I’m not a big sports fan. Don’t regularly watch any team sports on TV. Occasionally I’ll watch a local HS team just for something to do. On TV I’ll occasionally watch golf, or the local marathon. I golf myself, and used to run. I’ll have the TV on during the superbowl, and will occas watch hockey playoffs if the Hawks are in it. Several of my family are skaters, and my dtr is a huge fan.
For folk who are big sports fans, are there some particular sports you do not watch? If so, why? And if you don’t regularly watch major sports, are there any exceptions?
I like most major team sports; football’s my favorite, followed by baseball and hockey. I’m not turned off by basketball or soccer, but I don’t watch them often. Golf is OK to watch, and I enjoy the occasional auto race (though moreso open-wheel racing than stock cars).
But, I really don’t care for combat sports (boxing, MMA). I won’t willingly watch them at all.
For team sports I’ll watch baseball, football, and sometimes hockey, all mainly if my home team is involved. Football is the only sport I will watch even if I don’t care about either team. It’s a team event so I’ll include the Tour de France here. I rarely if ever watch basketball, soccer, or lacrosse.
For individual sports I watch skiing, some running or obstacle course events, triathlons. I don’t watch golf, tennis, auto racing, boxing or MMA.
Soccer and golf are definitely out. I’ll grow bored quickly with a lot of other sports but I’m willing to watch a little even with things like bowling and darts. I watch football and boxing consistently, professional wrestling if you count that as a sport. Long races aren’t worth watching for me, especially the Bored of France.
I know this sort of thing has been done before. Sounds like you sports fans will pretty much watch any pro team event - other then the excessive scoring of b-ball. Funny - pro hoops is the last sport I gave up. In my mind, at least there was some action, as opposed to all the standing around in football and baseball. Hockey also has more than a couple of seconds of continuous action.
I was wondering if - say, some diehard football fan would say something like baseball is too stupid/slow/boring. Whereas to a nonfan like me, all team sports are slow, stupid, and boring in some respects.
Free agency and early departure from college took a lot out of it for me. I became less interested in teams as I knew less about the team year after year. So with golf, I know more about the individual golfers. And I have no home team loyalty, after enough examples of teams having little loyalty to their home towns.
And with it becoming bigger and bigger business, I dislike the way the commentators make such a big deal out of each little thing. But didn’t want this to be a sports vs nonsports thing.
Like I said, we like to walk to a local HS girl’s softball or boy’s football game. Watch the game and the people.
And I guess I can imagine watching tennis or MA more than team sports. The individual nature appeals to me more than some group of rich men/women making ridiculous profits for a rich owner. That - and I used to do a ton of MA.
I know football fans like that. Interest in baseball on TV has been dwindling for years. Even baseball fans usually only care about their local or favorite team. In 2007* the Phillies made it to the playoffs for the first time in 14 years and a Sunday regular season Eagles game got higher ratings than the Phillies playoff game that night.
*Working from memory, I think that was the season.
I am not a big sports fan but I will happily attend any sort of game, in good weather of course.
I will watch tennis on TV. And the Olympics (but not soccer or basketball) because it’s the only chance I’ll probably ever get to see, for instance, water polo.
Echoing TriPolar, there are definitely quite a contingent of football fans that would say that. I find it more common down South though (albeit my group of friends tend to like both).
Personally I find myself getting more and more bored with football. And when I do watch, preferring the college game over the professional game. It may have partially to do with my being far, far, far more interested in soccer more than any other sport over the last few years and now having the ability to actually watch European soccer on TV (at least the English Premier League and German Bundesliga - I don’t have BeIN so the leagues from Spain, Italy, and France are only read about by me).
Pretty big sports fan in general, with an emphasis on those sports were individual, transcendent, pain and suffering are front and centre - boxing and cycling being the Kings.
I have a mental block with racquet sports like tennis, where I’d struggle to watch more than a few games. Like I realise the physical demands are monstrous, and it’s clearly a highly skilled sport - just the format seems so infantile that it’s hard to take seriously.
I can do without the sportsballery. I do like motorsports though. I’ll watch just about any race over sportball, but NASCAR is my least liked. Formula 1 is the only series that I actually follow and know the names and teams and such. However, I may be interested in who wins, I do not CARE who wins. It’s more about the crazy engineering on display for me.
I pay very close attention to baseball, and that’s really about it. Though I do enjoy the Olympics, both summer and winter.
Then again, if you gave me a ticket to a hockey, soccer, or basketball game, and I had the time, I’d take you up on it. And I have had things like football on TV while folding laundry and stuff. So it’s not that I hate other sports or anything.
Still, there are a few sports I have absolutely no interest in and have no desire to watch under any circumstances: Golf. Auto Racing. Boxing. Martial arts. Wrestling. Anything involving animals.
I follow football and hockey, and I’ll go out of my way to watch those sports. I don’t look for soccer, but if it’s on I’ll get engrossed pretty quickly.
I dislike a lot of the same sports as Ulf, and I’ll actively avoid golf, motorsports, and combat sports.
I’m pretty ambivalent to anything I didn’t mention above.
I consider myself a sports fan, even though I only watch basketball with any regularity. I pretty much don’t pay attention to baseball until the LCS, and only watch soccer during the World Cup. Hate golf, hate racing, loathe football. Prefer most women’s sports to most men’s sports*. Love pros, hate college (that pretty much applies across the board). I probably enjoy combat sports the most after basketball. I wish that more of the Olympic sports were available to watch on TV networks I have access to more frequently than just every four years, and I would watch the shit out of pro track and field, and pro handball.
And, just FTR, it’s not because I sexualize the athletes, either. The body type that I am attracted to is not conducive to being an elite pro athlete.
I’ll watch pretty much anything with the exception of basketball. There’s no real point in watching the first 3 periods and most of the 4th. Any real drama happens in the last 60 seconds of any close game and that’s ruined by stretching those 60 seconds into 20 minutes with foul-freethrow-foul-freethrow-timeout-foul…
Unless somebody got punched or kicked in the nuts you rarely ever see a highlight from a basketball game that didn’t happen in the last minute.
“And here’s Steph Curry making a layup for points 23 and 24 in tonights game in which they won 112 to 104.”
I watch baseball and football, preferring NCAA football because I feel like it’s better sports (because my NFL team is the worst team in football (Browns) and my NCAA team is one of the best (Buckeyes)).
My basketball team is the best in the world (whooo!) but I’m with Hampshire I think it’s pretty boring until the very end of the games. I keep up with the standings and highlights during the season and would watch the pivotal playoff games but I couldn’t be assed to watch a full game until the final series.
As far as other sports go, I can sit and casually watch or root for any sport but golf and NASCAR. They are just not compelling to me. Even soccer with its low scores is much more exciting than golf.