Sports are irrelevant. I noticed the Yankees won. Why should I care? My life is still the same.
I used to pay attention to sports so that I wouldn’t get lost when others started to talk about it. Now that my time is more limited, I can’t find the strength to waste my time trying to follow along. I don’t care and I don’t care enough to pretend to care.
I think the criticism comes if you don’t like “their sports”
I used to think that I didn’t like sports. But what I suppose I meant was that I didn’t get the appeal of the mass spectator sport market.
I tried to understand American Football, but I just thought it so contrived and choreographed and hey the skin tight pants and Joan Collins shoulder pads… come on seriously dudes and wtf is it with the late middle aged coach with his high tech comms earpiece controlling his armies of young spartans…:dubious: And just how many hundreds are in each team!!! no wonder it takes about three hours to play 90 minutes dress up! 
I could get into Rugby Union to an extent but not league ( whats this six tackles and you have to give up possession nonsense?)
I can watch boxing like you would watch an impending train wreck but IMHO no way could you consider ultimate cage fighting a sport. That is out and out barbaric. Wrestling, Is that a sport? Maybe the greco roman stuff that you get to see during the olympics every four years but even the leotards put me off.
Baseball, Isn’t that a version of the english girls school game of rounders? World series? Just how many nations compete again?
Cricket? Now this is where you should seriously give your heads a good shake!
I can understand how americans are slow to come to soccer, Hell up till a few years ago you guys really sucked! You are getting better but get rid of Beckham he is a one trick pony he can take free kicks and has decent crosses. ( believe me that is still only one trick) If you want to watch decent football don’t watch Man Utd watch Aresenal!
Swimming is too much like hard work and the gulf between the old greats ( think Spitz) and the poor (think anyone british) is not going to be closed soon.
I could get into horsemanship but racing is too oriented towards gambling, indoor show jumping too hit and miss. Outdoor show jumping or eventing is much better but only a short season and poorly publicised.
Americas cup? Well its been around a long time and if the Kiwis aren’t winning it they are winning it for other teams. Not much excitement watching there.
Personally I never had much objection to bloodsports whether its fox hunting, cock fighting, hare coursing or what not. But evolving standards of Petancy seem to be closing these down. I remember when I lived in a market town in the NE of england called Thirsk, every boxing day the hunt left from the village square. I never knew foxhounds were so big. When these dudes and upper class dudettes came back mud spattered ( and the fox hunt virgins blood spattered) They all looked as though they had had a good work out. (semi aristo english country girls are actually full on sluts but thats for another thread!
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Nascar, formula one or motorcycle racing. Well I suppose with NASCAR you can see the whole track ( but its circular and boring) But unless it rains who wants to sit in the stands watching 5% of a formula one race where the more interesting part is always the off track antics of the motor racing establishment.
Participant sports for me has to involve water! (deep blue not golden) But the competitive aspect is no longer, if it ever was, pitting myself against others but pitting myself against me. And I am very fair to myself. No point taxing my old bones too much. Sailing round the islands has to be where its at!
Of course YMMV.
I know the rules for baseball, football, NASCAR, and basketball fairly well but (American) football is the only one that I care about at all and that is just because my mother was a big fan when I was growing up. I watch the NFL cable channel for historical games as a mindless diversion sometimes as background noise but that is just because they are sometimes violent and occasionally entertaining.
However, if anyone wants to make a wager, I will bet you $5 that I don’t know a single substantial thing about any professional sport this year or maybe going back three years or more. Go ahead, test me but be prepared to pony up sucker.
Count me among the men who don’t care for sports at all. I know some of the rules, but I just don’t care. I live in West Texas (where, if you’ve seen or heard of the movie Friday Night Lights, football is nearly a religion), so I don’t get much chance to socialize. Hell, the women here seem to like sports just as much as the guys. I don’t have any major gripes about sports or the over-paid (IMHO) players; I simply get bored watching any type of sporting event. It’s just something that I don’t “get.”
Of course, I love video gaming with an intensity that is probably close to what a fan feels for his/her sport, so I just write it off as different strokes for different folks.
At my last job, I worked in a building with about 1,300 other people and lots of large bathrooms. Every single day, bathroom stalls would be littered with sports pages from the newspapers. I even looked at some of them and had no idea what to make of it. I didn’t know anyone even read those things let alone picked them specifically out of the paper to read in the confines of a men’s stall during work. I don’t want to be judgmental but it did strike me as being more than a little bit of homoerotic stalking behavior. I am even a personal friend of the wife of a professional baseball player. I think that she likes me especially because I don’t give a shit what her husband does for a living and I just talk to her. Other guys have even tried to angle me to get to her to obtain his autograph. The answer is always 100% no way. She is much smarter and versatile than he is.
I could just never get into anything sport-wise where I didn’t have the direct ability to affect the outcome, so watching sports where I don’t know the participants bores me. And I’m not not a very physical activity prone individual, so most sports are out. I’ve had fun playing paintball, and video gaming is always a blast. The standard basketball/football/soccer/baseball/hockey crowd just bores the heck out of me though.
I don’t have any problem with people participating in a sport. The exercise and the teamwork and strategies, and the sheer fun factor, is perfectly logical.
What I don’t get is the armchair sports watchers who think that sports events actually matter, and that it means something significant. The fact that they can’t see how pointless the whole system is.
[ul]
[li]“Local” teams clearly don’t represent a region at all, as the players don’t live there, they were all bought and sold.[/li][li]Your team winning in 1972 and then again in 1994, doesn’t mean anything now, as the players are all completely different, the other teams are different, the coaches and their methods are different, the rules of the game are different, the rules of the tournament are different.[/li][li]Shouting at the TV or painting your face doesn’t actually affect the playing of the game.[/li][li]Paying players $18million is turning the whole idea of competition into a farce.[/li][li]The fact that playing on a wet day, or into the sun, or suffering one injured player, or the other team having a bad day, can turn an entire tournament on its ear clearly proves that gambling according to stats is a load of bollocks.[/li][/ul]
Watch a game for entertainment. But don’t try and tell me that there’s anything more to it than that, because you’re fooling yourself.
I find sports boring too. Of course I’m a gay male so that’s convenient for me
But I don’t mind playing them but to watch??? No way it’s so boring. I’d rather play than watch. I like to be doing things.
I’d rather lift weights or run than play a sport because outside of something like soccer you don’t get much exercise when you play. You stop too much to raise your heart rate to the point where it does you any good.
The nice the about the OP is he’s 45, you can simply say “Oh God, I’m too old to be doing things like that, if I break my leg it’ll never heal.”
Every since I turned 40 I use that cop out and it never fails, I say “Oh please I’m too old for that.” And it always works.
For the OP let me tell you, life is short, in 20 years or less realistically you could be dead. Are you really gonna waste that time doing ANYTHING you don’t HAVE to do, especially if you don’t like to do it.
If you want to learn to play baseball then do it. Do ANYTHING you want to do. If it’s bugging you that you suck at it then take lessons. Otherwise let it drop. Don’t let anyone dictate your happiness. Life is too short and tomorrow you could be dead. 45-65 are the “Dangerous heart attack years” for men.
In short have fun with your life, it’s the only one you’ll get. I really urge you to think about that. Don’t let anyone dictate your happiness. You do what YOU want to do.
People say “It’s never too late,” that is 100% wrong. In reality it’s later than you think
I can get into watching some Olympic competitions, or maybe a 7th World Series game, but other than that it’s a complete waste of time.
Don’t think of it as “I suck at sports”, but rather as “I break out of stereotypes.”
Can I have your share of watermelon?
That doesn’t work too well for me, since the only time I’ve been compelled to play sports is at PT. (Physical Training, Army). If we’re supposed to be playing basketball for PT (which is considered a fun day of PT rather than doing the usual push up, sit up, run for a million miles stuff) I can’t just say “I’m too old, I could get hurt.”. For no other reason than I have to make sure the soldiers are motivated and engaged.
I could probably get out of a lot of activities if I put on a show of my medical issues. Occassionally I’ve been put on profile for them. (thats when a doctor says you can’t do this this or that for x amount of days, or sometimes weeks). But I don’t have it in me to whine. The last time I was on profile the doctor also put me on quarters (meaning don’t even come to work) for 4 days. I foolishly told the doctor I could still work, I didn’t want quarters. Fortunately she made it a direct order so I spent 4 days at home on the couch. (I had hurt my back moving some heavy crap…I didn’t have to actually do it, I was supervising the effort…but I don’t like to just stand there when my soldiers are busting their asses so I helped them)
Well, I’m hoping to get more than 20 more years, but I know what you mean.
Things that I can’t be forced or ordered into doing? Ha! I never do 'em. For the very reason you mentioned. Though I will admit I’ve been thinking of learning archery as a way to have some fun.
You can have all of it! I really don’t like it!
You’re proobably right. I could make an entire thread about how I don’t actuallyy fit in with most of the “brothers” wherever I go. I can’t stand rap or hip hop music, really. They all think I’m a wierdo when they hear me playing Peter Gabriel or Pink Floydd on my car stereo.
I’m multiracial; white, black, and a few other ingredients mixed into the soup to lesser degrees, so yeah, black. I also have absolutely no interest in sports, although I did play intramural soccer for a short time in college, which I think had more to do with finding myself and girls than anything else.
Since graduation, which is now over twenty years ago, I haven’t watched any sports on TV, nor do I follow or even know anything about any team or player, no matter the sport. I don’t really know how most sports work, and can’t work myself up enough to care to learn.
Here’s the thing though, and why I brought up my racial background. If you’re African American, there is some weird expectation for you to be into sports, especially football and/or basketball. Your masculinity and sexuality are judged by it, and your circle of friends are somewhat defined by it, to a seeming greater degree than were you white, even by some whites, but definitely by other blacks.
I’m a professional in the physician education field. All of my clients are either doctors, nurses, or pharma sponsors and, at some point during 7 out of 10 of my one-on-one sessions, the client will ask me how I think X team will do in Y, what team I follow, or what I thought of XX event or YY player. If the medical professional I’m meeting with is black and male, it’s 10 out of 10 as I don’t believe I’ve ever had a black client who didn’t bring up sports at some point in our session.
I have to say, however, although I find sports questions from blacks presumptuous, very annoying and somewhat insulting, I find sports questions from whites to be presumptuous, insulting and, at times, borderline racist. I can almost see the mental cogs falling into place as the client walks in the door:
Jeez, I hope this doesn’t take too lo…oh, [look of surprise] *he’s…what…black? *[look of confusion] Yeah, must be…right? Right. Break the ice, break the ice…sports…what sport? Basketball?..yeah, that’s safest. “Hey, Ono, Zack Smith, good to meet you. So what’d you think about XX game last Thursday?”
Or worse:
“Blah, blah, blah, Donovan McNabb, blah blah?” I finally looked up Donovan McNabb one day, after yet another question about him, and was surprised to find that he’s black. To this day I’ve never gotten a McNabb question from a black client.
Inferential reasoning, perhaps, but there it is.
To the OP’s point, I’ve gotten the “what are you an alien from space?” look once someone finds out I’m not into sports as well. It used to be kind of amusing, now, not so much.
I don’t really care why anyone does or doesn’t like anything, let alone something as unimportant as sports. But there does seem to be a noticable distinction between people who just aren’t into sports and people who have some weird insecurity about it.
There’s a bunch of posts about getting a hard time about not liking sports and I have to wonder how anybody would even know. Is this something people self-report or are there people going around asking men if they like sports? The closest I ever come is when people ask something like “did you see the game?” to which I respond “no”. The only way I can imagine it being a problem would be if I said “no, I don’t follow sports for a variety of entirely reasonable masculine reasons”.
(as a sport)?
I just don’t get it-why does anybody want to watch a traffic jam at 200 MPH?
Plus, the racetracks are usually in the South-and the events take place when its hotter than blazes! Why drive hurs to roast, watching this?
1.) I hate watching any sports on TV. Not even the Super Bowl. Not even the Olympics. Not even sports I like doing myself.
2.) I like racquetball, cycling, skiing, and swimming. I’ll also do other sports (Ultimate Frisbee, Soccer, Vollyball). I note that I prefer solo or one-on-one to team sports, but I do both. But:
3.) Don’t ask me to watch anyone else play.
I played soccer up through college but never once watched any sport to the point I followed a team. I can watch the finals of most sports but I have no vested interest in any team. I got a million other things I’d rather be doing.
A little interest in sports is OK with me. I am female and loathe sports, but I will watch some of the Olympics and I used to follow ice-skating competitions closely (if you consider that a sport). But every man I have ever been fond of has NOT been a sports nut. I cannot get with the lump in his recliner, wearing a team jersey, beer and snacks at hand, settled in for “the game”, yakking about “the game” non-stop with his dweeb friends. It’s so banal, so cliched, so sit-commish. “Why don’t you go out with so-and-so, he’s such a nice guy?” Uh, because he goes golfing every weekend. Because his weekends are spent in front of the TV. Because his world revolves around watching sports, duh! I guess young women now have the same problem with guys who play videogames or whatever…BORING! (and no, I am not one of those attention-whore women jealous that his attention is not focussed on me! me! me! 24/7.)…Many, many men don’t care about sports, but its like some big conspiracy that they HAVE to, or will have to turn in their man card. It’s like women are expected to care about shopping and shoes - many, many women avoid such timewasting at all costs…My husband will glance at the sports section of the paper before he’s out the door to work, just so he’ll know what game they’ll be droning on about when he gets there.
I’ll not argue that you have to like it, but there’s no way it’s not a sport. Anything with that much athletic training must be. I’ll also point out that it’s much less barbaric than boxing, as the fights are much shorter, and they’re stopped much sooner. Guys are not knocked nearly out and then sent back in after an 8 count. Plus, the wrestling and grappling means that there are fewer head shots per minute anyway. I think maybe you’re working on the publicity MMA got from the first few UFC shows in about '93.
Have no interest in sports what so ever. When I was a kid we played “football” in the local field and it was fun to be with friends but it never went beyond that. I have never followed professional sports and the entire business seems pointless. My mother however loves most sports, I seem to be missing the “sports gene” in my family.