I’m watching Sumo. In Japanese, which I don’t speak. And I’m yelling at the TV. My blood pressure verges on the low, so I’d turn it off, but the fat guy in the blue jock is so likely to win that I put my imaginary money on him early on so I need to know if he wins.
So, do you find yourself watching sports you aren’t into just because they came up while you were channel surfing and find yourself yelling at the TV?
There’s sports other than running and baseball?
boggles
Oh! Oh! My TV was stuck on SAP for a time and the White Sox sometimes came in in Spanish. They’re AL so beneath my contempt, and I can follow and yell at a baseball game in any language, but I still watched.
I watch all sports. I subscribe to every sports channel available, including the ones that are broadcast in languages that I don’t understand. I will take in an Ecuadorian soccer league game followed by the Red Bull Cliff-diving series. Last night, I was watching the NCAA Track and Field Women’s championship. And yes, like you, I automatically start picking my favorites. But I don’t typically get emotional about it, except if it’s one of the teams that have been my favorites since childhood. I think that comes from a lifetime of betting on sports. The only teams that make me emotional are the Yankees, Steelers, Nets and Devils, Brazil soccer, and more recently, India cricket.
I knew how the game turned out, but my doctor’s office was showing a rerun of a Northwestern and Notre Dame game and I watched all but the last minute before I got called in. My BP was unsurprisingly high. They think I’m allergic to white coats. No…
And this is why I don’t watch sports. I don’t have a death wish. Well, not THAT much of one.
I stumbled onto Red Bull Crashed Ice on some odd sports channel I get. In no time I went from “What is this?” to “Ok, this is kinda cool” to “GO GO GO GO!!”
I watched Belt Sander racing once. It was a slow day.
What grit? Did Nick Offerman host? 'Cuz I’d (and have) watch him watching varnish dry,
Oh yeah. On slow sports days, my local sports bar will show such things as lumberjack competitions. Out of boredom, we sports bar regulars get right into it. “That guy in the red plaid shirt–go, buddy, go!” Hell, it’s better than nothing.
But, and with no disrespect intended to the competitor lumberjacks, who do appear to be trying their best to win, such competitions always seem to be brought to us by a chainsaw company, and every contest seems to involve the sponsor’s chainsaw somehow.
Which has led to some interesting comments during more mainstream sports that we watch at the sports bar:
Announcer: “Drew Brees just got sacked for a loss of twenty.”
One of us: “Get a [sponsor’s name] chainsaw, Drew, and never be bothered by tacklers again”
I do find it difficult to watch sport without automatically picking a side. Whether because of a cool name, cute competitors and uniforms, getting screwed by officials - I generally find it difficult to watch sport purely dispassionately. Sometimes I choose based on an irrational, instant dislike formed about one of the competitors - totally unfair, but hey.
And why not? The main purpose of sport is to win. The main reason for watching sports is to watch someone win (or lose - if irrational, instant dislike, etc). Someone always does win, so if you don’t care, you’re missing the most important part. You might as well watch the circus.
There’s women’s lumberjack shows which are always fun, and I developed a massive crush on the captain of the Northbrook, IL team, and later the US team, of female curlers.
For me the best sport in the World is Rugby Sevens.
It’s incredibly fast; the action is continuous; there’s a high level of skill required by every player - and there’s a yearly international circuit.
Here’s two samples:
Sometimes I’ll be at a bar with friends, and the TVs will be showing some random game (usually college basketball or college football) between two schools that few people have even heard of. Mississippi Valley State vs. St. Bonaventure would be a good example of one of these matchups. I’ll immediately pick a team to cheer for, and then I’ll live or die by each play. Once in a while, I’ll even switch allegiances in the middle of the game!
No, but only because I haven’t channel-surfed in well over a decade. I’m not even a cord-cutter; my cable bill is essentially a car payment. I just can’t even conceive of watching something live instead of DVRing it and either watching it later or (in the case of sports) delayed enough that I don’t catch up to real time.
Typically that means I’ll start my Sunday NFL watching around 6pm so that when I blast through both the 1pm and 4pm games in 60 minutes each it’ll be 8pm by the time I’m done, almost always well after the 4:25pm game has ended.
I used to watch World Championship Curling, but I found myself yelling at the screen “Sweep! SWEEP!!!”. 
Maybe 2-3 decades ago I used to be like the OP describes. But I became less and less interested. I now watch sports extremely infrequently. There is no team that I follow. I think I watched a couple of playoff games when the Cubs were in the World Series. And my wife likes to watch the Superbowl.
The only sports I watch w/ ANY regularity are golf and the Chicago marathon. This weekend is the US Open - I’ll probably tape Sat and Sun and watch it on FF. Or maybe not. IIf the weather is nice, I’d rather be outside doing something. And if I’m watching TV, I’d rather watch something I enjoy, than sports.
Maybe 2-3x a year, I’ll pass by a sports channel and may stick with a marathon, triathalon, or bike race. Or something goofy like lumberjacking. But It is exceedingly rare that I’d stick with it for more than 5 minutes, or care who won. I’d rather watch American Pickers, Forged in Fire, Love It or List It… And I don’t watch THOSE very often.
I’m originally from Indiana, so I follow the Pacers and Colts. After that, I sympathize with the underdog (which the Pacers and Colts have historically been).
I like watching most sports BUT I generally don’t care at all who wins, even when watching sports I’m familiar with. So I’m left just appreciating the performances of the players as individuals and their performance as members of a team. It’s quite enjoyable this way since I have nothing invested in either team/player; the absence of desires results in the absence of stress.
I used to be the most diehard of Diehard Cubs Fans. If you were to cut me open I would bleed Cubbie Blue. Then they won the World Series. Haven’t watched a pitch since then. It’s like, not winning the World Series was their “thing,” and once they won the Series, there was nowhere else for me to go as a Cubs fan.
Similarly, I used to watch (NFL) football every Sunday, paying particular attention to yards gained by this running back, yards given to that quarterback for that completed pass, and so on, all diligently keeping track of how I was doing against my fantasy opponent that week. Then the NFL went all America, Fuck Yeah!, while at the same time refusing to admit that CTE is a thing, and being all butthurt about players not standing for the National Anthem, and long story short, I haven’t watched a single snap in probably four seasons.
I care not a lick for golf, hockey, EXTREME [guitar riff] Whatever, Olympic sports, or much else, sports-wise.
That leaves me with soccer. The USMNT is a disgrace, and indeed, may never win a World Cup thanks to profound differences in the way soccer players are brought up in the USA vs. Europe or Latin America.* MLS can be fun to watch, but TV coverage thereto is dismal. I paid for ESPN+ for two weeks, what with the app supposedly offering “most” MLS games. But in the two weeks I had it, Orlando City (my favorite team) played twice but yet somehow twice didn’t make the cut for the app’s coverage. I told ESPN to go fuck themselves. Soccer’s saving grace, for me, is that once every four years I get to watch American women dominate, 2011 notwithstanding.
So long story short, I’m not the sports fan I was even five years ago.
*I’m not saying the USA needs to adopt the European model of grooming young soccer talent; that opens up a whole different can of worms. I’m just saying that the USA model doesn’t work when it comes to international [men’s] competition.
I mean, the Olympics are the ultimate case of this. I get really worked out about sports I really don’t comprehend.
Soccer can become compelling even though I rarely have a rooting interest.