NBA (never really followed college hoops). I just find the tactics nowadays to be very basic, the creativity level to be way down, and in general I find the current iteration of the sport to be rather boring.
I have also lost quite a bit of interest in (gridiron) football, tho not as much as I have w.r.t. basketball. I used to be pretty fanatic about it, but now it’s like I’ll let a game run in the background, might pay more attention to the playoffs, but my level of interest isn’t fully there.
So what sports or other competitions do you no longer follow fanatically?
I was pretty big fan of F1 and even went to the Canadian GP in 1999. But shortly after that, I just lost interest. Schumacher was winning everything in sight and Villeneuve disappeared. I never got interested in whoever was battling Schumacher that year.
I also enjoyed CART but once the split happened, I got bored. Most of the interesting drivers went to IRL but I enjoyed more of the CART tracks since I was never a huge fan of ovals.
And maybe I just got older and wasn’t interested in cars going fast anymore.
I was a big time NASCAR fanatic back when i was in junior high and high school. When Earnhardt got killed in '01, I think that kind of ruined it for me. I followed it for a little while after that but my interest died off rather quickly. By the end of '01, I was pretty much over it. I’ve tried to get back into it the last couple years but my interest dies off after a few races. It’s definitely not like it used to be.
I was a huge baseball fan until the ‘87 mets’ drug scandals, then I just stopped. I haven’t watched an MLB game since then. I was a huge basketball fan, until Jordan retired. I also watched hockey until Espn stopped showing it weekly. My wife got me into the World cup for one year. I’ve been watching NFL heavily since ~2002.
Baseball. I grew up as an Orioles fan in Baltimore, and Peter Angelos has really run that team into the ground. The combination of Angelos, MLB’s half-assed attempt at steroid regulation, and the league’s refusal to address the sport’s revenue inequities in any substantive way just completely lost me as a fan.
I had season tickets for the Lions for over 35 years. They have just worn me down. I don’t even go to games any more. They are blacked out so often that you don’t even think about them . Nobody wants to talk about them on Mondays either. If an away game is on I may watch it, but I usually decide to walk my dogs in the middle of it.
Strikes and lockouts turn me off too. There is so much money in pro sports and the selfish bastages can not come to an intelligent agreement without making the fans suffer. They do so much petty crap wrong.
NFL, I used to follow the Skins, but when I started living overseas I just got out of the habit. Now, I can’t really follow NFL, it’s been too long and I don’t know the teams or players enough to care.
Baseball. I grew up in Boston, and the Sox were a religion. Now I live in California, and baseball is a game you might go to if it’s nice outside. I still love the Sox, but baseball is just too bloody boring to watch on TV for me now
Shinty. I used to play a bit when I was young and go to games regularly. It’s not popular in Glasgow so I’ve not kept up with it much since moving out of the Highlands, though I will sometimes tune in if there’s a game on television.
One of my American friends in an online game about 10 years ago got me in to baseball. He was a Red Sox fan so I became one too. The only problem was that to watch a full game I had to stay awake until 3-5am. There used to be a game on Wednesday and Sunday nights on free TV. I would check MLB.com every morning to catch the scores.
When I got a job it was impossible for me to stay awake and, although it might sound odd, I can’t enjoy non-live (recorded) baseball. I haven’t watched a game in over a year now. I was just getting in to American Football too, which I thought I could have grown to love. Aah well…
Baseball. After Bud Selig took over in the mid-1990s, the whole business of baseball really soured me on the sport, and my interest went from avid fan to couldn’t care over the course of about three seasons.
I lived, ate, drank and slept ice hockey, and have always been a Philadelphia Flyers fan. I played ice hockey. I coached ice and street hockey.
About two years ago, I got so disgusted with the NHL, the Flyers and particularly Flyers **fans **that I have not watched a game since. Nothing. No NHL games. No interest.
NFL football. I used to love watching every game and all the pregame shows and postgame highlights too. Then the Cleveland Browns hired Bill Belicheck, who was just a pill while he was the Browns’ coach - an arrogant SOB with no apparent basis for arrogance - and then the Browns fled to Baltimore, and then I found out I could get along very nicely without following the Browns obsessively during the 3 years Cleveland didn’t have an NFL team.
Since the team came back in 1999 I still know about them, (just through osmosis here in Cleveland) but I don’t live and die with them, I don’t watch the games, let alone the pre game or post game shows, and I don’t spend my money on them. If someone has an extra ticket and the weather’s not too bad, I’ll go to a game just to be sociable, but they don’t make any difference to me anymore. My friend always has a Super Bowl party and I’ll go to that because I like my friend, but that’s the only reason.
I was a NASCAR photographer for 5 and a half years, so I followed NASCAR very closely. I was associated with a regional touring division (Busch North, now Camping World East), but I also big fan of all of the NASCAR series.
Today I still follow it, but not nearly as closely as I used to.
It seems I haven’t payed any attention to short-track speed skating or four-man bobsled for years. Maybe I should get back into it.
I grew up outside of Portland, OR, which has only one major pro team, the Trailblazers. Rip City, at the time (early '90s), was going nuts over Clyde Drexler and the rest maybe being able to beat the Bulls. They didn’t; I moved away.
After moving away I realized that basketball is pretty damn boring until the last five minutes, plus the pros had suddenly started scoring 30 fewer points each game, each team. The local team isn’t any good, and until LaBron James showed up no individual players were fun enough to watch.
Baseball. I was a big fan up until the strike in '94. Didn’t go to a game for several years after that, and the game still hasn’t recaptured my interest like it had before '94. I follow what’s going on with mild interest, but that’s it.
And, auto racing. Growing up in the 1970s, I was a big fan of open-wheel racing (both F1 and Indy-car). And, in the late 1990s, I was really into NASCAR for a while. But, now, other than maybe watching some of the Indy 500, I really don’t care.
Hockey for me. I was never a big fan, but I would occasionally watch a playoff game or something. Then there was a strike sometime in the 90’s. Ever since then, I have actively hated hockey and do everything in my power to avoid reading about it in the sports section. The next strike during 2004 or 2005 that wiped out a whole season was a nice relief for me.
I was a hardcore basketball and football fan through the '80s up until the early 90s. Rosters, trades, fantasy leagues, watching all the time.
Somehow, I just had a total burnout, and haven’t paid the slightest attention or watched a game since…oh…'93 or so.
I couldn’t name a single current NFL player from any team. For NBA, does Shaq or Yao Ming still play? I don’t even know. Otherwise, I’ve heard of a guy named Lebron James and assume he must be good, but have never watched him and have no knowledge otherwise.
I can still fake the talk if there’s a game on at the bar, until I make the inevitable mistake of commenting on the Baltimore Colts or St Louis Cardinals Sports hasn’t been the same since Larry Bird retired anyway, and Mike Ditka will always be “da man”.
Sports hasn’t been the same since Larry Bird retired anyway, and Mike Ditka will always be “da man”.