Watching: I don’t find any personal meaning in it. Team X beats Team Y. How exactly has that made my life better? I suppose I could go the analysis route as with literary or art critique, but honestly there’s only so much you can say about the strategy of running a ball from one end of the room to the other. It gets boring pretty fast.
Playing: I grew up where I wasn’t wanted on any team sports, so I learned individual ones, and I still prefer them. I don’t need anyone but myself, so I’m not stuck waiting/cajoling/begging others to get together so I can do something. I can run or bike whenever I want, on my own schedule.
For me, if I exercise enough to build up a real sweat, more often than not I spend the rest of the day with a splitting, raging headache. Kind of puts a damper on the whole “fun” aspect.
Also, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t pretend to give a fuck as to which direction a ball is moving.
I don’t know why, I just don’t. I’m not that competitive, I guess. Don’t have that “killer instinct”.
And as for watching sports, again, I don’t know why, I’m just not into it. It’s probably one of those things where you either get it or you don’t. I don’t.
Somehow I developed all of those traits without ever having played any sports. How do you suppose that happened?
As far as why I don’t enjoy sports, blame it on my grammar school gym teacher, Milt, who is at this moment wearing a fire tutu and being ill-used by demons if there’s any justice.
Scotty - really, this is the crux of it. You like sports, you like playing sports. That is great! I mean that honestly.
But, why does your like of playing sports have to extend to everyone? There are plenty of people who share your like of playing sports. Lots and lots of people. But not ALL people. Those people who do not like playing sports as much as you are just fine, thank you very much. Why call them into question?
I wanted to kill myself in gym class as a little kid. I have never played a sport unless I was forced.I am not interested in winning, and I hate the way people act when they are competing. I have poor depth perception and am clumsy. I can’t catch, throw, or hit balls with a racket. Also, I was the smallest kid in the class my whole life. Getting checked by a 150-lb 7th grader is no joke when you are 4’10" and 70 lbs.
I don’t know why everyone doesn’t share my love of Jane Austen. Her books are funny, well written masterpieces. Reading her characters gives me a better insight into my own character and has made me a better human being.
Due to untreated asthma in my youth, I frequently found attempts to participate in sports ending in dizziness, black spots in front of my eyes, chest pain, and coughing, sometimes to the point of vomiting. It provided a form of adverse conditioning that has not entirely left me.
I do enjoy serious walking, riding my bike, swimming, and other sports that did not have that effect on me growing up.
However, most of my experiences with teams ports ended with me on the ground feeling half-suffocated while my teammates yelled at me and called me loser. That’s why I’m not particularly enthused with team sports. Your mileage may vary, of course.
My spouse spent most of his childhood in a wheelchair. He pretty much doesn’t care for team sports, either, probably due to being more or less unable to participate (there were many fewer opportunities for the handicapped to engage in sports back then, as compared to now).
This is true, and if people like playing sports, more power to them! But usually we enjoy activities we’re good at. I’m not particularly coordinated or athletically talented. My memories of team sports date back to grade school, when I was always the last one chosen for a team.
Many activities in life, if embraced with determination, promote discipline, confidence, teamwork, and health. And there is nothing intrinsic to “exercise” that says you have to play a sport. Heck, I bet a non-sports workout regime of running, lifting weights and swimming is probably better exercise than a similar amount of time spent playing softball.
Given that we’ve had about ten thousand threads on the SDMB along the lines of “I Don’t Understand Why People Like Sports,” maybe it was just time to try it the other way around for once.
i’m actually surprised as many people love sports to the extent that they do. i watch basketball and football because i played basketball and football. i like watching their tactics, their decisions, and their ability to do what i personally cannot. it’s the nuances of the plays that get me excited - an appreciation for the difficulty of what they’re doing and how they made it look so easy. i get a similar chill when i hear good music, taste good food, or read good books.
if i had to watch football the same way the unwashed masses watch football - cheering for some guy to advance the ball 10 yards at a time, i’d be infinitely bored yet there are TENS of MILLIONS of people who do exactly that. coincidentally if i had to watch basketball as the unwashed masses - watching some guy throw a ball through a ring - all without context? i’d be doubly bored. possibly as bored as when i’m forced to watch baseball.
honestly, every single year i sit down with my buddies and there’s about a 50-50 split as to who’s played football before and who hasn’t. those who haven’t are invariable WAY more pumped than those who have. they wear jerseys, they know more players, they know more stats… they’re totally in tune. we who have played? quiet comments on “good play” for boring 3rd and long hitch plays where the receiver scrambles for the extra 2 yards for the first down - and less crazy on the highlight blown coverage over-the-top 40 yard bombs. shrug.
i’ve never actually brought this up lest i be branded a sports snob but honestly… this thread needs to be directed in the opposite persuasion.
Competitive sports are pure boredom. Everybody follows a few rules and somebody only wins when somebody else loses. People act like it matters. I never found the slightest trace to enjoy.
I enjoy hiking, quite a great deal, because the woods and fields are so beautiful and peaceful. It also feels good to have the body moving that way. If that counts, well, I don’t dislike that sport. But I’m not sure the things I like about it are much aligned with it being a sport. I would also like just sitting out there and staring, if it weren’t for the mosquitos.
I can enjoy playing some of them, although frankly mandatory gym scarred a lot of that out of me. But I don’t understand at all the concept of watching sports for fun. Especially on TV. It drives me up a wall that every single stinking day since sometime in June (except for two days when an important civil rights guy died here) there has been, above the logo, a football player on the front page of the newspaper. It is not fucking football season.
I played sports as a kid when forced to and as an adult to bond with my co-workers but I have no real interest at all - and I live in Boston! My sports-crazy sister forced me to tour Fenway Park with her and I was surprised at how fascinating it was but that was more about the history/ancedotes about the place. I recommend the tour even as a non-sports fan. The closest I usually get to a sport is watching ‘Iron Chef’ in ‘Kitchen Stadium’.
Because sport is the direct descendant of gladiatorial combat, and sadistic displays of people being raped by animals, burnt alive, etc. in the arena. Sport has become more humane, but not nearly as much as art and literature in the last 2,000 years. If this trend continues, where will sport be compared to the arts in another 2,000 years?
