WOOOO!!!
Can I watch a game? Yes. Hell, I'll even go out of my way to watch the Pistons play...but only during the playoffs, and only if I really don't have something else to do, like writing, or reading, or catching up on some sleep.
I'm sure that sounds snobby to someone, but this is the point: I would rather catch up no sleep than watch sports.
Driving is a sport now
As ever, I want to be fair. I don't want to just say "sports are boring." Plenty of people find them just fascinating, ergo, it's not that sports are boring but that I am bored by sports. Important distinction. Another important distinction is that there are some sports I like playing. I like sunny summer baseball games with my 17 closest friends, any sport that has a demonstrable correlation between drinking and improved performance (like bowling), and anything where you're for all intents and purposes trying to kill your opponent or preparing to kill a potential opponent (boxing, martial arts, shooting, rollerball).
So I don't know exactly why I find sports boring. I have two theories.
Theory one - I didn't see a lot of my dad growing up, and so I was never inculcated properly into the cult of sport. This is actually pretty true, but then I know plenty of guys who also didn't spend a lot of time with their fathers, or whose father's aren't sports guys themselves, and they like sports just fine, so that leads us to...
Theory two - I fell in with the clove-smoking, smirking, coffee-shop, bad poetry, lazy, apathetic non-conformist loser crowd that thought sports were clearly for Nazis, and generally refused to play. This is pretty much 100% true, and when you couple that with the influence of Theory one (above), you know why I don't care about the Superbowl.
So bad they know they're good, but unironically, so the lyrics are meta as all hell
But high school was something like 15 years ago, so it's not like I'm still dressed in black, drinking cappuccino and reading "Catcher in the Rye." No, the whole enterprise has become something vaguely contemptible. Sports, to me, have just become a reminder of my outsider status, a cultural identifier that for me offers no identity. It is a piece of flair that is conspicuously absent from my Chotchkie's uniform.
So these indifferences feed on another - I didn't get into sports early, so I'm not into sports, so I'm not a sports guy, so its hard to get into sports, etc, etc etc.
As papa said of gaming:
"Unlike all other forms of lutte or combat the conditions are that the winner shall take nothing; neither his ease, nor his pleasure, nor any notions of glory; nor, if he wins far enough, shall there be any reward within himself."
Even when I was more competitive in my youth, I found this to be fundamentally true. What's that you say? You can't hear me over the hypocrisy inherent in my collection of little toy soldiers and polyhedral dice? Yes, truly, for the wargamer or roleplayer there is even less at stake than for the athlete, but this in part is my point.
Football and fantasy together - nothing escapist about that
An afternoon of sport is, for me, good exercise and a tiring diversion from the everyday. It's a chance to burn off some body fat and distract myself from the crushing agonies of existence. To just make this absolutely clear, I like exercise, I like competing, I like playing! But - it's nothing I would put up any real risk for, and in putting up no risk, I stand to gain no reward.
Thus it was particularly odious to me that I should break my thumb in, of all things, a dodgeball game. Suppose that the powers that be had ordained that I were to break my thumb in some fashion, and that it would have to happen in my 32nd year. Did I break my thumb rescuing a young lady tied to the train tracks? Did I break my thumb pulling orphans from a burning building? No, I broke my thumb trying, and failing, to catch a rubber ball.
BLOOHGIEBLAH BLAH SPORTS!
So more than sports, it's "sports culture" that eludes me. When the home team wins, what's in it for me? Do I get money? Do I get to go to Disneyworld? Do we get to kill the other team and mount their still-grinning skulls on pikes outside my front door as we take their fortunes, their lands and their women? No. For all the spectacle and advertising, the stadiums, the crowds, the traffic, the reward is trophy - a few bucks worth of tin, some commemorative rings from Jostens, and some intense cross-branding synergy with Budweiser, the king of beers, some shoe comany or another, a happy meal, y nada y nada y nada y pues.
If sports are your thing, man, more power to you. I just don't see the appeal beyond a nice afternoon spent throwing a ball around. I would rather watch Any Given Sunday than Monday Night Football, and roll some bones rather than toss a pigskin. I suppose if I put money on these "big games" then there would be some risk, and thus some reward, but as it stands I'd rather play than watch, and read than play.
Drinking is probably in there somewhere too.
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