Whereas I hate, loathe, and despise pretty much all sports.
I’d be really happy if I could delete all sports from all video sources I have available to me, or at least just hide them so that I don’t have to look at any of that crap.
Some in the tech community enjoy watching sport. As well, for those who are in the tech community who do not follow sport, it is good for them to be tangentially aware of major sporting events, so they can engage with co-workers and colleagues at more social level.
For instance I enjoy building Ardiuno and Raspberry Pi gadgets on the weekends, but most of my co-workers would rather be watching rugby. Knowing the outcome of the tournament is a social norm at my office, and not knowing the outcome would, while not a taboo, would make me seem socially awkward.
I think it could make both these sports more fun to watch, but then I'm not a fan of either. It seems to me that a lot of people following golf and baseball are purists easily turned off by this kind of thing. I could be wrong.
I am a fan of basketball and football, and do know that the innovative camera angles introduced so far fail the pub test; whenever I'm at a bar and the TV switches to one, people either complain or say nothing. I've yet to hear any support.
Oh boy, basketball. The only thing less interesting than Gruber's baseball related posts, other than Golf on TV.
I just can't get into watching sports - I love playing them (soccer and ultimate frisbee on the weekends) but watching them seems pointless for some reason. My wife watches more sports than I do, and she watches figure skating and track & field, which comes on like 4 times a year...
It's a topic where there is often daily new events, and it brings an additional audience into the news broadcasts. I get that you don't particularly enjoy sports, but not every segment of the news needs to be for you.
I think the goal of any sport should more be engagement than entertainment. For entertainment, go to a circus, movie, or theater.
Also, any sport at top level suffers from common people not being able to see what’s happening. That’s unavoidable. For example, at Olympic level, a hurdler having to shorten a pace by a few cm at one hurdle can make a decisive difference. In gymnastics, I doubt any layman can, given a video stream, rank the top competitors the way the jury does (would be an interesting experiment to do)
Also IMO, rules that more reliably let the better team win work against engaging the crowd.
Nothing better for user engagement than that ‘goal’ in the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.
Contrary to many other comment assumptions that I do not like sports, I do, but just struck me that it is similar like any other entertainment, movies, music, radio, internet ... but they do not have dedicated block each day.
I regret the coming of short-format cricket. Cricket's not supposed to be a super-exciting riot of entertainment; i like that you can drop in for one day of a 5-day Test, and sit there catching some rays and reading a newspaper.
In general, I don't care much for the influence of TV on team sports. I played Rugby Union at school; Rugby League was invented to make the game more exciting for spectators, by eliminating loose rucks. For me, all these games are participant sports, and the spectators are incidental (I don't watch sports on TV).
Football (i.e. soccer) is a thug's game, played by gentlemen.
Cricket is a gentlemen's game, played by thugs.
Rugby is a game played by men with peculiar balls.
For me almost all sports and esports are painfully boring to observe. I don't feel any attachment to the teams and the gameplay carries out pretty much the same every time. I'd much rather be playing the sport or game.
The exception is for this are things that are very novel. I'll happily watch a video of someone mtb riding down some insane trails or someone playing a video game in a crazy way I haven't seen before. But once its no longer new its no longer interesting to me.
Really couldn't care about the NBA, NHL, NFL, NCAA, etc, but it helps to at least understand the sports and the major teams and how the seasons are going.
I've tried multiple times to become interested in spectator sports. To date the only ones I find even mildly interesting are:
- NBA Finals basketball
- World Series of Poker
- UFC
Football is slow-paced and disheartening b/c of all the drives that end with a punt. Baseball is slow-paced. Hockey is OK but after a watching for 10 minutes I start to get board. Tennis and Golf are both extremely frustrating as well.
I love to participate in Amateur Radio Radiosport and have done quite well at it, and also love SCUBA and snowboarding but not in a competitive way (watching or participating).
So I guess it's a mystery to me how people can find mainstream sports so worth sinking time/energy into. If I were in sales I'd certainly glance at the sports page now and then.
I find it difficult to watch any sports these days because you are just constantly bombarded with sports betting ads and tie-ins. I have absolutely no interest in throwing my money away on sports bets and yet even I find myself wondering if I should try it out or maybe I could just open a trial account. It's dangerous and disappointing that this is the direction that all the major sports leagues are heading.
I was interested in certain sports as a teenager, but grew out of it. I can think of a couple of reasons. Firstly I moved around a bit, to different cities and countries, and parochialism seems very silly. If you don't care which team wins, a lot of interest in sport disappears. Secondly the sports themselves are extremely repetitive. Once you've learned the rules and seen a few games, there's not much more to learn, it's just variations on a theme.
Edit: I'm referring to spectating, not active participation. I'm sure there's a lot more to learn, understand and enjoy if you actually play.
It would help if the sports didn't seem to have arbitrary rules towards a specific end. Fewer rules the better.
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