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Comment by dreamcompiler | Hacker News Reader

If I could send messages back to my 12yo self it would be "quit pretending to give a damn about football." Football was a big deal where I grew up and I spent a lot of time keeping up with it to "fit in." Fortunately I figured out it didn't matter by the time I got to college (which happened to be a major football university).

To this day when I tell people I went to UT Austin their first response is usually "Longhorns are doing great this year aren't they?"

"I have no idea" I respond. "But they have very good EE and CS departments."

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I'd be careful with that advice. Sports are great conversation starters. People want to share what they are passionate about. I may not want to spend hours talking to them about it, but a few minutes that's fine. Who knows maybe you will learn something useful.

There's a great episode of The IT Crowd about this (and how it backfires horribly)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKHyqjHqQLU

-1 Strongly Disagree. Sort of :p

When somebody tries to talk sports to me, I feign stupidity but in a silly way. For example if somebody tries to talk Football (American) I say "Oh, that's that thing where sweaty guys chase each other around and people talk about it, right?" and they laugh, realize I have zero interest, and we move on to a more relevant subject. It's all in how you go about it.

that’s a patronizing statement that i don’t think certain kinds of people would love

If it's said in a kindhearted way with a twinkle in your eye, people usually get it. On the other hand, I stopped trying to please everyone years ago.

And sports can be more than just athletics. I watch "SpeedGaming" and "Global Speedrun Association" competitions, and these have announcers, tournaments, ratings, and even sponsors.

Football and Basketball are generally more accessible to the wider population than Speed running. Which I believe is what parent post was referring to

My dad isn't into sports at all. He lives in a very sports-focused city, much more so than where he spent most of his life, so I told him my little sports trick.

Sports fan: "Did you see the blank game?" Me: No but isn't what's his name doing well?

99% of the time people will fill in whoever the star player is and talk about how good they are doing or say no they were doing well but they haven't been recent.

I didn't care much about sports when I moved to Chicago, which cares a lot about sports, but now I have some knowledge about all the teams and friendships with a lot of sports fans I wouldn't otherwise know well. Go Bulls.

I have this problem with European and World Cup soccer. I just follow them enough to be able to briefly feign interest.

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