- their tastes are too sophisticated for sports-- despite the fact that I actually don’t care about sports either. Not that I’m charging anyone here with that, since it’s actually the topic of the thread. It’s when it’s said at parties or art galleries or local shows or whatever. I helmed my university’s philosophy club for a while, and it was almost like the club’s shibboleth. The participants were too busy thinking deep things to deign to notice eww… sports.
I honestly think I’m missing out on something of some cultural and social relevance, and it’s my own loss. Kind of the same feeling I get when I admit not really listening to country or jazz, or not watching Bollywood films.
I’ve heard that our obsession with sports has something to do with our primitive hunter/gatherer tribal nature. Our clan going up against your clan to see who’s the best and that sort of thing.
I think I’d be the asshole back then (years and years ago when going to war against neighboring tribes was in) whining about why should the warriors get all the perks and was war really necessary.
Ha, that’s probably especially true at my university. A few years ago the basketball team was discovered to have broken a whole bunch of NCAA eligibility rules back in the 1990s. As a result, they had to do all kinds of things to make up for it, which hobbled the team for the next several years. They still haven’t really come back from that, I guess.
My experience is just the opposite of Robby; was very into sports as a kid, played for years (not much good but loved to play); watched sports on TV mostly football and baseball. Never much into basketball. Had favorite college teams, pro teams, etc. Then I soured on sports about the time of the Baseball strike in 1972. I thought at the time that this is supposed to be entertainment, not a business. Boy, how wrong I was. TV watching started to go downhill; today I watch if it’s on at home which it isn’t most of the time. If I go to a restaurant or a bar and the TV is on sports I will watch but mostly because it’s on.
I still go to the occasional grand kids soccer, baseball or football game, but my interest in it is pretty much gone. I won’t watch the professional version much, nor college. High school, as I said if a relative is playing.
I’m rapidly approaching zero. I still watch bits of March Madness, but pro basketball has become personality driven and uninteresting. Haven’t watched a single football game in at least 20 years. Occasionally will watch boxing if someone like Manny Paquiao is fighting.
I’ll watch a highlight reel and be amused by the feats of skill, or the fluke shots, or the bloopers and such… but I can’t say I much care what cities or countries the players represent.
Actually, in recent years I’ve started hoping the Montreal Canadiens will get to the finals of the Stanley Cup (since there are some positive economic effects) but lose (so we don’t get a destructive celebratory riot).
Ha, yeah, that’s one thing that usually gives statisticians a tingle. That, and beer drinking, it seems. I went on a hike this summer with some statisticians from Florida, but I couldn’t remember whether it was Florida State or University of Florida. When I see those two names side-by-side, all I see are two large schools, one of which has a kickass stats program. I don’t see the apparently intense rivalry between them. I found out just how intense the rivalry was when I asked them how they liked University of Florida (turns out they were from Florida State :smack:) and they looked at me like I had pissed on their shoes.Whoops!
I will say that video games to me are what sports are to some people. I love them. I like talking about them, playing them, and even watching others play them (thanks, YouTube). Video gaming is much more popular than it used to be, but the lengths to which people will go to engage in that activity that are deemed socially acceptable aren’t nearly what they are for sports.
Around here, there are offices that close early on game weekends. Students get excused absences for big road games (from some instructors, not me). When I was in high school, one of the assistant principals would take off work and travel to every Dallas Cowboys homegame, when the drive was ~14 hours round trip. Hell, my office mate went to LSU, and said they would close campus on some Fridays.
Imagine everything that sports fans do, but put it with video games. Tailgating for LAN parties ? Taking whole weekends off when a new WOW expansion pack comes out? Spending $1000 on a trip to E3? I bet a lot of us gamers would be called “immature” for engaging in “kid stuff.” Oh, unless the game is Madden 2010:p
I’m a guy and I just can’t watch them. They’re slow and boring and I don’t understand what’s going on. And of course as I got older good luck trying to ask any male what was going on in the game (such as, what sport is this?) without getting snickering.
My coworker was going on about football season or whatnot starting (I don’t remember what season it is) and he started using words that were incomprehensible. I stopped him before he went to far into it and said “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” so then he used his Women-Folk speak on me and I finally understood
I do like sports, but I tend to play ones that are self accomplishment oriented and not team sports.
This is a very good book on the relationship between play and culture generation. I read it in the context of some research I was doing on dueling, but IIRC there is some material applicable to sports, too.
We just need to go live in South Korea. I have no interest in going to a football game but I would absolutely watch a pro SC2 tournament on a big screen with thousands of other people. I try to imagine a world in which people come to work the next day marveling over an innovative mech build or really risky gambit at the water cooler instead of whatever it is they talk about.
Every time the Canadiens make the playoffs, I know it’s time to batten down the hatches and give up on going downtown any evening in the next several weeks, ad even then I know that the results of all playoff games will be brought to my attention by bellowing baboons stampeding up and down my quiet residential street, not to mention by newscasters treating it as though it were some sort of an event.
I think this is just one of the things that makes a Doper unique. This is probably the only place that the OP can post this and be preaching to the choir (heck, the only other message board I regularly hang out on, the Official Jeopardy Fan Board has a few sports nuts on it and “look” at me strange when I say I don’t get/like sports.
I think this is just the jocks v. nerds dynamic after high school. Nerds will never understand sports, never did in high school, won’t start now. Jocks will never get an orgasm from advanced trigonometry.
I can’t quite say I have no interest in ANY sport. I boxed in high school and still like watching it; and if I walk into a room in which there is a tv showing women’s tennis I won’t necessarily change the channel, though that is probably just ogling. But I have negative interest in basketball and football.
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.
I’m absolutely astounded by how much perfectly normal people seem to care. Even a totally nerdy professor one day started talking about some game. Not just the game, but the intricacies of several specific team’s players. I’m thinking it must take hours to memorize who lost to who, and who traded who.
And, does anyone thinks it’s plausible that not knowing jack shit about sports will have a real impact on my future income?
I could not have less interest in sports except that people I like to hang out with like to watch games and are really easy to talk to while doing so. For the last two years I have had a lodger who watches all Bay Area sports except the As, American League not being real baseball. So if there is nothing to do I’ll sit and chat with him and ask about the details of what is going on. But I hadn’t followed the Giants or any other baseball team since the early 70s and I forgot many of the detailed rules about tagging up, bunting, fouls, consulting with the pitcher, etc. Football and baseball have the potential to be a lawyer’s paradise.
Taking whole weekends off when a new WOW expansion pack comes out? Spending $1000 on a trip to E3? I bet a lot of us gamers would be called “immature” for engaging in “kid stuff.” Oh, unless the game is Madden 2010:p
