I get that people like sports, and I don’t begrudge them of liking what they like. But you know what? Fuck them if they don’t understand why they often exasperate the rest of us. The shit is everywhere, delaying my 60 Minutes and screwing up my Animation Domination. Even NPR devotes time to sports. Yeah, yeah, we all have special interests. But no one else’s “special interests” bombard the airwaves and water cooler conversations the way that sports do.
You can play it cool if you want. This is probably wise when it comes to making friends. But I’m going to keep sucking my teeth every time I see a middle-aged guy with a paunch walking around in his favorite super hero athlete’s jersey. OK, not really. But I do think this is a silly fad. And if someone asks my opinion, I’ll be honest and not hold back.
I’m a gym rat, and it’s always amusing that everyone wants to talk to me about sports. I know next to nothing about the major sports - it’s not that I hate them, it’s just that I’m not really a fan (I do like going to the occasional game, but mostly for the social aspect - I find watching professional sports on TV pretty boring). I do like skiing and cycling, but those aren’t really “sports” to me.
The biggest problem I find is that not having an interest in sports takes a huge chunk of “common ground” off the conversation list. Since I don’t watch a lot of TV, either, it’s hard to shoot the breeze with other guys that I might meet at a party.
I enjoy playing sports occasionally, and I can find entertainment in watching a game every now and again – I’ll watch the Super Bowl most years, or see a college football or basketball game for my alma mater every once in a while.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand following sports. Following a whole league, week-by-week, caring about the careers of players you’ll never meet – baffling. Completely, completely baffling.
I’ve never seen them, however, I understand your point.
But them while I discuss Walking Dead with the girl at the pharmacy, I don’t talk about it at bars, and I don’t wear T-shirts, although some folks seem to sell a lot of them.
The local evening news doesn’t devote 10 minutes to showing highlights of soap operas and cable TV shows. People don’t riot in the streets when a favorite TV character is killed off. If people dressed up like their favorite reality TV stars, they’d be laughed at. But no one says a word if you wear sports team memorabilia.
People say they are the same things, but they’re not.
A lot of the fun of sports comes from pretending that it matters. It’s kind of like the “willing suspension of disbelief” that you exercise when you lose yourself in a novel or movie, except that what you’re suspending disbelief in is, not the reality of what you’re witnessing, but its significance.
(And, yes, there are some people who don’t seem to realize that it just pretend-matters.)
He couldn’t understand AT ALL why people would bother to follow sports. I can see being baffled by extreme displays of sports-related emotion, but why one would follow them at all is for the same reasons why people follow serial entertainment. It IS serial entertainment.
People do wear clothing related to their favorite non-sports entertainment. Maybe no one is wearing a The Young & The Restless beanie in the winter but don’t act like there’s no such thing as a Star Trek tee shirt.
And there are whole shows and channels devoted to the discussion of other forms of entertainment, not just sports. As for the news - tax dollars do play a stake in sports teams. And they are tied to regions. People don’t just wake up and decide to choose a far-flung sports team to enjoy. For the most part the fans are cultivated from the area served by the team market.
Sports are different than other forms of entertainment, yes. And it might be infuriating to you that other people get enjoyment out of a thing that turns you off. But pretending like it is absolutely confounding and illogical that people like a particular type of entertainment, because sports, while accepting and understanding that people like a bunch of other types of entertainment is just being willfully obtuse.
He had to mix it up since he got called out the umpteenth time he asked why people think video gamers are lame. (And as a woman video gamer who isn’t all that into sports but totally understands how someone could be - dude, quit making us look bad.)
ZipperJJ, where did I say I’m infuriated by sports or people who like sports? Tired of hearing about them, sure! Tired of being made out like I’m some sort of party pooper just because I’m not “rah rah” about them, yeah. Irritated that we’re having yet another discussion about people not getting why people don’t get why people don’t get something, hells yes.
But I’m not infuriated over anything. Please don’t project emotions on me that I’m not feeling.
I’ve seen Trekkie shirts. But we don’t have “wear your favorite sci fi memorabilia” days at work like we do for sports teams. And again, all of that fine. I’m in the minority, clearly. But I’m not going to be ashamed about having negative opinions about a trivial subject. I’m not going to pretend it makes sense to me, just so I don’t offend anyone.
I love you a little bit for posting that link. Just perfect!
Screeching and getting emotional about spectator sports and “my team” are, IMHO, about as stupid and brainlessly primitive an emotion as one can have. I’m fine with it at a distance, because, whatever. but only at a distance. A very great distance.
I’m trying to explain to a dude who said "I cannot, for the life of me, understand following sports. Following a whole league, week-by-week, caring about the careers of players you’ll never meet – baffling. Completely, completely baffling. " and helping him to not be baffled.
Saying that following sports is like following an un-scripted television show is, I think, very helpful to helping him not be Completely, completely baffled.
They are not the same, but doesn’t it give some insight as to how people can enjoy sports? I’m trying to say that if you enjoy how a story unfolds, or how you enjoy watching the action of pretend characters on a screen, you can understand how someone else can enjoy how games and seasons unfold, and how watching athletes on a screen can be fun.
You just keep listing ways in which they differ. I agree that they differ. We can sit there and list the ways all day. For example, Michael Jordan is not in Game Of Thrones.
But that’s all besides the point. Sports is not the exact same thing as other forms of entertainment. Movies are not television shows. I cannot order a hamburger from Pizza Hut. But we can use analogies to sort of compare familiar things with unfamiliar things sometimes to get a better understanding. That’s all I’m trying to do.
This is me, exactly. I just-don’t-care about sports. And I also dont care who else does or doesn’t like sports; as I imagine most people feel. Nobody cares. Except the weirdos who do. But they’re weird.
I don’t think he’s saying he doesn’t get why people are entertained by sports. At least, that’s not what I read. It seems to me he’s saying he doesn’t get why people are so obsessed with and emotionally invested in sports. Personally, the latter is what puzzle me more than anything. Why should a team’s defeat put a person in a bad mood? I know it’s a feeling and feelings aren’t supposed to make sense. But I just can’t relate to this. And I can’t think of anything else comes close.
I don’t bother people with my “not getting it” in real life. I just keep my mouth shut and fake it till I make it. But I understand not getting something that’s popular and being completely 100% sincere about it. People like the OP do need to stop creating threads like this. But I also think people need to chillax a little too.
