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Comment by parennoob | Hacker News Reader

Wow, could this mean the end of overpaid, media-hyped sportspersons being on American TV all the time, and American people actually getting off their asses and going out and reducing the obesity rate? Yay! I hope they cut "free" game broadcasts and force people to pay $1000/month to watch them.

Also, The NFL and the NHL are registered as "tax free organizations", which means that those of us paying taxes have to pay more because these corporations are too greedy to give up a fair share of their (enormous) profits. This makes the hypocrisy of them crying about "free" broadcasts extremely irritating.

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A comment like this reeks of ignorance and adds nothing to the dialogue.

If you wanted to vouch for the reduction of sports on broadcast television with reasons related to health that are backed up with facts or citations, rather than speculative opining, you could have, and should have, done so.

The "sports" word was mentioned, so yes, we can expect a deluge of holier than thou prejudiced nerds explaining in very ethnocentric terms why sports is bad.

It'd be comical if it wasn't depressing.

I had to look up what "ethnocentric" meant, but I don't think I am "evaluating other peoples and cultures according to the standards of my own culture" here. Perhaps you could elaborate?

(Also, even if I was, don't we all unconsciously view things through the lens of our cultural upbringing? Fail to see how this could be either comical or depressing. Or perhaps you want opinions to be restricted to only people from your own culture?)

Yes, it means exactly that. As in, nerds who have lived in their own geek culture bubble all of their lives, aggressively and prejudicedly judging sports culture from the perspective of their own comfort bubble, without ever truly experiencing it with an open mind or truly trying to understand why people enjoy those things and behave that way. Jock-bullying. It's very common in nerd circles, if only as a reflexive against the injustices against nerds, both real and imagined.

It's comical/depressing because nerd crowds are generally very self-congratulatory on how open-minded, liberal and intelligent they are.

And then this kind of reflexive antagonist behavior against jocks bubbles up, and we're forced to realize that no, just because geeks paint themselves as these smart and open-minded people does not mean it is true.

Sometimes, they're no better than bullies, insulting ways of life that they've never tried, simply because it is different or because they are expected by their group to dislike those things.

This has nothing to do with jocks. If anything, it might be considered bullying people-who-watch-sports-yet-are-in-no-condition-to-play-sports-themselves. You'd think nerds constitute a greater proportion of that than jocks. I don't know much about jock culture, but I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that physical fitness plays a part?

Why stop at sports? Let's start bullying people-who-love-music-but-can't-play-an-instrument-themselves! Or how about people-who-watch-movies-yet-can't-act-their-way-out-of-a-bucket? Those people definitely deserve our scorn...

If severe deficiency at playing an instrument caused heart attacks, sure, that would be a great idea.

I'm not entirely sure which side is 'reeking of ignorance' here.

Go to any so-called sports bar. The majority of people are obese or overweight and look as if they'd be hard-pressed to run a hundred yards. Look at the majority of commercials during sports games broadcasts. They are typically Doritos, McDonalds, or something else related to fatty, unhealthy food. To go shopping in most places, you have to get your ass in a car since the bloody mall is like 20 miles away, and when you get there, the aisles are full of frozen pizza and cookies instead of fresh produce and meat.

Don't bother nitpicking my statement (it is obviously an exaggeration) -- just notice all these things about your "game Sunday" next time. But since you seem almost slavishly devoted to "omgsomeoneinanewspaperorscientificjournalsaiditsoitmustbetrue" sources, here are some.

1) Map of obesity rate in the US for all states from 1985-2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obesity_state_level_estima...

2) In 2012, the NFL generated $9.5 billion in revenue http://www.businessinsider.com/sports-chart-of-the-day-nfl-r.... Yet, it is registered as a non-profit organisation, which essentially means that all of us are indirectly subsidizing it as taxpayers. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/25/1241265/-Wait-the-N...

You've done nothing to connect obesity rates to sports viewing in this comment. At best, your anecdote connected obesity to being in sports bars.

As I said in the parent, don't bother nitpicking. To appease you, substitute the typical American living room on "game day" for the sports bar. I guarantee you the obesity rate is not lower.

It's not a nitpick. It's a core and fundamental flaw in the central point of your reasoning.

I'll bite: Look at the map of searches for 'college football' here - http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of... Now look at obesity rates at the county level here - http://www.maxmasnick.com/2011/11/15/obesity_by_county/

Here is a map of poverty rates at the county level:

http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/percent-of-...

I have a hard time believing that obesity is causally related to "college football" or televised sports in general. Except perhaps the fact that it's a sedentary activity, but a sizable chunk of HN probably spends far more time working in front of a computer.

No, no, football causes poverty. And obesity causes football.

> I have a hard time believing that obesity is causally related to "college football" or televised sports in general.

Correlation is not causation, but it is correlation...i.e. things which will affect college football viewing might affect obesity as well. Ergo, if college football becomes too expensive to watch, maybe obesity rates will reduce. This is my hypothesis; only an actual experiment can show if this is true or not.

Here I'll fix your statement for you.

Go to any so-called tech conference. The majority of people are obese or overweight and look as if they'd be hard-pressed to run a hundred yards.

Stop being a douche.

Actually, I whole-heartedly agree with this statement. Not sure whether that means I should continue being a "douche".

From your second paragraph I can see that you have no idea how the NFL and NHL are structured or operate. Of course, you're too pretentious to even try to understand the business because they're just "media hyped sportspersons."

If "how they are structured" is going to be an argument for calling a 9 billion dollar franchise a non-profit organization, yeah, I'm not sure I want to hear that argument.

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