I’ve never been a fan of sports. Growing up My father would watch baseball and boxing and football on holidays. We had one TV and he called the shots. I could watch the odd game, but would be bored quickly.
The culture of following sports just went over my head; I had other things to obsess about like Music, Disney, Medieval Fantasy, Role-playing, Computer Games.
I can still watch the odd game; I quite like baseball, I enjoy footie, I like rugby and Australian rules football. But to go out of my way to watch them (except for world, european cups) is foreign to me.
I also can’t stand the typical American sports fan in his type-cast heterosexuality. I can’t discuss the language of sports, nor would I choose to with those who can. I try to have no judgment, but it is a difficult situation. The ephemeral and relative insignificance of popular professional sports exasperates me. The lack of (in my opinion) cultural value to who is the best team or how the local team is doing removes me from the capability of finding lasting interest.
Perhaps it is because I intellectualize my hobbies and sports lacks intellectualization? I can see the draw of the team-grouping, the us-vs-them aspect. I can understand a history interest perhaps. Getting together with friends on a weekly basis and the camaraderie, yeah I can see that. I fulfill those needs in other ways and don’t need the excuse of a sports team to justify it. (<- a judgement that the typical male needs an excuse to bond/spend time with his fellow male friends, 'cause they afraid of teh gay) To each his own; I'm glad people can enjoy something. I just wish that a cultural phenomenon this prevalent would have more cultural significance. Also, I'm thankful that my close friends are like-minded. I'd hate to have to pretend to be interested in hearing all about the local sport's teams exploits. (Not that I suppose someone like that would make it into my tribe) I still enjoy a nice sports game every now and then, just for the fun of it. No addiction ever formed. Oh, and American Football is boring-as-hell and I still hate the fuck out of it. Bunch of wimps.
Don’t hate, beotch!
LOL
Well, I’ll just have compassion then instead?*
*Compassion’s just a nicer way of looking down your nose
I just like that the two state teams are the Ducks and the Beavers… now that I think about it, I don’t even know what the Beavers play. But I like the name and logo.
don’t be eletist mister! just because you don’t enjoy it, don’t look down on those who do. That’s just like the the fundies lookin down on us homos for likin the buttsecks.
It’s not just because I don’t enjoy it. Nor do I look down: It’s more like sideways. And I hardly think even if my views were that extreme would it be like fundies religious views. It would be more like how a TV-free person views those who suck the boob tube.
I don’t take my elitism seriously, don’t worry. 🙂
The Beavers are orange and the Ducks are Green. I like the ducks because it’s Donald Duck. Disney did the mascot back in the day.
I think they play all sports because they are university teams. Still don’t know which university is which team, don’t care either.
I think that our drama department couldn’t afford to hire a director to do plays the same year the Football team got all new equipment adds in somewhere too.
You know – I don’t go on enough about the positive cultural ramifications of lowbrow sports. Roller derby being my fave, natch, but also soapbox derby, kickball, table tennis, darts… they’re recreational things to do/watch that encompass all the inclusive group-y, rah-rah-y, fan-as-participant-y stuff that mainstream sports try to fake their fans into feeling. They’re neat. And accessable. And fun.
I’m really not into Big Sports, but I won’t ever turn down free basketball tickets.
LOL
Yeah, I’m with you: I play darts, Pool (horrible at it), bowl (love it, and suck horribly). I love going to the ballpark to watch a game.
I get lost when it becomes the mass-produced, popular-culture-y kinda stuff. It loses the personal connection for me.
It seems to become Sports Fan who is a person rather than Person who like Sports.
But then again, I am usually uncomfortable about singular Personal Identification even when it is something that I enjoy (!GOTH! !GREASER! !TIKI!).
p.s. I’d like American Football much more if they wore much less. (for a variety of reasons)
nerd
Interesting…I wonder if you’ve met Sports Geeks.
Sports Geeks abound, from the people who play fantasy football to the people of SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research, who have a quasi-academic society devoted to the history, sociology, and statistical analysis of baseball.
Sports Geeks analyze the games they watch and try to predict what’s going to happen.
American football is a very complicated game – it’s probably *the* most complicated game or sport invented – chess with multiple human variables involved.
I tend to group sports as an art, an art whose practitioners are judged both on their contribution to the game and aesthetics.
The problem is the mass-production, which is *very* recent.
In an attempt to get fan and corporate money, stadiums have become much more sterile and Applebee’s-esque – stuff doesn’t just happen as much anymore, and even the supposed nice new ballparks make me long for the cheesy, but less corporate, Concrete Donut ballparks of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Sports I like: Participating: Weight lifting, bowling (good at it – I’m Polish), volleyball, pool, darts, softball.
Watching: Football, hockey, some baseball, other sports if they seem to interest me.
Sports I don’t like: I can barely swim. Soccer is boring. Golf is enjoyable, but attracts the Asshole Upper-Middle-Class.
nerding is a sport? cool!
Sports Fans, in general, annoy the crap out of me. I just. don’t. get. it. And I really don’t want to. Why should I? So damn boring.
And I admit that when I see people in sports jerseys, esp. football jerseys, I kind of hate them a little.
I think it might be a holdover from when I was younger, and my Goth, “is she queer? She looks like a dyke” looks made me not very popular with the football jersey wearing crowd. And so maybe I just need to get over it. But in general, people in football jerseys are not the first people I want to seek out to be friends with.
Wow I didn’t think sports could get any less interesting for me. I’m glad this subset of geeks have something to enjoy, but that just steels my negative reaction.
Reminds me of what turned me off about fanboyism of any degree. Just not for me.
I really didn’t need to know that kind of thing existed. Kinda like scat freaks and plushies.
Squick. I’m sure glad I’m me.
HEY DID YOU WRITE A CHECK FOR HALF AND HALF
oh wait nevermind, I wasn’t paying attention because THE GAME IS ON
This aggression will not stand.
Well, those pants are rather tight. In fact, they’re very nearly tights.
I’m so ashamed that I know this.
I understand your holiday sports-related pain. My dad was a jock in high school (football, of course), so there was no way of getting anything on tv except football. I did play softball for one summer, but we were the absolute worst team.
So imagine how confused I was when I started dating someone who is really really into sports, especially football. Then the horror when I realized I was actually going to marry him. Obviously, we must have two tvs–imagine what would happen if there was a game on at the same time as Lost! (I’d win, of course, but it wouldn’t be pretty.) And I’m starting to learn a little about football through sheer osmosis! Not that I actually watch it–I’ll never be that bored–but T keeps trying to tell me things about the game.
Although, obviously (since I did end up deciding to marry him), he’s not the typical idiot drunken frat-boy sports fan. But I don’t understand the hype that goes along with the sports thing. As my non-lj friend Debra said (her fiance is also a huge sports fan–Giants, the same as T), it’s only a game. We complain a lot to each other. But at least her man doesn’t watch the damn football draft!
okay, mini-rant over.
I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with your “sports-based camaraderie as a way to have male bonding sans teh ghey” judgment, but the rest of it strikes a chord with me with one exception. I don’t think you mentioned the only reason I watch sports at all. I watch sports that I enjoy playing because I get a visceral satisfaction from seeing someone who is very good at an activity that I enjoy. I try to learn from their example and I just like seeing them do their thing.
The only sports I watch regularly are boxing and tennis so I don’t really get the “root for the home team” thing. I have had favorite tennis players and boxers, but I like(d) them because of their qualities as sportsman, not because I was a fanboy. I don’t like team sports because I’m too much of a competition freak to have to rely on other people to hold up their ends.
My dad used to play football and we have had conversations regarding this very phenomenon. He is not a big fan of any particular team, but he’ll watch football fairly religiously. It takes him back to when he used to compete. He can play armchair coach or just listen idly while he works on finances or plays his guitar. Put him in with any typical American sports fan and he’ll fit right in, but I wouldn’t say he was homophobic or fanatical.
People who are rabidly loyal to their home teams simply because they are in a social group that is rabidly loyal to their home teams are the same sort of mob-mentality nutbags that lynch people or burn crosses. They just have a less destructive way of being lemmings.
The disparity of budgets in collegiate studies is dismaying. this morning on NPR, one of the talking heads said quoted a politician, (An outgoing Repub of all people,) who asked, “If their budget is $500 million how are they considered non-profit?”
I personally like American football, (Though I felt as you do for a long time, so I can relate.) I can’t get with all the goddamn hype, though. It’s just a game.
“Golf is enjoyable, but attracts the Asshole Upper-Middle-Class.”
Hear-hear. I don’t mind a nice lazy day on the links, but fuck all the yuppies and the club rules. I’d be perfectly happy going through with a 5 iron and a putter, no caddy, no cart, no bullshit. Guess that makes me uncouth, though.
I don’t buy the homophobia argument either, but C is hardly the first person to make it, so there is likely some merit to it, in at least some cases.
I think other folks just like a reason to get together.
Well, it wasn’t an argument, it was an observation. Take it in perspective 😉
A poor choice of words on my part.