Football, mostly, if I recall correctly. Though I think much of it might have been college football, for all the difference that made to me.
Pele’s probably the most relevant from a historical standpoint–he was so dominant a soccer hero that at least one war had a negotiated cease-fire specifically so he could play in an exhibition match for both sides (Nigerian Civil War in 1967)
I am also not interested in sports. It is possibly because they didn’t find out until I was twelve years old that I was so near-sighted in one eye that I was only using the other one, so I had no paralax vision for any ball sport. It was also possibly because my father had no interest in sports.
My wife tried to get me interested in Tennis. I don’t know if you are knowledgable about tennis, but there is a small fence about three feet tall in the middle of the court. My wife could consistently barely get the ball over that little fence. But behind my wife was a ten foot tall chain link fence. I got the ball over that ten foot chain link fence every single time. My wife was so angry that I was so much better than her at tennis that she never asked me to play again.
I don’t care about sports. I mean, I don’t hate it, and I can appreciate the skill of a well thrown pass, or the significance of the blown umpire call in the current baseball debates, but on my home planet we don’t paint our faces, or consider it a personal accomplisment or a personal betrayal when a team does well or poorly.
When pressed about sports I’ll usually respond with some variation* of ‘um, football’s the one with the pointy ball, right?’ People either laugh and leave me alone, or have apoplexy which I find more entertaining than most sports.
*orange ball, stick, skates, brooms
I don’t like sports either. I can stand to watch MMA or other fighting type sports (I even watched some sumo wrestling on a Japanese channel once) but none of this baseball, football, basketball, golf, tennis, NASCAR type crap.
About the only Olympics I ever watch is if I happen to catch some curling. For some reason that just fascinates me.
I loves me some pro-rasslin, though. Might not be “real”, but that’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing.