More so, actually, as wrestling actually has storylines and in-“game” characters.
(No, I’m not into wrestling either, I just read about it.)
Now that you mention it, I do like curling.
“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Of course when this was written, those 3 sports were truly blood sports in every sense of the word.
and he killed himself so there is that…
So now I kinda want to check out this game but can’t because I don’t have ESPN. The ESPN feeds on their site and all apps (like the one on the XBone) require a cable provider. Doh! Hopefully this model will die in a few years.
For me, watching sports is relaxing. I love having a baseball game on that I can dip in and out of while I do other things. Televised golf is awesome for naps. Hoops, on the other hand, can be stressful.
I’ve pretty much given up watching pro football, not so much because of the football itself, but because everything else in the telecast, from the commercials, to the committee meetings, to the announcers babbling their platitudes and genuflecting to the owners, is insanely annoying. It’s weird, because I used to love all that extraneous stuff.
Used to be a fan of basketball and baseball, but grew out of caring. It’s really just socially acceptable D&D for many people.
Even back then I found it really weird to hear people say things like “we won!” when they aren’t remotely involved and nobody on the team is usually even from that town, let alone the state in many cases. I just find that tribe by proxy thing odd.
The “we” thing is the weirdest to me and I am a baseball fan (not so much with football or other sports).
A few years ago my boss came up to me after the Giants won the World Series (and he knows I am a fan):
Boss: “Congrats!”
Me: “For what?”
Boss: “You won the World Series!”
Me: <proceeds with a mini rant on how the Giants won the World Series and all I did was sit on the couch and watch it>
And for me, I like watching the human achievement in the game and it is also nostalgic to me. But, of course YMMV.
The “we” comes from emotional investment. It doesn’t seem weird at all to me.
Some folks don’t enjoy it or understand the appeal. For me, life would be duller without it.
Read Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch sometime. The lives of many sports fans aren’t reduced or negatively impacted by their obsessions. Rather, they’re enhanced and made richer and more vivid by them. In Hornby’s description of Michael Thomas’s goal to win the EPL for Arsenal, he lays it all out: there is absolutely nothing else analogous to it in all of life experience. Nothing.
Because, unlike a lot of other things on TV, I don’t know how it’s going to end.
I think I’ve seen a lot of good answers in the thread here. It’s fun to root for a team, or you can enjoy the contest of wills and physicality, or the strategy, or you can just watch it because watching guys who are really good at something can be entertaining. I’ve always loved watching (and playing) sports, but as I have gotten older, I find my sports watching has expanded from my local team. When I was younger, I’d watch the home team and not really care about any other games but now I find I enjoy watching good players regardless as to which team they’re on.
One thing that I find really rare though is women who are super sports enthusiasts. When I watch sporting events I see a lot of women at the games, and a fair percentage of them seem really engaged (as opposed to just sitting there because their partner went). I’ve never personally met a woman who was a super sports fan of any time - I’ve met female athletes, but not fans. Just a weird fact.
Meanwhile, over at college-football.com, they’re having a thread where the sentiment is “why do people play video games? It seems so pointless!”
Different strokes for different folks!
This is it, for me. I went through about a decade of paying no attention to college or pro sports, but then got into fantasy leagues on a lark. Now I am in two baseball leagues each season and one football league. I enjoy so much of it: trading with other guys in the league, getting together with them for pre-season drafts, manipulating my lineups, tracking the leagues’ trades and contract talks, picking up free agents on the waiver wire. I am constantly following league news online and on my phone.
[Humble brag: I am pretty good at it. In the 2013 and '14 seasons for my three leagues, out of six total chances, I have two solo first place finishes, one tie for first and one third place. I have more than $700 in winnings over those two seasons. But the money is truly secondary. I would do this without prize money.]
So the television is almost always on sports. I always have a game on in the evening, and I subscribe to the MLB and NFL networks on cable for talking heads when there’s no game on. I usually pay only half attention to it, but its always on. My wife doesn’t mind (fortunately) as she knits or works on her laptop. For her its noise.
Wait…what? Ask me after the game is over - woooohooo, Oregon scores! Rose Bowl II - suck it, SEC!
Gotta laugh - just read the first message.
No idea who is on either team. It’s the PAC 12 vs the Big Ten. What else do I need to know? My parents went to USC (back when common people could afford to go). Maybe you have to grow up with that.
As to it being televised - hell, my dad took me to the Coliseum to watch USC games (yes, OJ Simpson included). Televised has nothing to do with it beyond it makes everything a lot more accessible. The college game just has a lot of youthful enthusiasm, color, music, tradition and noise. College teams are eternal - they don’t move to another state because they have a new state of the art stadium with exclusive luxury boxes.
And…just as I finish, Ohio scores! Game ON!
I root for the bull. I stopped watching motor sports because the drivers were dying like flies (I remember feeling so good when Jackie Stewart retired simply because that means he wouldn’t die some horrible, awful flaming death), but eventually returned when it got safer (official analysis, Jules Bianchi did not slow sufficiently upon seeing the double yellow flags), and my balls spontaneously recede watching any of the current free ascent up El Capitan. And finish a post, a team scores!
Why is any television popular? It’s just entertainment. There are hordes of people just as invested in Dr. Who as any sports fans is in their team. Explain THAT.
I say it sometimes. It’s intended as shorthand for “this is my fan interest that I spend a great deal of time and money following and reading about and thinking about”. Not that I’m under any delusion that my fandom makes any material difference to what occurs on the field (besides whatever small amount my attention and ticket sales helps to pay expensive salaries for ballplayers, anyway).
I’m not a big sports guy at all. I generally find it off putting and hardly speak to a couple colleagues at work because every damn conversation turns into hockey.
That said I enjoy watching cycling, Formula 1 (hate Nascar), and baseball, and even the rare hockey game. Don’t watch football but I get it, arguably the most intense and strategic sport.
Good answer. On a series, the good guys always live and the problem either gets fixed or promised to get fixed in the next episode. Sometimes there are two or more problems and some get fixed and some continue, but the good guys rarely die. In sports one team always dies, and it can be the good guy team or the bad guy team. Two enter, one leaves. That’s cool.
Sport is generational. It is something a kid can enjoy with his grandfather. It is taught, handed down, from generation to generation.