How does a non-sports oriented dad relate to a sports-obsessed son?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have an 8 year old son (and a 10 year old daughter) that are both very athletic. The 8 year-old son in particular is very into football (mostly) as well as baseball.

In contrast, I am very sedentary, my knowledge of sports is laughable, and worst of all I have little interest in sports. Plus, I have four kids total, and a demanding job, so I don’t have a lot of leisure time.

My son knows all the team members of his favorite baseball and football teams, he made travel football, also plays baseball and soccer, and sports is a huge part of his life.

So, what can I do to come up to speed given that I know extremely little? Is there a “sports for dummies” book? Is there anything you’d recommend? I’ve faked it up to this point, which was easier when the kids were smaller, but the thought of being at travel football games, and sitting in the stands with parents who follow everything, is making me a bit nervous…

Thanks.

2

You can learn an awful lot just by watching them. If you’re confused about basic rules, you can easily learn them on line, but the best way to learn appreciation is by watching.

3

How about taking them to big league/college games whenever possible?

Or buying sports video games and enjoying the many ass kickings they’ll give you playing the games?

4

Which is I guess my basic problem. I don’t know if I’m wired differently, but I just see lots of people running on the field. I generally know people are trying to advance the ball, but just by watching, I can’t tell what the running back is trying to do (I don’t even know what the “running back” position is), where he is supposed to be, what he is supposed to do etc. I just see a lot of randomness.

Even when I watch kids soccer, I can’t keep track of who kicked the ball out of bounds, or who then is supposed to throw it in. I had to work the sidelines once, and it took all my concentration to try and point in the right direction after the ball got kicked out. And even then, I screwed it up a lot of the time. Stuff that other people naturally “get”, I don’t…

5

If you want to easily kill half an hour while the boy rants, just ask him “How 'bout them Raiders huh?” and sit back while he goes off on you and horrible taste in teams. Conversely, find out which two teams are the most popular right now, as well as the main players and ask him about the ones he hates and just let him go. :wink:

Sure it’ll take a little research, but the result will be worth it. If he doesn’t get up in arms about your comments, berate him for not being a true sports fan. :slight_smile:

6

I’m sure there is a For Dummies book, and hopefully someone who knows sports better than me (be assured, my knowledge is less than yours!) can help you out. But in general, I wouldn’t worry too much. I think that if you are genuinely supportive of your child, you don’t need to know the details. I’m just basing this on my memory of how, when I was a teenager, my favourite activities were those of which my parents were completely ignorant. There were no expectations, they applauded every effort, no matter how poor the result (and they often had no idea how bad it was), and they weren’t coaching from the metaphorical sidelines. I’m not saying that you won’t want to learn a bit, just that you’re not necessarily dooming your relationship if you just take the kids to the park and let them play, rather than teaching football skills.

Edited to add that I’m built like you. All those years of gym class and I still never learned the rules to most games, beyond “run in the direction of the ball, don’t get too close in case someone passes it to you, and if someone does, pass it on immediately, hopefully to someone on the same team.”

7

I don’t know if they have something like this where you are, but there was a very Mad Men-ish article in the paper a few days ago about a weekly football class they’re having for women at the university. You know, so you can talk to your man about football. (As if there were a single human being who doesn’t live in my house who doesn’t follow USC or Clemson football the way other people watch a soap opera in this town.)

8

For game rule and strategy basics look at the general wikipedia entries for baseball, basketball, soccer, etc.
If you want to keep up on the current events of professional sports to learn relevant player and team names watch ESPNs Sports Center once a day.

9

There’s a copy of *Football for Dummies * sitting on our bookshelf right now. There’s probably one for baseball as well.

I’m sort of in the same boat. I have some knowledge of sports but I’m not interested in them. What I am interested in is my kids. When my daughter took fencing, I learned the difference between a foil and an epee (which I’ve since forgotten). When my sons tried out for baseball, football, golf, etc. I made sure I knew enough to ask why my son chose a 6-iron instead of a 7.

If you’re motivated (and it sounds like you are) get a Dummies book, read it (or at least those “the least you need to know” sections) and then try watching a game. You won’t get everything the first time around, but you’ll understand a little more each time.

10

When I turned 18 I found I had nothing in common with my Dad. I don’t guess this is too uncommon for men when they start becoming a man.

Since we had no common ground I decided I would start watching the NFL, so that we would at least have something to talk about. It took me a long time to learn the rules and understand, mostly because I was too proud to ask questions. (I now know that giving him a chance to share his knowledge would have been a gift to him. I wish I had been wiser.)

In any case, once I learned the rules I really learned to like American football. (I never did learn to like baseball.) I still love it and think of him often when our Steelers are winning.

Give it a try. Watch a game with him. Ask him about the rules and ask him why the team would run instead of pass on this play. Or what his strategy would be.

11

Why on earth would you want to turn to a Sports for Dummies book, when you’ve got a little expert in your own family who I bet would absolutely love to be the ‘teacher’ and for you to be the ‘student’?

12

Spend time watching and enjoying your child’s activity? If you go to your son’s football games and really care about and enjoy watching you can’t help but learn about it. Or maybe you are at the second stage - How do I learn more? You volunteer. Most teams my kids dealt with would take a blind monkey as a volunteer if he looked like he would make an effort.

My sons went through a number of different sports that I knew nothing about, except that my kid was doing it and that made it the most exciting sport there is. I never did figure out some of what was going on in lacrosse but my kid was awsome at whatever was going on down there - I think - that’s what I’m going with until proven otherwise.

13

Most people are happy to explain what’s going on. If you’re going to games and sitting with the other parents just ask them whets going on. My mom hated football but after 5 years of coming to my games in high school she started to watch some college games and enjoy that. She could talk about the games with me after college and while she still only watches a handful of games year she at least knows what is going on now. Just ask, even if it’s as simple as naming the positions.

To start off with here’s an easy one; The center guards the tackle’s tight end. Is the easiest way to remember the positions on the offensive line from the middle out (center, guard, tackle, tight end)

14

If you want to learn about a sport you have to watch it. I know you think you can’t get it. You’re wrong; all mainstream sports are conceptually simple.

The only way to learn it is to watch it. It helps to have someone there to answers any questions you have, but they need to keep their yaps shut most of the time and let you watch. Your kids, for example. Why not ask them?

15

Another easy suggestion is to pop into the Game Room forum on the SDMB and ask some questions or read some of the sports threads there.

16

If you know you and your son will be watching (For example) the Jets - Cowboys game today. At some point during the day, open up the the sports page from your newspaper. Read and take notes of the highlights of what the sports writer’s thoughts are of the game. Then just basically repeat those key notes or thoughts to your son as if they were your own.

It sounds a little sneaky but this method has worked for me for several years and I haven’t been caught yet!!:smiley:

I do like sports a little. I just don’t become interested until the play offs and even then I am only interested if the team playing is from my home town Dallas.

17

My family has all sorts:
the Gramps from Hell was a soccer referee for ages (my female cousin on that side and a male cousin on the other side have refereed as well),
my aunt (GfH’s daughter) and her son are completely nuts about Barça FC, a team for which GfH’s hate is hot enough you could use his living room as a smelter when they’re all there,
Dad (GfH’s son-in-law) would sit on anybody who tried to keep him from his weekly match on TV (specially if one of the teams was “his” Osasuna), but was extremely moderate as Spaniards go,
Middlebro gets hives when soccer is mentioned, but he needs to keep up on it due to being a construction foreman: most of his guys have only three things they can talk about and Middlebro prefers soccer to “chicks I’d like to do” (the third thing is politics, which can get dangerous depending on who’s in that day),
Lilbro doesn’t just love it, he’s one of those guys who can tell you which guys started for each team, who was sitting out and when did any replacements happen, as well as who and when got expelled, who and when scored and who and when failed any penalty shots, for a surprising amount of matches from the last, oh… 100 years and change? (you know, since the first soccer match on Spanish soil)

I like soccer about as much as I like my yearly girly-bits checkup. But some basic knowledge is required for social reasons.

So, what do Middlebro and me do?

  • We’ve never been afraid to ask questions. If I’m home and the TV mentions “a change in offside rules,” next time I see Lilbro I ask him what change is that. He’s always happy to talk soccer, and wasn’t “teaching the ignorant” one of the Beautitudes? I used to do the same when there was a game on TV, that’s how I got to learn the basic rules. I still can’t see an offside until they repeat it with magic-marker arrows, but “my men” are still happy that I know what it is.
  • We’ve learned when to let our mind roam and when to pay attention, while They talk about their favourite stuff. This is the same as when, say, Mom starts telling me about her latest conversation with one of her friends… for the third time in only two hours. Basic conversational skill, you know.
  • Check out newspaper covers. I didn’t need to read the whole badly-written article to find out that Real Madrid hired a new forward: it was on the cover of. Every. Single. Newspaper. And a few glossies (the dude is an Official Heartthrob, you see).
18

aaelghat, you’re me before I met and married Mrs Piper. I live in Saskatchewan, where the Saskatchewan Roughriders are a religion. Mrs Piper and all her family are fanatics who go to as many games as possible, even if that means driving three hours to the game and three hours home. When they couldn’t go to a game, they listened on the radio (if the black-out hadn’t been lifted on the t.v.). One sister would write down all of the plays during the course of a game as she listened on the radio. Two of them went on a 24 hour bus ride to Toronto to watch the Riders when they unexpectedly made it to the Grey Cup in 1989.

My family were agnostics. We didn’t know nothing about the game, and didn’t really care.

Then Mrs Piper and I got together, and I realised that I’d better learn something about it, since it was such a big part of her life and her family.

So we started going to games together, and I started asking her questions. And yes, I found it very confusing and hard to follow. So I asked her lots of questions. She found it a bit irritating if I asked at a key play “What are they doing?”, but she humoured me. (At one point, we were at the game with a friend from Ghana, who knew even less than I did, and both of us were asking her questions. After a particularly obvious question from one of us, we heard the guy behind us say “For God’s sake!” He then leaned forward and answered it, leaving us with a strong impression that Real Men™ shouldn’t have to ask the little woman such things. :stuck_out_tongue: )

And eventually I learned enough that I can follow a game and make intelligent comments on it. I actually enjoy it. You can too! (At least enough to make it something that you and your little guy can talk about).

So, yes, talk to your little guy. Ask him questions. He’ll love the fact that you’re asking him for his opinion. If you sit and watch a game on t.v. with him, and ask him questions like other posters have suggested, he’ll love it! In the long run, the fact that you’re asking him for his opinion will probably be the most important thing that comes out of it all!

Plus, as RickJay suggests, the goal in most sports is pretty simple in theory. If you just focus on the main goal, and don’t get distracted by all the subtleties of the rules, you can follow pretty well.

For example, in football, the goal is very simple - one team is trying to move the ball into the other team’s goal area. They’re the offence. The other team is trying to stop them. They’re the defence. The forward progress is measured in ten yard increments, called “downs”. The offence gets a certain number of chances to move the ball forward ten yards. If they don’t move it at least ten yards forward in four downs (in US football), they turn the ball over, and the other team gets to try to score instead.

As well, with all those guys on the field, it can be confusing, so don’t try to watch them all at once. Just watch the ball and the offence’s quarterback. The important play will go wherever the ball goes. The quarterback is the guy who decides where the ball goes. Focus on that, and you’ll see most of the important things that happen in a game.

Another thing you might do is seek out the most sports-oriented buddy you’ve got, explain your situation, and ask him to tell you about the game over a coffee, or maybe watch a game together, with you asking him every question that comes into your head. Most sports nuts love to talk about their passion, and to introduce a newbie to it. And, if the sports guy you seek out is also a member of the Brotherhood of Dads, he’ll want to help you to look good for your little guy!

19

FWIW, I learned how American Football- undoubtedly the most complicated sport on earth- works by playing Joe Montana Football on a Sega Genesis.

If you want to learn a sport, play a video game.

20

Do you have relatives that are really into the sports your son and daughter enjoy? Because, while it’s great to bond with your kids, in a few years they will likely be happy to have other older role models that they can go to with certain problems. Meanwhile, you can go to some games and take some interest, but bond with them over different activities that you and they truly enjoy. Just a thought.