I’m wathcing golf right now; it’s awesome. Tiger just put it in the water taking a double bogie. There a five people in contention to win.
After this is over I’ll be watching hockey till 10:00ish.
I played hockey, softball, golf, and curling. I still golf weekly during golf season here, about 5 months.
It’s the original reality TV.
I like sport, though I much prefer doing to watching- however since I injured my knee a few years ago I’m pretty much limited to watching.
The only sport I probably prefer watching to playing is snooker. I’m a pretty good pool player (UK 8-ball), I’ve even beaten 1 or 2 England international pool players over the odd frame (though tbh I’m still below County level). However snooker is probably the most difficult sport I’ve encountered to even do an imitation of being a good player and the tactical elements which I enjoy the most when watching only really come into play at level that I couldn’t hope to attain (and I have actually played a fair amount of snooker).
I love football (soccer), I much preferred playing to watching, though I still enjoy watching, I used to watch my local team a bit, but the only team I have any real passion for is England and I have to admit every 4 years I become despondent when we fail to win the World Cup.
Most other sports I can take or leave, but I will watch if the mood takes me.
Played a bit of field hockey & soccer at school.
I find about 98% of sport to be stunningly boring to watch. The other 2% is the various Olympic or Commonwealth games (maybe the World Cup soccer).
Even then the TV coverage is usually so bad here (look its the 35th heat of the 100m freestyle that happens to have an Australian swimming it it - let’s broadcast that and ignore everything else thats going on) that I don’t bother with it much.
Big football fan here. And this year alone I also picked up watching bball, nascar, golf, and hockey. I see a lot of people dont enjoy the “insert the ball to the hole” mentality of sports, but I enjoy the team aspects, the leadership, the determination, and all the other human dynamics that come out of the desire to compete in a socially acceptable way. Its great.
I played a little bit at very low levels, nothing beyond a bench warmer by high school age. I’m just not a very good athlete, slow of foot and reflex. But I love me a good game either on TV or (preferably) live. Mostly football, baseball, and hockey, but I’ll look at some basketball and soccer on occasion when it gets down to playoffs or major championship competitions.
Basically this. Being an athlete doesn’t necessarily mean you also must be a fan.
Ran track at a high level, played hockey, football, baseball, soccer, golf, downhill skiing, and basketball. I currently play hockey, golf, ski, and run triathlons. I love numbers and competition so sport has, is, and will be right in my wheelhouse.
I love watching sports and the ones I tend to appreciate most are the ones I didn’t compete in or didn’t excel in nearly as much.
I played a bit in grade school and high school whenever I was forced to. The things I remember are 1. being really lousy most of the time and 2. teammates who were WAAAY too into it, a toxic combination. (Yo, Leighton, you’re going to be a struggling-to-survive ditch digger in a few years; volleyball isn’t that big a part of your life, mmkay?) P.E. was almost universally about savage, vicious, adrenaline-soaked competition, sometimes with a crowd on hand screaming for blood. This did not give me a positive opinion of P.E.
So the heck with it. I have my treadmill and I’m happy with it. And the only thing that’s the least bit surprising about that is that it’s not “Nordictrack” or “elliptical machine” instead of “treadmill”*.
As for watching, my tastes have changed vastly in the past couple of years alone (let alone since childhood), so a brief current tally:
Football (college & NFL): Used to be something of a fan…I remember the Broncos against the Packers in the Super Bowl and hoping really hard that this would be the time…not so much now. There simply have been too many unsatisfying results for me to keep caring. Patriots fail to complete 19-0, ensuring that ESPN will keep blathering about Mercury Morris for the next 50 years**. Slimeball Art Modell rips the heart out of Cleveland and is rewarded. Barry Sanders retires in disgust. Bengals see their one shot at happiness taken away by a jaw-dropping miracle drive. Seahawks the victim of possibly the most brazen robbery in history. Michael Vick crashes and burns. Kurt Warner sees his career sink into the abyss an inch at a time. As for the college side, not much has changed for Hawaii, well, ever: They can be truly awful, they can have flashes of greatness against weaker teams, and most of the time they’re just a notch below average.
Golf: The problem with there being only one guy anyone cares about is…well, there’s only one guy everyone cares about. (That he has all the warmth and charm of a toxic waste dump certainly doesn’t help, either.) I actually had some interest when there were big names like Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh to provide some competition.
Basketball/baseball: I can watch snippets at a time, but just too many delays and breaks and pauses for me to catch anywhere close to a full game. Besides that, the only story I find compelling right now is what the fallout will be if LeBron James gets a third ring. And I don’t find it THAT compelling.
Soccer: Yes, there’s the potential for excitement, but these moments are so few and far between that I can’t be bothered to catch a full game. Now, of course, the whole enterprise has become so nakedly corrupt that I can’t even take it seriously as a sport anymore. It just hasn’t been the same since France won the World Cup, has it? 
NASCAR: I tuned out for good when spectators started cheering Jeff Gordon wrecks. I’m bewildered that this received near-blanket tolerance (never mind the wink-wink-nudge-nudges on ESPN, which is usually good about calling out BS behavior). Haven’t seen much of a reason to return, especially with drivers now deliberately causing wrecks and somehow not receiving massive suspensions for it.
MMA: I actually liked the early years better (especially on DVD). It was so wild and free and fun, a good time had by all, and you never knew what to expect. Now, it’s almost like Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling, where the competitors are so evenly matched that its hard for anyone to stand out. (I understand that there are exceptions, but they’re largely confined to PPV, so I unfortunately haven’t seen much of them.) One thing I’d like to get my hands on is a nice, comprehensive CroCop retrospective. That man was a force of nature.
Olympics: The good news is that with the medal count issue finally put to bed, we’re free to focus on individuals, like we should have all along. The bad news is…the coverage still sucks. There’s just no getting around it. Honestly, I don’t mind beach volleyball or gymnastics or swimming, but do we need that much? How about judo, or fencing, or kayaking, or handball. Traditional disciplines are find, I’d just like more of them. And get those stupid yoo-ess-ay chants off my TV. I know where I am, dammit.
Poker: Not a sport. 
** Did I mention pretty much zippo debate about how much the perfect regular season should enter the discussion? I believe I mentioned something like that. On this very website, no less.
I went to a baseball game about 20 years ago. Other than that, I have never watched any type of sport, either live or on TV. Sports simply don’t appeal to me, at all.
I’m a terrible fan, finding myself incapable of identifying closely with a particular team, but I really like watching a good football (American or global) game between two closely matched and enthusiastic teams. The strategy and the plays leading up to an unknown ending are hugely entertaining to me.
I used to play and enjoy a few sports on casual levels, but I have never understood the phenomenon of being attached to some “local team” that isn’t even made up of local people and which may in fact be comprised of people who were playing for the “bad guys” just last year.
The idea of being a “sports fan” to me, seems like some sort of holdover from mankind’s primitive past or something. 
ENJOYING sports for the sense of competition is one thing, but cheering for “your team” is just some weird tribal throwback.
Similar to some … I played many sports (still do, when I can) and I enjoy watching sports a great deal. But I’ve never been one to care that much about them. I generally don’t know which team is in which place, who’s on injured reserve, what the league leaders’ stats are, etc.
Around playoff time for baseball and football, I usually pay more attention. And every four years, the World Cup is my religion, but in general, though I thoroughly enjoy watching sports, I just don’t have the attention span or short term memory it takes to give that much of a shit about the minutia.
I was talking to my Mom at the very moment you were writing this. I’m trying to have a nice mother’s day conversation and she’s going “Oh no, Tiiiger (that’s how she says it) just hit it in the water.” OK mom, I’ll let you go back to watching golf. The only thing more boring than watching golf is having it described over the phone. She is 89 and has never played golf but loves to watch it.
I voted “I don’t watch sports in general, but I play(ed) them”. I am assuming that football, baseball, soccer, basketball, hockey, bowling, golf, and tennis, count as “sports in general”, and weightlifting, bodybuilding, powerlifting, and judo count as sports I play(ed).
Basically, if it is popular, I usually don’t watch it. I watch the Summer Olympics, but not the women’s gymnastics, which means I skip about half the TV coverage. Track and field is fine in reasonably small doses, swimming in somewhat larger doses, women’s beach volleyball gets boring once I have seen the skinny women in bikini tops jump a few times, and then I am fine for four more years.
Regards,
Shodan
Used to follow colege and pro football and hoops quite closely. I remember being upset that all of the Bulls’ preseason games were not televised, so I listened to them on radio. These days, I cannot remember the last time I turned on a pro or college team game. I’m not sure how much you would need to pay me to attend one in person - at least several hundred dollars. Can’t imagine much less boring than watching a baseball game - either in person or on TV.
I would love the Olympics, but hate the way they are televised - which has little to do with sport. I guess I’ve just really cut down on the amount of TV I watch. I would derive more enjoyment from walking over to a local park or highschool with my dog and watching some kids play basebal, soccer, football - than spending the money and effort to see the Cubs/Sox/Bars/Bulls/Hawks.
Only sport I regularly watch on TV is golf. Used to watch some NHB, but grew tired of it as my fighting days faded further into the past.
In high school I was on the track and golf teams. In college I mainly played a ton of pickup and co-rec hoops. Then I played quite a bit of softball (16") and hoops. For a decade or so I did quite a bit of martial arts, including BJJ, kickboxing, NHB, and escrima tourneys. That was probaby the best shape I was ever in, and the most competitive I ever was - peaking around age 40. Some injuries ended that, after which I fenced a bit, and ran, including a marathon. Some more injuries/surgeries. Now the only competitive sport I participate in is golf. I run, swim, and hike and do situps/pushups for exercise.
I’m in the smallest cohort. I was a bookish nerd as a kid and though I kinda enjoyed stuff like swimming and shooting free throws in my backyard, I was way too uncoordinated to thrive in actual competition. I was typically in the bottom three in any team picking ;). My parents were also largely uninterested in such things, so I didn’t even grow up watching sports. About the only time it came up was when some stupid sports event would run late and preempt Disney on Sunday nights.
That gradually changed as I got older. First getting vaguely interested in things like the Wide World of Sports through my step-brothers. Then when I moved to CA in my early teens my new best friend in HS was a sports fanatic, including being a major collector of Baseball and NBA paraphernalia and I started absorbing some mild interest by osmosis. When I was a young college student I eventually got a job working at the Oakland Coliseum and worked a lot of A’s ( La Russa-Canseco-Stewart-McGwire-Eckersley era ) and Warriors games ( Don Nelson’s Run-TMC era ). By the time I was in my twenties I had developed an appreciation for a variety of sports and regularly followed them.
These days I’m mostly a “casual fan” - I read the sports page in my local newspaper almost every day, follow a few local teams, but only intermittently watch games on TV. I never attend actual games anymore. My interest waxes and wanes quite a bit - for a season or two I followed the Sharks religiously, now I almost never watch hockey. Some years I watch five pro football games, some years twenty-five. I read sports threads on this board, but only rarely participate. Etc.
Played softball at school when I was a kid, but lost all interest in it during the summer after fifth grade. Have never been interested in basketball, American football or soccer. Was forced to play football, basketball and baseball in high school, but haven’t willingly participated in a ball game of any kind since those fifth-grade games.
Watched a few Australian rules football games back around '80-'82, because they were so different from anything else, but since then the only sport I’ve watched is gymnastics (mainly because I’m so amazed by the things those people can do with their bodies).
My opinion is similar to Homer Simpson’s:
(Voted for watching sports and having played them)
Sports are a form of performance art. With a whole shitload of added pressure involved.
I don’t particularly care for American sports, because I don’t think that they take any skill. Oh, you were born to be tall and/or fast? Big fucking deal. It says a lot that when American Football fans talk about the “Super” Bowl they mostly talk about the TV ads rather than the few minutes in which the sport is actually being played.
And Americans call the winners of their domestic competitions of sports that nobody else even plays “World Champions”. The Baltimore Ravens being declared “World Champions” of American Football is laughable. It’s a friggin’ joke. Nobody else even plays that sport, FFS.
But for a person to have the natural talent to play in an actual World Cup Final played between nations that care? That is indeed a big deal.
Can you even imagine what it is like for a Lionel Messi or a Sachin Tendulkar to walk onto the field with his whole country behind him? It’s like Mikhail Baryshnikov walking out onto a dance floor with the pride of the USSR at stake. It’s like Beethoven stepping in front of an orchestra with the pride of Germany at stake.
Omitting individual physical activities like going for a long walk or climbing a mountain, things that are both individual efforts and not organized so as to compete with others…
I’m capable of being a spectator at a sport and enjoying it and on rare occasions have been either on a team or competed as an individual in some kind of organized sporting event and enjoyed that.
Sports comes in somewhere down below attending interesting lectures, eating out, listening to music, hanging out talking with my partners & friends, posting to the straight dope, going to the theatre, reading, writing, observing crowd and small-group behavior, washing dishes, going for a drive, cleaning up the files on my hard drive, paying my bills, doing the laundry, and picking toe jam out from under my toenails. It’s way unimportant and I don’t think about it for months at a time, but I don’t detest it or anything.