I can't get excited about football or most sports. Watching guys chase a ball or a puck is akin to watching paint dry, to me. How many times can a person watch a player dunk the ball, make a touchdown or slam a puck into a net? I dunno..it's just me. I can't figure out what holds peoples attention to the games.
What is it that you find exciting about football? What does it do for you that makes you want to watch every game and root for a certain team? I'm just curious because I've never understood the fanaticism about sports that so many other people share.
Yes, it was another bad season for the Buffalo Bills, but Man what a way to go out yesterday!!! What a game, and the weather was just perfect. Gotta Love Winter in NY.
Posted by Doug Yeomans on January 4, 2010 - 7:59am
I'm just curious because I've never understood the fanaticism about sports that so many other people share.
I don't follow, nor enjoy, all sports. However, I do appreciate the God given skills that athletes possess, just as I appreciate the talents of musicians, composers, authors, etc.
Bea, I was looking for more of a personal opinion on why someone follows sports or finds it so consuming. Some of the guys I work with absolutely live and breath football during the season. It's all they can talk about and it baffles me.
Fair enough, Doug. I am a sports lover and have always been. Yet there are plenty of things that people enjoy that I do not understand either. Fishing would be a great example of this for me.I never was exposed to it as a child, so I was intrigued to test it out as an adult. After I had done so, I saw no reason to ever do it again. Just didn't work for me.
I think sports means something different for each person. Myself, my love of sports REALLY began when I was four years old at my first professional baseball game. I went to a Phillies/Astros game with my Dad. We were sitting on the third base line close to the field. In the second inning Mike Schmidt, now Hall of Fame third baseman for the Phillies, came up to the plate and sent one out of the park. I looked at my Dad and said "Who's he?"
My Dad said "That's Mike Schmidt and he plays right there in front of us" When the inning ended and Schmidt came back out I yelled at the top of my little lungs:
"Mike Schmidt, you're the best!!!" He turned, smiled and tipped his cap. That was totally enough for me, but my Dad screamed out, "This is his first game!" Schmidt smiled again and waved.The Phillies put the Astros down 1,2,3 and went off the field.
Two innings later, some kid in a oficial Phillies jacket came into our section and asked my Dad, "Is this the young gentlemen who is attending their first game?" My Dad said yes and he proceeded to hand me an autographed photo of Mike Schmidt. I still have it to this day.
Nothing can ever replace that memory and I will treasure it always. Ever since I have always been a sports fan and live and die by my teams. Just thought I would share.
Doug, I believe it is a matter of "to each his own". Like Phil, I don't see how people get so wrapped up in hunting, or snowmobiling. I would neber put anyone down for it, just not for me.
My love of sports started as a kid, watching my uncles play basketball and baseball. Also cable in the early 70's was a real treat, and I remember watching Yankee games with my grandparents (holy cow). Then, I played some sports myself, albeit not very well. My freshman basketball coach encouraged me to take up acting :) (maybe that's where the salesman came from). Anyway, I'm with Bea...it always amazes me how amazing God is, and what some people are able to do because of the gifts given by Him.
BTW, the Bills suck and I love them, because they are OUR team, a source of comraderie in the frigid outback we call WNY.
One of the things about sports is getting to know the athletes.
I enjoy any game more when I take an interest in the people playing it.
If I sit and watch a game where I don't know any of the players involved, my anticipation for the game isn't every high, but it doesn't take long before I find myself rooting for this or that particular individual, and then the game becomes much more interesting.
I'm not much of a soccer fan, but a few years ago I made a point to watch as much of the World Cup as I could. I became really engrossed in the series of games, picking out favorite teams and favorite players and found some of the matches then to be really intense and enjoyable -- I finally got a glimpse of why soccer is so popular around the world because I applied myself to trying to understand it.
With basketball, that didn't work out so well. I remember during the baseball strike a decade or more ago, I decided enough baseball, I'm going to start following basketball. I watched dozens of games and tried to become either a Lakers or a Clippers fan. It just never took. I've never gotten the appeal of basketball.
And many people don't understand why I love baseball so much.
It's part an interest in the players, a deep love of the history of the game and its statistics, but also I know very well how to evaluate players and what it takes to win a game. I have a pretty good understanding of the strategy and can appreciate nearly every pitch of the game. A lot of people think there is no action in baseball -- to me, there's action on every pitch. What a pitcher throws and where he locates that pitch in the first inning may be very important in the fifth inning, a nuance you only see if you really enjoy the game.
Also, I think I'm a competitive person. Who wins and loses is important to me, and I prefer to win than lose, even though I've spent all of my life rooting for teams that have lost more than they've won (Padres and Chargers). I simply enjoy watching others compete and seeing how the story of a baseball game or a golf tournament a football game and now even a soccer game over the course of that event (and every match has a story to tell if you pay attention).
Ha! These posts bring back memories of growing up with one TV and three Bills fans. On boring Sunday afternoons in winter there was nothing to do but sit with my dad and two older brothers and watch football. They were so into it, it was hard not to get excited. My dad patiently explained how the game was played (or supposed to be played…). Everything I learned about football I learned from him first.
In the summer, girls and boys in the neighborhood played two hand touch or flag football in the field or somebody’s backyard. My friends and I were all tomboys…we had to be if we wanted to have any fun. Good times.
Not so much of a fan now, but I’m sure I could remember how to do it.
Now that's what I'm talking about. Personal testaments as to why someone likes sports. It sounds like it's not just the game that's important, it's the whole aura, captured moments in time...etc.
As a kid I can remember my uncle monopolizing the television to watch sports at family gatherings and I hated it. Maybe that's why they bore me to tears..lol.
Bud, I have a lifetime sportsmans license, fishing, bow hunting and muzzle loader tags but I hear you on the fishing. I loved it as a kid but now just see it as a way to get eaten alive by mosquitoes.
As i get older, hunting becomes less and less enjoyable during shotgun season and more enjoyable during bow season.
I agree with both Bud and Doug: I can appreciate the level of skill demonstrated by athletes- both professional and amateur. I can also understand that watching professional sports on television, by repetition, undermines the unique quality of any skill. But I would go a step farther. The betting, merchandising and marketing of players creates a subculture, alien to the play.
Fans adopt teams and players as aspects of themselves. They wear jerseys and talk about "my" team and "my" players. They aren't ours. The wins and losses aren't ours, still many act as if they had something invested. They even pantomime competition, jeering fans of teams other than the ones they have adopted.
Just as organized sport is a metaphor/catharsis/substitute for war (think ancient Rome); it has become a cultural surrogate. If anyone is in a particularly cynical mood, watch the movie Rollerball- not the recent flop, the original with James Caan.
For those who had and lost, or never had the experience of playing sports, watching others play is a substitute. Instead of organizing a game of softball or volleyball, fans sit in a chair and passively assume the energy expended by others. They invent a whole persona based on the accomplishments of people they don't even know- other than in a statistical sense.
...And they pay these synthetic gods millions of dollars for the privilege of becoming wrapped up in them.
Personally, I'd rather savor my first wrestling pin, home run- the one that went over the treetops and the time I caught the line drive when I was pitching. To heck with pretending. ...And I don't need an excuse to invite friends over for a beer.
I play softball, ice hockey, gaelic football, indoor and outdoor soccer, and golf. I love each of these sports.
And to me, watching a game is almost as fun as partaking in one. I watched the Winter Classic this weekend and loved every minute of sitting there with my coworkers/teammates watching a game that none of us would last 2 minutes in.
I am a competition junkie. Video Games, Sports, Politics, Work, all of them make me strive to be better than those around me.
Watching others try as hard as I do to improve is just as exciting for me.
Recently I had a soccer fan from Poland who lives in Rochester tell me that I don't love soccer because I don't follow the game after he Rhinos are out of the playoffs and I don't care about the world cup after the US is out. He doesn't understand the love I have of my teams. He doesn't understand that local representation in the event is where my pride comes from. For him its about the game and that game alone (soccer). For me its being the best at what you do. I rout for teams that I feel a connection to. The Amerks is my team. The Sabres is my team. The Rhinos, Knighthawks, and Red Wings are my teams. The Muckdogs is my team. I want them to do well for whatever reason. Sure the game it self is fun but I lose something when I have no connection to the people playing.
To me sports are pretty much the only thing on TV that is worth watching. There is not one single tv show on regular network television that I watch. The drama and competition of sports provides the excitement for me. The live game is even better. I love to go to see the Sabres we will get there 2 hours before the game just to walk around and watch the pre game skate. I was at the Bills game yesterday and loved watching them in the snow. ( I do admit that the Bills games are getting harder to enjoy live because of the drunken fools) I was fortunate enough to attend a game at Yankee Stadium and saw A-Rods 500th home run some thing I will never forget. Even catching a Muckdogs game with a cold one and a hot dog,, grate fun! I even like baseball on the radio. When we are camping during the summer ( and Im not fishing or hiking) its a great way to waste an afternoon relaxing and listening to a game. I can get them all because I have satellite radio. So its sports ( in HD of course) and documentaries on History or any of the discovery channels that i can watch on tv.
I am with Doug on the whole sports thing. People live, eat, breath and other things all around sports. With all of the things going on in the world and the only thing people can talk about on Monday morning is how the Bills lost. Let's put on the front page about the Bills losing and who the new coach is, but put on page 5 a little bit of abused children, a famly losing all in a house fire, or unemployment on the rise. However, let's keep the players employed with the super high salaries they get, and pay $30 for a t-shirt to support the "team", and back wonderful decisions like getting T.O. yeah he was real productive. How about we get kids as supportive of the arts as we do of the sports stuff. We need that kind of support of the B.P.O. they are never disappointing, but the Bills, let's get real, talk about disappointment. Hello, it has been ten years since they have been in the playoffs, if you were to perform that badly in your work place would you still be there? I would rather go to the B.P.O. and be able to listen to culture than go to a Bills game and listen to all the over weight want to be drunk coaches in the stands spilling beer all over me. Oh and I am sure there are going to be plenty of people in support of the Bills and call me all sorts of names, but how about you put that frustration into something positive and help out those less fortunate, I know I do and could care less if the Bills won or lost yesterday.
I can't get excited about
I can't get excited about football or most sports. Watching guys chase a ball or a puck is akin to watching paint dry, to me. How many times can a person watch a player dunk the ball, make a touchdown or slam a puck into a net? I dunno..it's just me. I can't figure out what holds peoples attention to the games.
What is it that you find exciting about football? What does it do for you that makes you want to watch every game and root for a certain team? I'm just curious because I've never understood the fanaticism about sports that so many other people share.
Yes, it was another bad
Yes, it was another bad season for the Buffalo Bills, but Man what a way to go out yesterday!!! What a game, and the weather was just perfect. Gotta Love Winter in NY.
Posted by Doug Yeomans on
Posted by Doug Yeomans on January 4, 2010 - 7:59am
I'm just curious because I've never understood the fanaticism about sports that so many other people share.
This explains it far better than I.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sport
I don't follow, nor enjoy, all sports. However, I do appreciate the God given skills that athletes possess, just as I appreciate the talents of musicians, composers, authors, etc.
Bea, I was looking for more
Bea, I was looking for more of a personal opinion on why someone follows sports or finds it so consuming. Some of the guys I work with absolutely live and breath football during the season. It's all they can talk about and it baffles me.
Fair enough, Doug. I am a
Fair enough, Doug. I am a sports lover and have always been. Yet there are plenty of things that people enjoy that I do not understand either. Fishing would be a great example of this for me.I never was exposed to it as a child, so I was intrigued to test it out as an adult. After I had done so, I saw no reason to ever do it again. Just didn't work for me.
I think sports means something different for each person. Myself, my love of sports REALLY began when I was four years old at my first professional baseball game. I went to a Phillies/Astros game with my Dad. We were sitting on the third base line close to the field. In the second inning Mike Schmidt, now Hall of Fame third baseman for the Phillies, came up to the plate and sent one out of the park. I looked at my Dad and said "Who's he?"
My Dad said "That's Mike Schmidt and he plays right there in front of us" When the inning ended and Schmidt came back out I yelled at the top of my little lungs:
"Mike Schmidt, you're the best!!!" He turned, smiled and tipped his cap. That was totally enough for me, but my Dad screamed out, "This is his first game!" Schmidt smiled again and waved.The Phillies put the Astros down 1,2,3 and went off the field.
Two innings later, some kid in a oficial Phillies jacket came into our section and asked my Dad, "Is this the young gentlemen who is attending their first game?" My Dad said yes and he proceeded to hand me an autographed photo of Mike Schmidt. I still have it to this day.
Nothing can ever replace that memory and I will treasure it always. Ever since I have always been a sports fan and live and die by my teams. Just thought I would share.
Doug, I believe it is a
Doug, I believe it is a matter of "to each his own". Like Phil, I don't see how people get so wrapped up in hunting, or snowmobiling. I would neber put anyone down for it, just not for me.
My love of sports started as a kid, watching my uncles play basketball and baseball. Also cable in the early 70's was a real treat, and I remember watching Yankee games with my grandparents (holy cow). Then, I played some sports myself, albeit not very well. My freshman basketball coach encouraged me to take up acting :) (maybe that's where the salesman came from). Anyway, I'm with Bea...it always amazes me how amazing God is, and what some people are able to do because of the gifts given by Him.
BTW, the Bills suck and I love them, because they are OUR team, a source of comraderie in the frigid outback we call WNY.
Great, story, Phil. One of
Great, story, Phil.
One of the things about sports is getting to know the athletes.
I enjoy any game more when I take an interest in the people playing it.
If I sit and watch a game where I don't know any of the players involved, my anticipation for the game isn't every high, but it doesn't take long before I find myself rooting for this or that particular individual, and then the game becomes much more interesting.
I'm not much of a soccer fan, but a few years ago I made a point to watch as much of the World Cup as I could. I became really engrossed in the series of games, picking out favorite teams and favorite players and found some of the matches then to be really intense and enjoyable -- I finally got a glimpse of why soccer is so popular around the world because I applied myself to trying to understand it.
With basketball, that didn't work out so well. I remember during the baseball strike a decade or more ago, I decided enough baseball, I'm going to start following basketball. I watched dozens of games and tried to become either a Lakers or a Clippers fan. It just never took. I've never gotten the appeal of basketball.
And many people don't understand why I love baseball so much.
It's part an interest in the players, a deep love of the history of the game and its statistics, but also I know very well how to evaluate players and what it takes to win a game. I have a pretty good understanding of the strategy and can appreciate nearly every pitch of the game. A lot of people think there is no action in baseball -- to me, there's action on every pitch. What a pitcher throws and where he locates that pitch in the first inning may be very important in the fifth inning, a nuance you only see if you really enjoy the game.
Also, I think I'm a competitive person. Who wins and loses is important to me, and I prefer to win than lose, even though I've spent all of my life rooting for teams that have lost more than they've won (Padres and Chargers). I simply enjoy watching others compete and seeing how the story of a baseball game or a golf tournament a football game and now even a soccer game over the course of that event (and every match has a story to tell if you pay attention).
Ha! These posts bring back
Ha! These posts bring back memories of growing up with one TV and three Bills fans. On boring Sunday afternoons in winter there was nothing to do but sit with my dad and two older brothers and watch football. They were so into it, it was hard not to get excited. My dad patiently explained how the game was played (or supposed to be played…). Everything I learned about football I learned from him first.
In the summer, girls and boys in the neighborhood played two hand touch or flag football in the field or somebody’s backyard. My friends and I were all tomboys…we had to be if we wanted to have any fun. Good times.
Not so much of a fan now, but I’m sure I could remember how to do it.
Now that's what I'm talking
Now that's what I'm talking about. Personal testaments as to why someone likes sports. It sounds like it's not just the game that's important, it's the whole aura, captured moments in time...etc.
As a kid I can remember my uncle monopolizing the television to watch sports at family gatherings and I hated it. Maybe that's why they bore me to tears..lol.
Bud, I have a lifetime sportsmans license, fishing, bow hunting and muzzle loader tags but I hear you on the fishing. I loved it as a kid but now just see it as a way to get eaten alive by mosquitoes.
As i get older, hunting becomes less and less enjoyable during shotgun season and more enjoyable during bow season.
I agree with both Bud and
I agree with both Bud and Doug: I can appreciate the level of skill demonstrated by athletes- both professional and amateur. I can also understand that watching professional sports on television, by repetition, undermines the unique quality of any skill. But I would go a step farther. The betting, merchandising and marketing of players creates a subculture, alien to the play.
Fans adopt teams and players as aspects of themselves. They wear jerseys and talk about "my" team and "my" players. They aren't ours. The wins and losses aren't ours, still many act as if they had something invested. They even pantomime competition, jeering fans of teams other than the ones they have adopted.
Just as organized sport is a metaphor/catharsis/substitute for war (think ancient Rome); it has become a cultural surrogate. If anyone is in a particularly cynical mood, watch the movie Rollerball- not the recent flop, the original with James Caan.
For those who had and lost, or never had the experience of playing sports, watching others play is a substitute. Instead of organizing a game of softball or volleyball, fans sit in a chair and passively assume the energy expended by others. They invent a whole persona based on the accomplishments of people they don't even know- other than in a statistical sense.
...And they pay these synthetic gods millions of dollars for the privilege of becoming wrapped up in them.
Personally, I'd rather savor my first wrestling pin, home run- the one that went over the treetops and the time I caught the line drive when I was pitching. To heck with pretending. ...And I don't need an excuse to invite friends over for a beer.
I play softball, ice hockey,
I play softball, ice hockey, gaelic football, indoor and outdoor soccer, and golf. I love each of these sports.
And to me, watching a game is almost as fun as partaking in one. I watched the Winter Classic this weekend and loved every minute of sitting there with my coworkers/teammates watching a game that none of us would last 2 minutes in.
I am a competition junkie. Video Games, Sports, Politics, Work, all of them make me strive to be better than those around me.
Watching others try as hard as I do to improve is just as exciting for me.
Recently I had a soccer fan from Poland who lives in Rochester tell me that I don't love soccer because I don't follow the game after he Rhinos are out of the playoffs and I don't care about the world cup after the US is out. He doesn't understand the love I have of my teams. He doesn't understand that local representation in the event is where my pride comes from. For him its about the game and that game alone (soccer). For me its being the best at what you do. I rout for teams that I feel a connection to. The Amerks is my team. The Sabres is my team. The Rhinos, Knighthawks, and Red Wings are my teams. The Muckdogs is my team. I want them to do well for whatever reason. Sure the game it self is fun but I lose something when I have no connection to the people playing.
To me sports are pretty much
To me sports are pretty much the only thing on TV that is worth watching. There is not one single tv show on regular network television that I watch. The drama and competition of sports provides the excitement for me. The live game is even better. I love to go to see the Sabres we will get there 2 hours before the game just to walk around and watch the pre game skate. I was at the Bills game yesterday and loved watching them in the snow. ( I do admit that the Bills games are getting harder to enjoy live because of the drunken fools) I was fortunate enough to attend a game at Yankee Stadium and saw A-Rods 500th home run some thing I will never forget. Even catching a Muckdogs game with a cold one and a hot dog,, grate fun! I even like baseball on the radio. When we are camping during the summer ( and Im not fishing or hiking) its a great way to waste an afternoon relaxing and listening to a game. I can get them all because I have satellite radio. So its sports ( in HD of course) and documentaries on History or any of the discovery channels that i can watch on tv.
I am with Doug on the whole
I am with Doug on the whole sports thing. People live, eat, breath and other things all around sports. With all of the things going on in the world and the only thing people can talk about on Monday morning is how the Bills lost. Let's put on the front page about the Bills losing and who the new coach is, but put on page 5 a little bit of abused children, a famly losing all in a house fire, or unemployment on the rise. However, let's keep the players employed with the super high salaries they get, and pay $30 for a t-shirt to support the "team", and back wonderful decisions like getting T.O. yeah he was real productive. How about we get kids as supportive of the arts as we do of the sports stuff. We need that kind of support of the B.P.O. they are never disappointing, but the Bills, let's get real, talk about disappointment. Hello, it has been ten years since they have been in the playoffs, if you were to perform that badly in your work place would you still be there? I would rather go to the B.P.O. and be able to listen to culture than go to a Bills game and listen to all the over weight want to be drunk coaches in the stands spilling beer all over me. Oh and I am sure there are going to be plenty of people in support of the Bills and call me all sorts of names, but how about you put that frustration into something positive and help out those less fortunate, I know I do and could care less if the Bills won or lost yesterday.