Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports
mako.cc
mako.cc
It's called being a snob. The disdain for working class culture among academics was part of the reason I choose not to pursue a formal higher education. I suspect this overt snootiness keeps many gifted working class kids from participating in higher education.
I grew up working class and was a boxer. I love Ice Hockey, Football, UFC, NASCAR, Motocross, and heavy metal, but I am also an academic and an intellectual. Many highly educated people have told me so, I just don't have the paper to prove it.
My oldest son is highly gifted earning math test scores putting him in the top tenth of one percent and placing 1st in regional Math Masters competitions. He also plays ice hockey so he interacts socially with the 'jocks' and the 'brains' preferring the company of the 'brains.'
Most of his 'smart' friends show contempt for sports which is a social problem since he is an athlete.
When a kids says, "Hockey. Meh. It is a bunch grown men with sticks chasing a black piece of rubber around a sheet of ice" he is saying in effect "What you love is obtuse and low brow and I don't care how that makes you feel." And that is just rude.
I don't have statistics, so this is all anecdotal, but most Professors I have gotten to know well have a favorite team or sport etc. The reality you present sounds more like movies than real life. For example, I can see Dr. Epps from Numb3rs being snoody about sports in a way I have never seen a real Professor be.
Is it possible that it was the popular culture image portrayed of academic attitudes is what stopped you, rather than actual academic attitudes?
> but I am also an academic and an intellectual. Many highly educated people have told me so, I just don't have the paper to prove it.
Do you have problems getting published without "the paper to prove it"? Anyone can be an intellectual if they are intellectual, but at least in my mind, being an academic implies peer-reviewed novel research.
I thought this as well. I had always thought that being an intellectual was just something you were regardless of education, but an academic is a vocation marked largely by publishing peer-reviewed research and (most likely) having advanced graduated degrees and/or a professorship of some sort.
One of my favorite CS profs loved his Duke Blue Devils, and was an avid Bulls fan (really who wasn't).
I think that the disdain people have from sports may stem from a general disdain that arises from being an outcast.
This has been my experience, up to and including a stint at a top tier American university where during the World Series I couldn't have a conversation with anyone, including my elderly Swiss-American academic supervisor, that didn't have a long preamble about how things were going for each team.
I grew up in an (American) football-loving family and still enjoy the game, but knew (and still know) almost nothing about baseball. But I watched that Series just so I could communicate with my American colleagues.
So to describe academics as sports-hating snobs is wildly at odds with (anecdotal) reality.
I grew up in an academic family. My parents were at the top of their respective fields, and their work, to them was as much a labor of love as it was anything else. I found that really very few things competed in their eyes with the fun/enjoyment of doing their job. Sports didn't really make that cut, but pretty much nothing but family made that cut. Their friends (and colleagues) seemed to be similar.
It was not so much about "Eew sports" as it was "Do I want to watch sports? Or would I rather read a book?" and "Read a book" won 99.99% of the time.
That being said, I did see a lot of disdain for sports among some of the more intellectual students at my university.
I'd be willing to bet that who acts like a sports-hating-snob can be predicted by simple signalling theory: professors/academics are unlikely to have their 'intellectual credentials/worthiness' questioned. They usually wouldn't need to signal "Disdain for sports" as a way to differentiate themselves from the non-intellectual working class. Being interested in sports also probably doesn't have any potential impact on other's perception of them, but probably doesn't benefit them particularly either--so you'd see academics with an interest in sports and academics who just don't really care, but you probably wouldn't see lots of academics decrying sports. (Outside of the critiques you'd expect of the NFL/NBA/FIFA/etc.--probably focused on the organizational ethics rather than the idea of sports as inherently bad.) On the other hand, in the case of students or middle class, non-professorial individuals, the differentiation between them and the working class is less immediately obvious to them and their peers, particularly on the things that someone aspiring to appear 'intellectual' would care about. (I think this also includes people in tech.) For them, decrying sports signals that they are decidedly not working class/non-intellectual, and alleviates the risk of being identified as such.
Signalling of social and political grouping is particularly prevalent and obvious on the internet because you can't rely on extrinsic or physical factors to demonstrate your social groupings. In the real world someone can rely on their appearance to telegraph a lot of things--clothing and grooming choices alone can hint at sexuality, politics, social class, and a variety of other things, to say nothing of existing social structures and bonds (who you surround yourself with also telegraphs a lot). On the internet, you either need to explicitly say these things ("I'm not straight", or "I came from a well off family" or "I'm a conservative") or signal them somehow, and there are areas where it's less acceptable to overtly announce your membership in a group, so implying it through general biwords for it is socially necessary. ("I'm filthy rich" or "I'm really, really smart and intellectual" or even "I'm really, really, really ridiculously good looking" all likely fall under that category. I think that generally the more desirable the category, the more it requires either actually costly signals--e.x. displaying expensive artwork in your home or donating lots of money in the case of wealth--to do 'acceptably'.)
You see some of it on HN, too, although I think it's generally much less accepted to negatively signal here--but especially in the more social-justice-y threads, you see a lot of signalling of people picking sides going in both directions, because that's something that HN doesn't really have any sort of unity on but individuals here feel strongly about. In this thread there was a perhaps unsurprising backlash against the author (usually backed up with some logic--which is thankfully required by the etiquette here) about why the posters were justified in their active dislike of sports.
In my experience most social signaling/biwording is fairly well summed up by the basic theory of "You will only expend effort signaling if there's (a) a chance you'll be mistaken for someone in a group you don't want to be mistaken as, and (b) there's a chance you'll be seen as being in the group you want to be in because of it."
Bottom line for me is that no one has ever had to worry about getting beaten up by a stadium full of Mozart fans, or humiliated in high school by a feral gang of science nerds.
Saying "I'm not interested in X" has very different connotations from "I can't see why anybody is interested in X".
Taken more charitably, it merely implies that one does not understand the valid reasons for liking X.
There's a difference between saying "there's nothing of value here" and "I don't see why this is of value" -- one is phrased as an objective statement, while the other is a statement of perspective.
Long ago, my wife told me she didn't understand why people liked a particular music genre I listened to. I had her listen to a couple of favorite songs and talked about what I thought was interesting about them, and as a result she developed a mild fondness for the genre which grew over the next several years. She wasn't expressing contempt; she was expressing a lack of understanding which was overcome as a result of experience and education.
And therein lies the rub. Interpreting others statements charitably and trying to make your own clear and unambiguous can reduce an awful lot of social friction.
This is completely wrong. You're essentially saying here that "I don't understand the valid reason for X" necessarily means "therefore X has no valid reason". I really hope you're just confused here, as opposed to actually believing this line of thought and applying it to things in general. To use my example again, when I say "I don't understand the appeal at all", I'm literally saying that _I_ don't understand it: I assume there's just something I'm missing about pro sports or some as-yet-unknown difference in my preferences that makes me averse to watching it.
You're essentially saying here that "I don't understand the valid reason for X" necessarily means "therefore X has no valid reason".
The thing that bites me is that I can say something like this and mean it as you do, and yet the person hearing it insists on interpreting incorrectly. I find this is especially true in conversations with a lot of emotional components.
Any time the listener of an assertion on my part that I'm trying to understand fact X, treats it as my asserting that fact X is false, it raises a flag for me to check the emotional content.
In my experience, to understand the appeal of sports (professional or otherwise) you have to understand people who want other people they care about to succeed. Being a parent helped me understand that. Prior to being a parent I was notoriously confused about what the connection was between sports team's success or failure and the outpouring of raw emotion on a large scale.
My best understanding of it is nothing more than the same blind tribalism that is responsible for so much of what is terrible with the world. As I said though, I prefer to think there's an alternative, more valid explanation that I'm just unaware of.
You've changed the original wording that I was commenting on to mean something different. Telling me I'm completely wrong and that you hope I'm confused does nothing to change that.
I literally see no difference (beyond the latter being slightly clearer) between "I can't see why X happens" and "I don't understand the valid reason why X happens" (where X in this case is "people being interested in pro sports"). As such, I didn't consider switching it out to change the meaning at all beyond slightly clarifying.
The connotations you refer to are also ones that I don't think the original phrase is laden with. I really don't see how "I don't see why X" connotes a lack of attempt to do so, any more than "I don't understand why X" does.
I'm aware that now we're getting into differences in connotations where there really are "no right answers" (unlike the denotation, we can't just look up a single source of truth). Apparently we've just been exposed to rather different vernacular, at least with respect to these couple of phrases. I guess that makes us "both right", with respect to the "languages" that we each speak.
You know the type, they think they're so clever calling sports terms by the wrong name. Really sticking it to society by saying things like, "yay!! our squad scored some touchgoals in the handball match ha-ha-ha!!" People who are too good for non-intellectual things like sports, because in their mind, being intellectual is what sets them apart from the rest of the pack and the rest of the pack are stupid neanderthals who watch sports.
I've had a couple girlfriends who made fun of me enjoying hockey and college football, but after explaining the depth of the strategy, and how the football game is much less about the guys running into each other, and much more about the chess game the coaches are playing against each other, they've all come around and at least appreciated what sports are about.
Sorry you have a grievance with your exes who were bored by your preoccupation with sports. Nobody is obligated to share your interests any more than you are obligated to share a certain autistic person's interest in trains. If you find talking about models of trains boring, that's your right. Period.
a) everyone expects you to know the difference between a safety touch and a free safety
and
b) no one knows the difference between muonium and muonic hydrogen (a difference I myself just learned today)
and
c) if you do know the difference between muonium and muonic hydrogen you instantly get treated with contempt?
I'm not sure that this is the case, but having lived my whole life in a world that treats almost everything I care about with overt and sometimes violent contempt, I can certainly see people who care more about art, science, literature or poetry acting out a bit to give the rest of the world the feeling they have when they try to talk to anyone about anything that matters to them.
That part interests you more, maybe. One of the reasons sports have such wide appeal is that they can be appreciated in a number of different ways. Coaching and long term strategy is interesting for sure, but there's a lot to see just between players too.
Watching a professional basketball game, for example, I'm astounded by the pure, freak strength and athleticism of these six-and-a-half-foot-tall giants as they dunk, struggle for position for rebounds and leap across the court to block shots. I'm in awe of the mental discipline and social coordination the players need to successfully execute a defensive scheme or offensive play: split-second reads of their opponents' schemes, precise spatial awareness of their teammates and opposing players, and the ability to communicate effectively with teammates amid the roar of an NBA arena at full capacity.
Football isn't the same as basketball but the players are doing a lot more than just "running into each other." As one example, wide receivers are often engaged in tactical mind-games with defensive backs, fighting for the millisecond-grained advantage off the line of scrimmage that makes the difference between a touchdown and an intercepted pass. They have to execute cuts down the field on their routes with incredibly precise timing matching the quarterback's or risk causing an incompletion or worse. All players spend hundreds of hours a season in the film room studying their opponents, looking for tendencies and tells to exploit in the coming game.
I kind of disagree with that label, as it imply that its only is a problem with higher education. The working class show the same overt contempt at people who watch e-sports, snooker, and other sports which isn't directly associated with the working class culture.
It's made worse in these contexts because these are the same people who are asked to comment - and sometimes even make policy - on the working class.
It's a little galling when the educated, wealthy, and powerful show contempt for core parts of the culture of groups they are supposed to represent the interests of.
It's also counter-productive, since these educated, wealthy, and powerful people must necessarily engage in dialogue with the working class if their research, policy, or commentary is intended to be accurate or useful.
I just finished my undergrad, and I've realized that the 'jocks hate nerds' has become severely outdated in my generation. Like the parent commentor, I grew up in both worlds; My athletic, frat-boy, 'jock' friends are often loud and obnoxious, but they don't hate quieter, 'nerd' folks. Rather, they just don't really care. On the other hand, I've found that a lot of my CS friends care a ridiculous amount, often feeling persecuted by mainstream social people for no reason. Ive had to hear a ridiculous amount of shit talk about fratboys and sorority girls (who in turn are mostly pretty cool).
Nowadays I've found that the real assholes in the "jocks hate nerds" equation have become the 'nerds'.
I guess you either die young or live long enough to become the villan.
That said jocks have a lot more social respect despite nerds contributing much more to our society. That seems reasonable to be pissed of about, and being perceived as being treated unfairly by a group and therefore hating it is pretty much what we humans do.
Personally, I really enjoy sports. What I don't like is the organizations (NFL, NCAA) and owners that sell advertising and broadcasting rights on top of them. There's far too much watching and not enough doing.
It could just be a self-selection effect due to playing a relatively expensive sport (since income and education are correlated), but given how popular sports of all types are (both watching and playing) among so many different types of people I am amazed that the denizens of ivory towers have been able to maintain the stereotype of sports as "low brow" for so long. Especially given that many ivy league universities have historically had popular and successful teams in sports like boxing and wrestling.
It's deeply, tragically ironic when you consider that the origins of those same intellecutal bubbles are rooted in Greek and Roman classical studies, both cultures that prized a well developed body and mind, and considered a man incomplete if he lacked either:
"No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable." - Socrates
I don't think that stereotype actually exists in "the denizens of ivory towers" so much as the stereotype of "denizens of ivory towers" holding that stereotype exists in the minds of people who identify themselves in opposition to "denizens of ivory towers".
Actually academics, whether fairly described as "denizens of ivory towers" or not, seem, IME, to be no less interest in sport qua sport than anyone else -- plenty of them fans of the popular professional sports, and plenty of those that aren't not disdaining them so much as being busier with other things, whether academic/professional pursuits, family, or even their own personal involvement in some form of sport, and not taking time for participation in the ritual of major professional sport spectation.
> It's deeply, tragically ironic when you consider that the origins of those same intellecutal bubbles are rooted in Greek and Roman classical studies, both cultures that prized a well developed body and mind, and considered a man incomplete if he lacked either
I don't think tribal attachment to and spectating major professional sports has any connection to a "well-developed body and mind".
Not only is everything over priced, but there's a vast array of tax breaks and hidden subsidies that the working class pays for.
B. I tend not to go to "tent pole" movies (well, occasionally) nor really consume a lot of blockbuster type music. Those would likely be the largest consumers of subsidies, or at least I'd guess that.
C. Music and movies occasionally intersect with "art" which I mostly support some subsidy of.
You did ask a good, thought provoking question. But as I said, I do like sports, and do use some of my discretionary spending to attend games. I don't support the massive subsidies that professional sports in the US gets.
More than that, he is in effect saying "there is no depth to this thing" (which he hasn't studied in depth enough to know). Which is both rude and arrogant.
It's one thing to say you don't understand a thing and aren't interested in it, and then politely discuss things you are (mutually) interested in. It's quite another to distill something you don't understand into an absurd caricature like "grown men with sticks chasing etc." when it actually has a tremendous amount of depth and strategy -- which every sport has at the highest levels (including things like Snooker and Starcraft.)
There's a reason the weakside linebacker positions himself in a different spot against the pistol formation when the backup tight end is in versus when the starter is in. There's a reason the shooting guard makes a hard baseline cut right after swinging the ball out to the wing if he's matched up with a smaller defender. If you show contempt for people who think that stuff is cool (or even for people who merely think the end result is fun to watch though they don't understand the details) that's a serious social dysfunction.
There's obviously nothing objectively bad about enjoying sports, but the ravenous obsession with sports is not exactly uncommon and to pretend we should celebrate it is not in the best interest of humanity.
There is a reason a lot (most?) NFL players go bankrupt shortly after their career of being paid far more than will reflect their contribution to the future of mankind. It's because that grouping of people has a lot of backwards thinking and irresponsibility attached to it.
It's very interesting to me that someone, here, in academia, is having to defend their disdain to the vocal majority about their distaste for sports culture when it does nothing long term for our species good and could easily be argued to be detrimental via opportunity cost thrown away in human potential that grew up believing it was more prestigious to be a football player than a scientist.
So am I annoyed? A bit. Do I generalize based on your taste for sports? No. Do I think your choice to praise athletes over scientists is detrimental to society? Yes, I do.
Is the reason because a very large number of them grew up in poverty or with rough family lives and therefore never had the chance to be trained into proper financial management as you were? Because that's a reason for a pretty solid proportion of athletes in the NFL at least.
Isn't that supposed to be because of the mental illness brought on by the repeated concussions that players suffer, which causes physical injury to the brain? I'm not sure how you can blame the players for that.
More precisely, 'there is no depth that is emotionally or intellectually relevant to me.' I'm sure there is lots of depth to the architecture Robin Hood Gardens, but it still should be levelled.
Likewise, while you're quite right that there's lots of depth to professional sports, I don't think that means that anyone should care, or be expected to care.
Contempt is bad, and obviously it's a fact that sports are popular, that most people like sports and that those of us who don't care are, in some pertinent sense, socially ill-developed. Still, what about the contempt which sports-lovers have for sports-haters? I think that's far more harmful, both in childhood and adulthood.
That's less precise.
By caricaturing the sport, he's not merely expressing that he doesn't care about the depth, he's implying it doesn't exist and that other people who care about the sport care about something pointless. It's an expression of contempt not just for the sport, but for their judgment. Like "the depth this sport may have shouldn't be relevant to anyone".
It's like if someone caricatures computer programming as "just typing" and therefore unimportant -- they're not merely saying that they don't care about pointers and function calls, they're implying that there's something wrong with people who do care about those things.
> "what about the contempt which sports-lovers have for sports-haters?"
I'm glad you prefaced this with "contempt is bad" so it didn't appear to be a tu quoque fallacy.
And you are correct, that form of contempt is also harmful. And the form of contempt sometimes displayed by groups of sports fans for other groups of sports fans is harmful. I don't think there's a lot of need to analyze the proposition "children are sometimes immature" -- I know I dished out and took my fair share of insults about everything from intelligence to looks to athleticism to choice of entertainment.
But for adults, we should rise above. If a friend is genuinely passionate about something, whether it's programming or sports or stamps or butterflies, figure out a way to be supportive rather than dismissive -- listen a little bit, ask questions, and then move on. And when you move the conversation to areas of shared interest, do it in a way that respects your friend's interest in whatever it is you don't particularly care for.
Even the title is dripping with disdain and condescension. Seems like he has to spend a bit more time going native. [2]
It's best to avoid judging people's interests, and learning a bit about them can definitely help you interact with people. Faking interest, as many do due to social pressures, is ineffective in the long run as well.
[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cultivated [2] Can someone please tell me the politically correct version of this idiom?
That's nice. What other corporate products must I consume in order to be a validated member of your social caste?
How about this: "when you show overt contempt for fast food, you are showing contempt for most everybody, and that is a problem with your social skills."
If I don't eat at McDonalds because I care about my health, am I unfit for socialization?
Whats funny is that you could actually bring up this topic with fans of mainstream sports (especially for the NFL) and probably get a decent discussion going. Just mention things like TV timeouts and you'll probably get some level of agreement on how annoying things have gotten these days.
Of course, if you phrase it in a way similar to how you did above, people will most likely just think you were an asshole.
Of course, a similar thought most likely crossed my mind when I read the parent comment.
I love basketball. I grew up playing and refereeing it. I lost interest for about a decade, because the culture got to be too much about the personality and antics, and not the game. I've only just gotten back into it in the last year because it seems to have shifted back. And there is a lot of fun to be had attending a game.
I encourage you to quote that part of my comment. For bonus points, quote the part where I said I can't understand why people enjoy sports.
Go ahead, say, with a straight face, that such a remark was not effectively a paraphrasing of what I said and was a non-loaded question asked with sincerity. To claim that you were not implying some corporate brainwashing in what you said is, frankly, disingenuous.
I think the commenter was being a bit of an ass too, but I think he still has a defensible point, and it's not the absurd point that you're making it out to be.
Suffice to say, this: I think that it's possible to enjoy sport at a professional / high level (or local for that matter), in itself, whilst still having something of a disdain for overly crass commercialization (which varies between sports).
Imagine if we game all our attention and praise to teachers and all of our money to successful charities. Imagine if it was a cutthroat competition to become the first team of intellectuals to solve today's difficult problems.
Just because a vocal majority aren't hurting anyone, doesn't mean I have some moral obligation to respect your choices that do nothing for anyone.
We can imagine such an idealistic world, but this is completely unrealistic and crazy. People legitimately ENJOY watching and participating in sporting activities. You cannot (practically speaking) dictate what people should or should not enjoy. Suggesting better alternatives, fine, but insisting that others follow YOUR vision for a perfect world is self-centered and conceited.
I would argue that you do have a moral obligation to respect other humans which includes not purposefully hurting people's feelings for no reason. If you don't like sports, fine, but that's no reason to put down people who do.
As for a more idealistic world and my choice, I never even hinted at trying to legislate your ability to do what you want, but if you want me to clap and jump up and down and pick a favorite team because a bunch of grown people make ridiculous sums of money doing absolutely nothing for our future, well, count me out.
I get it, it's comfortable to be in a vocal majority. I understand that in many conversations I'm not welcome if I don't have a favorite team. Humans are tribal creatures. Being in a majority doesn't give you some right to an unopposed position. Just because most everyone around you will agree with you doesn't make what you're doing right.
If you would like to define some criteria and have a discussion about whether sports makes this world a better place I will gladly show you the fault in sports.
Also to the person commenting that you could say the same for any type of entertainment (regarding it being useless). That couldn't be farther from the truth. I love aquaponics, for one. Finding new interesting ways to feed people is entertainment for me. It's not uncommon for people to enjoy creating and learning. That type of entertainment becoming more prevalent could have a significant impact on our future as a species.
Not only that, but sports can teach you a wide range of life skills. It is not simply a display of physical prowess. For example, tennis is not a competition on the basis of physical exertion alone, but of mental fortitude.
> I get it, it's comfortable to be in a vocal majority. I understand that in many conversations I'm not welcome if I don't have a favorite team.
Um, you don't have to have a favorite team. You can still enjoy and talk about the game. For example, I don't have a favorite football team, but I will listen and talk all day about the strategy of the game and if, for example, a QB can execute that particular strategy or choke.
I think they can potentially do plenty for the future. For example, why does Nadal always put two bottles in the exact same position while playing a tennis match? Hey, maybe this will be useful for some research in psychology. Or maybe a survey of head injuries in football can lead to better health care. These sportsmen are usually at the edge of physical ability. Any attempt to push the envelope gives us the opportunity to learn more about ourselves.
Do you feel the same way about musicians, actors or other artists making money?
You could say the same thing of any form of entertainment that humans have ever engaged in.
However, even expressing contempt for intrinsically bad activities can be interpreted as offensive and hostile. There's a difference between saying something is bad, and saying that someone is bad because they participate in or enjoy it. Making people feel bad for eating McDonalds is unlikely to make or keep friends and is therefore by definition a problem with your social skills.
As to your last points, you shouldn't recognize athletes who take illicit drugs. Focus on the athletes who do things the right way: work hard, take care of themselves physically and financially, take care of their family/community, and so on.
And besides, what makes you a better arbiter of what is useful to society?
In many sports this in non-existent. The only people not taking performance enhancing drugs are the ones not getting caught. When billions of dollars are involved it's more than just a gentle suggestion that these professionals take drugs or enhancement.
And besides, what makes you a better arbiter of what is useful to society?
Nothing. I'm not commenting on something as fickle as society, I'm commenting on the future of our species, to which I can say with great confidence that education and ingenuity will affect peoples lives infinitely longer than the contributions of any sport. The fact that some of these professional athletes contribute money is a moot point when we're discussing whether they should exist. Those resources would still exist and the chances they would be distributed to a cause that would have lasting impact would likely increase.
In fact, some of those athletes would contribute more than just money. They may be the very person who makes a mark on the history of mankind.
That is quite the accusation. Stereotyping at best. Because that incentive model exists in your head does not mean it reflects reality.
Not sure if you've talked to any kids lately then. My son has a small freak-out if we get near a fireman. If he got to meet an astronaut, I think me might pass out.
...and no, of course sports are not intrinsically bad. They're good exercise, a tremendous amount of fun to play, and they take focus to master. It might not be a skill that you appreciate, but it is a skill nonetheless.
All sports, presumably, sprouted from a few folks having fun and then deciding to codify the rules. Imagining a world without sports is imaging a world without fun.
Sports unite communities in way few other human activities can. Plus, at least outside the US, interest in professional sports often inspires children to go outside and play, especially in the case of cricket and soccer.
Specifically, "Claims that the NFL is using a tax exemption to avoid paying the tax due on these revenues are simply misinformed. The confusion arises from the fact that there is one small part of the NFL, unrelated to all this business activity, that is tax-exempt: the NFL League Office. The league office is the administrative and organizational arm of the NFL and does things like write the rules of the game, hire referees, run the college draft, negotiate the collective bargaining agreement with the players, conduct player safety research, and run youth football programs."
Furthermore, if that's what people want to be done with their tax money, that's their business. If enough people felt the way you do, the story would be different. See the San Diego Chargers situation for example. They may end up relocating because of lack of political backing on building a new stadium.
But kyllo has another good taxy point.
Intrinsically bad.
Granting, for the sake of argument, that that generality is true, I'm not sure how it applies to the actual issue here; particularly, I'm not sure how hobbies that are subsidized at public expense -- and therefore at the expense of competing public priorities -- can be said to "cause no harm to others".
So, the Chinese streams may seem like a good thing, but they are a symptom of a bad thing.
Professional sports are also incredibly problematic in multiple ways. One can argue against those issues--from the corrupting influence of money to the homophobia (now finally breaking down just a little bit) to the willingness to use up players to the normalization of violence (in hockey, in particular). In the same way, one can argue that fast food has virtues that make up for its supposed "intrinsic badness" (which I don't see at all: nothing is "intrinsically" good or bad... it depends on how it is used for what for.)
> However, even expressing contempt for intrinsically bad activities can be interpreted as offensive and hostile.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Having strong and forthrightly held tastes and opinions is a virtue and a delight.
When I see the vast amount of money and time that is dedicated to professional sports it makes me despair of humanity. Do I want to hang around people who spend a good part of their lives on such activities? I do not. This is not a problem with my social skills.
It would be a problem with my social skills if I did hang around with them and bitched about it. But saying, "I'm glad you're having fun, but I think it's completely crazy to spend so much time and money on the activity of being a fan" is not.
And just to be clear: no one has ever been shy about telling me how far beneath contempt I am for caring more about science, art and poetry than sports. So perhaps problems with social skills exist outside of stereotyped groups that it is currently fashionable to berate regarding them.
Just look at tailgating -- at any university you can witness loads of adults setting a great example for their children by getting dead drunk en mass in front of them at every Saturday home game.
It's also a weird double standard when a lot of college campuses don't allow booze except for football tailgating.
"Sports" are not the issue. The currently-popular set of professional sports brands is the issue -- this discussion isn't about sport in the abstract, but the particular professional sports brands with which tribal identity is a major factor in contemporary American culture, and how people who aren't with the masses on this should shut up and join the masses, or else they are snobs. Or something.
Any action can be interpreted as offensive and hostile. That that is true of an action has no substantial meaning.
There is more to "sports" than watching them on TV. How about participating in them? It's good for your health, sort of like not eating McDonald's.
>If I don't eat at McDonalds because I care about my health, am I unfit for socialization?
There's a difference between "not eating" (or "not liking"), and "showing overt contempt" towards.
So, yes. If you don't understand that, your social skills are probably lacking.
The context here -- starting with the article, and followed in the thread prior to your response -- was participation in the culture of fandom of popular professional sports.
Obvious, individual direct participation in sports is a completely different thing (and often a thing that competes with participation in fandom culture.)
I haven't seen a single case where being a fan has precluded children from going out and playing.
Perhaps as adults the situation might be different, but their are a whole host of other factors at play there, including health and time issues.
I guess you ask that rhetorically, but I think it is an interesting question. I'd say you have to listen through the music top charts. You also have to watch most popular movies every year. There are more TV-series than there is time to watch, so I'd guess I'll say you only have to watch one or two of your choice. Read synopses of the rest.
Furthermore you should have at least some passing familiarity with the most popular games, but there is no need to go all out. 10 hours each in final fantasy, mario, random flash games(10h total), mobile games(10h total), counterstrike, starcraft, league of legends, dota, wow,
The person who is into <extraordinarily specific topic, no matter how interesting> is always tiring to be around after a while (and can create a very one-sided social interaction).
Of course, dividing up into different tribes is not healthy. We should ideally try to leave such things behind and try to get along with everyone. But the nerds versus jocks thing lingers even in programming with the "brogrammer" meme and also in many programmers' expectation that everyone else should put in the hours to learn programming on their own because that's what they did.
Rather than indulging in moral shaming, I think better to say that the folks who are good at sports and at intellectual activities are in an excellent position to build bridges.
And if a few young nerds kill them themselves because of the abuse, what harm right? As long as our school sports team is on form it's all cool.
If not liking sports makes me a snob then ok, I can live with that. but let's not pretend working class sports culture is all good clean fun. It can be as venomous as any other culture.
As evidenced by the top comment in this very thread calling out non-sports fans as being elitist snobs without social skills. What a joke.
Same thing happens with math, or programming, or various other intellectual pursuits. People will specifically talk about how bad they are at math, and wear it like a badge of pride. Or, they can just not enjoy it without being rude.
This entire line of reasoning strikes me as such an epic straw man. What is the difference between not being a sports fan, and being an "elitist snob"? It's completely subjective.
Not liking watching sports and not liking _sports_ (i.e. playing) are very different things with very different causes (though they are, to a degree, correlated).
The article is primarily talking about watching pro sports, so IMO what you're describing doesn't really give a complete picture of the topic at hand. As a single example, playing sports is one of my favorite things to do, despite finding watching pro sports to be extremely, extremely boring (regardless of the context: Soccer is my single favorite sport and even at a World Cup party I found myself bored out of my mind).
Admittedly, my parents openly disdained pro and school sports, and rock music, when I was a kid. They are scientists, and into classical music. Today, I'm a scientist, I love classical and jazz, and am a performing jazz musician. Whatever "signaling" I might have received, I can't escape the fact that I love those art forms today.
But I wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in hell of getting onto the hockey or football team. Today, I'm probably in better physical health than most of my classmates who actually played on those teams.
Oddly enough, when my musical interests become a topic of conversation, nobody ever feels any qualms about stating how much they hate jazz and classical.
The takeaway being, there are infinitely many different reasons to like or not like something. The fact that this comes up in particular for sports communicates to me that there's a different dynamic at play here. Do we often see this conflict for things like soy? Ballet? Curling? Sports in america seems to stand alone in that any deviance from the norm gets picked apart with a VERY fine toothed comb, perhaps as a factor of societal norms. I wonder if we'd see the same examination of soccer non-fans in the broader world or if this is a more american phenomena, I honestly don't know, and it asks many interesting questions.
Even beyond that though, I "enjoy" (sarcastically) how there's a tendency to turn differences into conflict. Anecdotally, choices around interest in sports seem to cue more dissent than as mentioned in many other areas, but I see similar trends in the "big three" of politics, religion, and money. Similar patterns have sparked in other areas (gender differences; and I'm probably risking a hailstorm for even mentioning this) as well, there are certain topics people seem to be less willing to "live and let live" about.
This turned into such a ramble. I may edit it later, I hope there are some useful thoughts in there somewhere.
Interestingly, as an alternative to the "big three," a feature of talking about sports is that it risks no enmity because the taking of sides is assumed to be good natured.
Not that I can't see the proposed appeal, I just mean to comment on the somewhat unique additional pressures these interactions carry with them.
(Deleted following post due to accidental double reply-click)
And my experience was exactly the same as yours: people developed a kind of snobbery as an emotional self defense.
Sports as a team activity, a friendly space to be physically active and competitive (with varying degrees of physical injury risk depending on the sport), are fantastic. I was a three-sport athlete in high school and consider the lessons learned in that context just as important as some of the coursework. My cross-country team was full of AP math and science kids, while my soccer team had more of the kids who smoked pot and goofed off in class. Even supporting the teams I didn't belong to meant finding common ground with those I might otherwise have never associated with.
When I consider the professional sports phenomenon, I can't suppress my knowledge of its more insidious aspects. The ludicrous salaries in an age when the disparity between rich and poor is becoming more painfully exacerbated, and the effect that this allure has on the American educational system. The reinforcement of racially motivated prejudices. The disregard for players' physical and emotional well-being, as well as other more casual disgraces that Marshawn Lynch could readily identify. The vitriol frequently associated with team fandom (which I am fortunate to have escaped despite growing up in the heart of the SEC).
I don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of collegiate or professional sports. Once in a blue moon I'll even attend a football or hockey game at a friend's invitation, and I whoop and cheer and critique just like the next guy. But don't ask me to fall in line with the majority and unreservedly celebrate professional sports just so I can "identify with the common man". I don't watch the Super Bowl, despite invitations, not because I feel some elitist need to prove my refinement to others, but because it's difficult for me to support a system that contradicts my values on so many counts.
When somebody says that, you just have to rephrase them a'la T-Rex. "It's a bunch of scientists stating their hypothesis that they're the best at using wooden sticks to direct the motion of a vulcanized rubber puck across a surface with a friction coefficient of .15!" [1] and then hockey becomes a collaborative science experiment, repeated twice a week, and broadcast on television.
While there are many valid arguments to be made about sport and the importance thereof, it's also condescending for someone (not you specifically) to act like this - there's quite a degree of talent and skill and hard work that I think a lot of people don't quite realize. "Oh, he's a good player, but I could have played college ball, and made it".
No, most likely you couldn't. There's a huge gap in skill.
I played cricket as a teen and we had two international players come to our club for a BBQ and hit around session. The kids bowling to them, they just blocked.
The adults, several of whom played at the state level themselves and to us were "very skilled"?
No. Not in comparison. Everything they threw at these guys was hit out of the park. I'm not exaggerating. Fast, slow, skilled players. Every. Single. Ball. Out of the park without a bounce. It gives you a realization of the level of talent and skill to play at that level.
Becoming a professional player requires as much (if not much more) hard work and talent as becoming a software engineer. These people dedicate their lives to the task, and are genuinely much much better than 99% of humans at their task, and are getting paid for their ability to entertain.
I don't get why people would look down upon these players and their fans.
What you shouldn't do is brag about your ignorance or dislike/hate of it as a way of projecting your status.
I don't follow baseball or most sports, but folks might ask me about so-and-so team, and my response is often "Oh, I don't really follow X, but <insert another topic you find interesting and may have common discussion point on>".
As the article points out, for most folks just exhibiting how much you dont care to follow sports ends the conversation, and makes you seem somewhat snobbish and like you don't want to engage on any topic. However, expressing it in a more open way, where you then volley back an alternative topic keeps the conversation alive.
Heck, even if you dont follow or don't care about the topic, the other person apparently does -- so try not to be too dismissive or indifferent..
I find all this behavior symptomatic - even if someone is being a snob, so what? Ignore them if their opinions are bad.
I for instance don't care for sports. And that is how I phrase it when asked. If there is a sports related conversation taking place I am generally more upset at the snobs demanding to be a part of the conversation just so they can shit all over sports in general, than the people that are spending an hour talking about a specific player, game, or statistic.
It very much is a social thing where you need to know how to politely excuse yourself from conversations and situations you do not want to be a part of rather than trying to evangelize your view that they suck.
Well, that jerkiness is often a reaction to the jerkiness of many sports-lovers, who abuse one in grade school and raise one's taxes to pay for their hobbies in adulthood, and spend so much time expecting that everyone shares their enthusiasms.
> It very much is a social thing where you need to know how to politely excuse yourself from conversations and situations you do not want to be a part of rather than trying to evangelize your view that they suck.
I (eventually) learnt that not everyone shared my love of science fiction and fantasy; I don't trot out Tolkien or Asimov every time I'm talking to most folks. It would be nice if folks didn't trot out football or baseball when talking to me. If I had to learn to suppress my enthusiasms except around the like-minded, why haven't they?
I don't believe that is the reason behind snob bashing. What really bothers people is aligning ones likes and dislikes as to boost perceived social status. People perceive it as grabbing social status undeservedly, so the social instinct for punishing transgressions kicks in.
> even if someone is being a snob, so what? Ignore them if their opinions are bad.
You have missed an important point the author made. It was not about one snob but rather a whole social group.
On the other hand there are people who watch or read/talk about sports for many hours per day ignoring other aspects of personal growth.
Some of us dislike them because they're destructive to society. I'm sure I'm not the only one who went to a high school where athletics were more important than academics, and not going to the football game was worth a couple nitpicked points off on your chemistry quiz or some teacher who became a teacher solely to coach had you spend their class taking notes from a text book every day while they jawed around with other coaches in the back room.
I feel like sports culture deprives lots of regular public high school students of an education, and I don't think it's elitist at all to dislike professional sports for their contribution to this mess.
I love sports, but every time I watch or support them I feel like I'm destroying civil society and undermining democracy and helping to destroy the last vestiges of effective public education.
And I'm not elite or upper class.
Robert Putnam is a political scientist of some renown. One of his major contributions was a study he did in Italy over 40 years. His question was why was government in in the north generally more efficient and just all around better than politics in the southern portion of the country.
His conclusion was that northern Italians were much more heavily involved in civic clubs like religious groups, labor unions, and ... soccer clubs, which created social capital, and horizontal networks, unlike the hierarchical networks in the south which created clientelism and gangs.
Sports fanhood and clubs may actually make democracy better. They certainly foster community. There are bigger problems in this country.
While I respect your position I feel that you really don't understand the perspective of sports from the athletes side.
You're completely glossing over the positives that sports bring to the lives of people involved in them, especially those who take it serious. I've been writing code since I was 13-14 years old, but I've been testing myself physically and mentally since I was 8, thanks to a life long 'career' of playing baseball. Nothing in my life has taught me more about who I am and what I'm capable of, both mentally and physically, than my time spent in team sports. And that's saying nothing of the social growth and life long friendships and connections made.
I'm just a middle class white kid who had far better options in life than to pursue professional sports...but for those less fortunate, the education they get from their sports teams/coaches/careers my very well be the best 'real life' education they'll ever get.
Calling sports destructive to society seems so completely asinine to me that it's comedic. Then again, my perspective is quite different than yours.
> You're completely glossing over the positives
...
> Calling sports destructive to society seems so completely asinine
Yeah, at the most successful football schools. That's a minority among schools that have football programs. [1] [2]
>If anything sports creates a lot of opportunities for students that otherwise could be done due to budgets.
No, sports diverts scholarship funds from scholars to athletes, and the athletes rarely take full advantage of the academics in college, going for easy classes and easy majors. It actually destroys a lot of opportunities, particularly at schools that are losing money on their sports programs.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/05/05/does-foot...
[2] http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Ar...
And it's the successful (at pulliung NCAA TV money) football schools that have coaches with million dollar contracts.
It's a nice bait and switch you constructed. A "trick play" if you will.
Feel free to search that image from other sources too.
And the data backing it.
And yes, this is not the same as it being paid for by academics...but then you have to deal with the fact that most top-tier sports departments also fail to break even, and it's extremely murky if they contribute anything back to academics at all - whereas it's pretty visible that they are allocated money out of the academic takings. [http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-fo...]
EDIT: All of which again, would probably be worth turning a blind eye to if it were a good thing for the players...except it isn't. Because they don't get paid.
If only a few schools' football programs fund the other sports, and all schools have a lot of sports, it only follows that most schools are losing money on sports, no matter how much money they pay their coaches.
That said, many unsuccessful football programs still have coaches with multimillion dollar contracts, so you're still wrong.
>It's a nice bait and switch you constructed. A "trick play" if you will.
This added nothing to the discussion and wasn't even a fair accusation, since I wasn't arguing anything like what you suggested I was. If I were being uncharitable, I would accuse you of intentionally misunderstanding my argument for the chance to be snide.
It definitely doesn't come from sports at most American universities.
There's something for the argument that sports attracts students who will become wealthy alumni and donate after graduation, but AFAIK, there's no data proving it, and some that contradicts that notion.
And so are music departments.
Which I think is part of the point here. I firmly believe that playing right tackle can teach you just as much as playing the oboe, yet intellectuals tend to look down on former and praise the latter. Organized sports are not only a hobby and social gathering, but they can also serve as part of a greater learning and education experience. There is a reason why a few of the Ivy League schools rank near the top of all universities when it comes to the number of varsity athletes.
>that college-level sports is hugely abusive and exploitative to the players which actually play it.
You need to be specific here. Big revenue college sports (basically only Div I basketball and Div I-A football) are definitely exploitative, but most college athletes participate in sports that generate little revenue and it would be hard to argue they are being exploited.
That isn't the point. The point is that the mission of universities is academic pursuits, not athletics. If anyone wants to practice sports, power to him, but let him join the sports club, or let him start an inofficial intramurine league.
The wider point is that in America you can't earn much social capital by being knowledgeable about any academic subject, you have to be wealthy instead. That's a problem, and probably also explains many things about American society. Universities finally getting rid of organized sports might perhaps be able to change that.
Where I went to grad school, that would have been unthinkable. There was a special major that most of the football and mens basketball players chose, one of the departments of "studies."
There's no university where the oboist in the orchestra has to be given a fake education. Indeed, most music majors these days wisely pick up a second major.
If the band directors made millions of dollars, you would have a good point.
The band students pay tuition to be there. If the football players paid tuition to be on the team and the sports teams were subsidized at the same rate as the band program, I wouldn't care.
There are a handful (maybe 20?) of schools that probably make an overall profit from their sports teams, but the rest of the thousands of colleges and universities in the US operate their sports programs at a loss. Those are really the schools I'm talking about.
Not only that, coaches are the highest paid public employees in most states [0].
[0] http://deadspin.com/infographic-is-your-states-highest-paid-...
I attended a state school where the "highest paid public employee" was a football coach. I was lucky enough to marry a then student president of the professional students (Med, Vet, Opt, Dentist, Pharmacy, Law) and as part of her duties she sat on the athletic counsel. Our tuition did not go to the coaches at all, the athletic dept was entirely self funded and donated the excess to the school itself. They helped fund a library renovation while we were there, among other student oriented needs.
Also, because of the success of the football team they are able to fund (again without student money) all the other sports "no one cares about" eg men's badminton or women's olympic weight lifting or something... The majority of THOSE student-athletes truly are students then athletes.
Take away the good football and the other things become harder or impossible to achieve. I'm not saying sports should be considered a loss over academics, but some people enjoy both and are not going to the NFL
Somehow I doubt UNM’s football team is able to cover the cost of the athletics department. The coach in question was Mike Locksley.
There were many more example of trade offs like this, almost all of which undermined any ostensible focus on education.
These kinds of things have nothing to do with whether playing sports (on a team or not) can be a positive experience or is good for people.
Hyperbole. In a lot of ways, sports can bring a city or group together in ways that other events can't.
I feel like this is where I have to make the usual acknowledgement that yes of course the NFL is run by a bunch of morons and yes of course head injuries when you're a young kid are a bad thing.
Jr, ear muffs! "U! C! L! A! Fight! Fight! Fight!"
Yeah...I'm not quite getting how this invokes visions of Nuremberg, may I politely suggest a bit of therapy perhaps?
It's more that when I see that effect, I have an uneasy feeling that a trigger could set things off the rails or shut off critical thinking or modify social standards for certain acts. I'm a bit of a contrarian at heart, so it's something of a non-specific mental immune response.
In fact, at (EU) football events, soccer hooligans are widely known for being violent. In the US, commercial and government propaganda are often dispensed in a socially validated environment. An alarming trigger (or a home-run that lands in the stands) can cause a stampede at stadia. I recognize that the more extreme examples are relatively rare occurrences, but they are more common than on say the street per square foot.
The irrationality of the crowd is something that unnerves me. I've been to games, so it's not like it's some paralyzing anxiety, but I feel some creepy crawlies at times.
Let me give you an example of a cohesive social situation that wouldn't creep me out: A town coming together for disaster recovery, where the people signaling cohesiveness are actually directly affected or are participating in the recovery effort. On the contrary, when people that are totally unaffected come together, it feels more uneasy to me because they are responding to a story being told on the news and are in a condition where simple manipulation is possible as they are not responding to advance their own interests (so certain sanity checks are disabled) and they do not have a good way to verify the story they heard.
Why? Is community bad? I need that argument to be unpacked a bit more, because for me my experience living in several different cities as their teams make a playoff run has been a fun, electrifying experience. Neighbors are hanging out. Kids are having sleep overs watching games. There's a (usually very) healthy bump to the local economy. For all the room-for-improvement there truly is with managing the sport, the sense of community is what's actually valuable to me.
Of course, having something that serves as a community focal point that crosses faith boundaries is invaluable - nearly any time new people meet powerful things happen.
However, I take issue with your point about the economy: A local bump means that there was a withdrawal from somewhere else in the economy. If it came mostly from savings rather than from shifting consumption from other locales, then it generated increased consumption, which depending on the macroeconomic condition, could be good or bad (though during the latest recession, inducing an overall increase in consumption sounds like the right thing to do). It's not clear whether this is a good thing or not. Why should I prefer the shop owners in your town versus some other town to temporarily enjoy increased profits? There might be a good reason, but for a disinterested third party, odds are it's a wash.
>> having something that serves as a community focal point that crosses faith boundaries is invaluable
This is true up to the point that team allegiance is weaker tribalism than faith. Growing up in Manchester and not swearing fealty to red/blue, admittedly less so than orange/green in Belfast, was still more troublesome than it needed to be.
Yet all this seems a matter of identity development. My younger brother felt the opposite pressure of having to grow up in a family uninterested in sports. Each of us were yin surrounded by yang (or vice versa). I feel the article's writer may have given up something more valuable when he arbitrarily adopted another identity for the sake of broader communication. Unless he had a latent need to belong to a group more deeply and is merely rationalising it in the article.
>> There might be a good reason, but for a disinterested third party, odds are it's a wash.
That's the nub of it. Tribalism in any form wants adherents to reinforce that there are no disinterested parties. You are either with us or against us. Depending on your starting assumptions, that's either valid or completely spurious.
On the whole, I think everyone is reading into this wayyyy to deeply. If anyone wants to enjoy a beer and a hotdog at the ballpark of their choosing, let's do it. 20 days until pitchers and catchers report.
Baseball is... much slower than european football. I grew up as an american baseball fan, but could never understand the fascination with american football. Ever. It's just a weird game, but it tends to be faster than baseball, and certainly more physically intense (tackles, etc). And soccer, basketball and hockey are even faster. The speed tends to hype people up, I think.
It feels easier to watch a baseball game from the stands without getting "worked up". I can easily watch a bb game and be relaxed. I never felt able to relax at a basketball game (by comparison). I imagine it's easier to relax at a cricket match vs a soccer/football match too.
My next point might be a bit of a stretch, but I would invite you to consider the possibility that your comment is itself a weak exemplar of the tendencies I disliked growing up in Manchester.
"othering" the others :
>> I think that's a very sad and depressive
Appealing to the in-group for emotional support :
>> If anyone wants to enjoy a beer and a hotdog at the ballpark of their choosing, let's do it. 20 days until pitchers and catchers report.
deliberately misrepresenting outsiders and making a loud noise doing it :
>> the argument that they're part of some fascist tribal conspiracy is silly and immature
I'm not a big sports fan, but pro sports does serve a purpose.
Sports in general is ritualized hunting / warfare. A civilized and less brutal version of war, but the roots are clear. The skills used are the same as our ancestors used to survive: running, throwing, tackling, hitting things with sticks. That's war.
Watching sports is a celebration of those ancient survival skills, though they don't have much place in modern society. These urges exist within many of us, and need an outlet. Sports is highly preferable to the small-scale skirmishes that frequently occurred in centuries past.
Many people feel the strong call of tribalism too. Us versus them. Rooting for the home team, and feeling their ups and downs as your own is also wired into us at a deep level.
It would be a lot more effective for society if we were pitting city governments against each other, seeing who can deliver the best services at the lowest taxpayer cost. But I'm not holding my breath for someone to set that league. :-)
Ritualized, sure. Hunting / warfare? Depends on the sport.
Dancesport is a thing, and its assuredly not ritualized hunting / warfare.
> Sports is highly preferable to the small-scale skirmishes that frequently occurred in centuries past.
Sports is -- and has been for quite some time -- a frequent focus of the small-scale skirmishes much the same as those you paint it as an alternative to. I'm not sure its much of an outlet.
> It would be a lot more effective for society if we were pitting city governments against each other, seeing who can deliver the best services at the lowest taxpayer cost. But I'm not holding my breath for someone to set that league.
Actually, before those "small-scale skirmishes" were so frequently outbursts about sport, they were often outbursts between the backers of different political factions, ideologies, or groups striving to shape society (we still sometimes have those, too; sport may have kept the violence while removing the social purpose to a certain extent, but not entirely.)
The main topic of conversation is the widely popular professional sports such as Football, American Football, etc. These sports have attackers, defenders, and so on.
Sports is -- and has been for quite some time -- a frequent focus of the small-scale skirmishes much the same as those you paint it as an alternative to.
I don't see that as the proximate cause of most conflicts throughout history. Mostly, it seems to be about resources, and sometimes ideology too.
No one said it was the proximate cause of most conflicts throughout history. Nor have conflicts in general stopped since sports became popular, nor were conflicts in general part of the discussion.
What was asserted upthread was that sports was an outlet that prevented "small-scale skirmishes". I simply pointed out that, in fact, professional sports are -- and this is true globally -- well-known as focuses of small-scale skirmishes and social violence, rather than an outlet which prevents them.
When I say "small-scale skirmishes", I'm talking about relatively small border conflicts and the like that last less than a year and kill tens to hundreds of people. As opposed to regional or national conflicts where the casualties get into the thousands or much higher.
Football skirmishes that kill people on that order aren't unheard of, and I know of no evidence even suggesting that the popularity of professional sports even correlates with (much less causes) a reduction the kind of small-scale skirmishes you discuss (even before considering whether the degree of such effect is offset by violence directly associated with sport.)
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in the UK football hooligans are a dying breed. There have been a few Hollywood films made about UK football hooligans, but it's more about the situation at it was in the 70's/80's.
I'm not an expert on it, but it strikes me it was born out of boredom. You'd travel to an away match, see some goalless draw, and had wasted your weekend. The scrap may have started as some sort of consolation prize. Anyway, now the games are televised, prices are more expensive and the audience has become broader so the environment that bred it has gone. Some firms still have a reputation, but it's increasingly irrelevant.
I wonder what fuels the hooliganism where you are.
No, I was asking if dragonwriter was referring to football (soccer) hooligans from the UK or other countries. Argentina guys in particular seem to get pretty rowdy, and there have been murders too.
But there isn't any sort of hooliganism where I am, I was just trying to figure out what dragonwriter was talking about with regards to pro sports being the focus of conflict. Which I don't see being anywhere close to the level of conflict (like actual war) that I was talking about.
That's my opinion anyhow.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/olympics/a/OlympicGames.h...
It is 'gathering' the other main component of 'hunting and gathering'.
... or that a piñata is an encouragement of ritualized torture.
It may amuse you to know that I did actually look into that. However, the piñata's origins seem relatively innocuous.
What's awful is that you get to inflict this interest on everyone with general social approval, and you even get to tell people on HN that they are socially defective if they don't pretend to share that interest - but by no means would the same courtesy ever be extended to some kid who wants to talk about Minecraft for hours. That's nerdy and gay, sports is for real men.
Excuse me if I don't take your "advice" seriously.
Isn't that a two-way street though? If I must feign interest in the saga of Manchester United or the troubles of Peyton Manning, why mustn't others likewise be expected to feign interest in Njál's Saga or the tale of Luthien & Beren?
Well, the pragmatic reason is that most folks care about sports, and most folks don't care about fantastic fiction. And you're quite right that there are benefits to knowing and connecting with more folks than just those who share one's interests.
But it's annoying to have to conform to their interests and never have them conform to one's own nonetheless. Kinda like being annoyed at gravity, I guess, but it's still annoying.
I agree that it's annoying and frustrating.
What is the difference?
Edit: Also, astronauts.
So there's that.
I hear ya. I wrestled in high-school, did a lot of BMX biking in my younger years (and still ride a little, even now in my 40's), used to dabble in amateur power-lifting a bit, mountain-bike these days, and used to participate in some brazilian jiu-jitsu / submission wrestling / MMA stuff. I also grew up watching NASCAR and Indy Car racing, and I'm a diehard NFL fan (#PHINSUP!!!) But I'm also a pretty well educated (3 college degrees) guy who listens to both heavy-metal and classical music, reads Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Foucalt, Wittgenstein, etc. for fun, reads The Economist semi-regularly, etc.
I won't use the term "intellectual" to refer to myself, but many of my friends think of me as something of an "intellectual". I just think the whole thing is silly. I'm "working class" in many ways, but I share characteristics, attributes and interests with the intellectuals. So yeah, I would say that this whole "disdain of the working class and working class interests, by intellectuals" me strikes me as pretty stupid.
When a kids says, "Hockey. Meh. It is a bunch grown men with sticks chasing a black piece of rubber around a sheet of ice" he is saying in effect "What you love is obtuse and low brow and I don't care how that makes you feel." And that is just rude.*
It's also ignorant. There is a lot of wisdom and truth to be learned on the hockey ice, the football field, the wrestling mat, etc. Sport is just a compressed version of life in many ways.
That said, I wouldn't go the further step to say that people should somehow be obligated to like sports. I don't like most sports--for reasons brought up, but not really expanded by the article.
My main beef with sports is the effects sports have on education. My city spends millions annually on the maintenance of stadiums, simultaneously cutting budget for schools. In turn sports figures become role models for kids, and sports talent is a poor indicator of being a good role model. Even when sports figures aren't horrible people, their fame encourages children to seek careers in sports--a field where very few will be successful--at the expense of their education. Even when sports scholarships allow people to go to college who otherwise couldn't, sports scholarships rarely result in good scholars. Professional sports are directly counterproductive to increasing education.
At a personal rather than societal level, I don't see a point in emotionally investing myself in something that has no actual effect on my life. I'm not above having a few beers with friends while watching the game, but I would rather have a few beers with friends without a big screen TV distracting us from actually interacting with advertisements for products I don't need or want.
And I don't need another way to make small talk, regardless of class. I don't want to make small talk about things the person has only a side interest in--I want to find out what people are working on, what they care about. How is your spouse doing? What about your kids? Are you working on anything interesting? Making some progress on a hobby? Getting closer to a goal, paying off loans, buying a car or house? People actually are affected by these things--they're things that actually matter and make a difference in their lives. If you show interest in these things you're showing interest in them, in their lives.
So no, when I show overt contempt for sports I am showing contempt for people. All the reasons I don't like sports are pro-social.
That's pretty much the definition of elitism as far as I know it. You think you know more than the common man.
Elitism is another word for the post modern idea that A isn't A, that nothing is absolute and there is no truth.
The reason I'm posting is that the article attacked my viewpoint.
I don't think people who like sports are misinformed or stupid, I think they value different things than I do. There are plenty of very smart people who like sports.
> You think you know more than the common man.
And this is the PR that sports has, that it's the purview of the common man, when in fact sports fuck over the common man more often than not. You're only looking at the viewers of sports. What about the people who buy teams, sponsor athletes, etc. Are they "common men"?
And yes, I do know more than the common man on this subject, not because I'm inherently better in any way, but because I've taken the time to educate myself on this subject and the average person hasn't. Everyone out there knows more about some subject than I do--that's just how people work. If you think that knowing more about this subject is somehow a bad thing, then who is really cultivating ignorance here?
One of the striking features of classism in America is that the upper class has managed to represent their own interests as being the interests of the common man. Who cares more about the common man--someone who wants to slash funding for the common man's education to pay for stadiums, or someone who wants to pay for education?
The smug "I've taken the time to educate myself on this subject and the average person hasn't" is exactly what I'm talking about. How do you know what everyone else thinks about? Have you asked them? Many people have spent a lot of their lives thinking about sports and the great lessons they've learned and memories they associate with them.
Then combine that with the fact that you actually go through the effort to excuse yourself when people talk about sports? You must be a lot of fun at parties. Do you realize that many times people listen to things you are talking about even when the subject isn't the one they would like to talk about? I do it all the time. Why? Because I'm interested in the person talking about it. Either that or I have enough social skills to know how to not be a smug jerk.
I should add quickly that I agree personally with a lot of what you are saying, but do feel the issue of how important sports should be in American culture as a lot more nuanced. That everyone has a different, and equally valid viewpoint. That everyone has different priorities about the shape of the world around them. Maybe you should consider looking at the opinions of others as valuable as opposed to dismissing them as ignorant and misplaced.
I think grade school sports programs are important for teaching kids how to stay in shape, among other things. That's a very different discussion from the discussion we're having, which is about professional sports.
> One could argue that the tax subsidies given to professional teams work in the cities favor based up increased revenues at local business and higher real estate taxes from increased property taxes.
One could easily disprove this argument, at least in my city. This argument is made, but over the last decade since we built a new stadium, property values around the stadium have gone down, and cashflow from the stadium goes to its owners who pay very little taxes.
> The smug "I've taken the time to educate myself on this subject and the average person hasn't" is exactly what I'm talking about. How do you know what everyone else thinks about? Have you asked them?
You said: "One could argue that the tax subsidies given to professional teams work in the cities favor based up increased revenues at local business and higher real estate taxes from increased property taxes." This pretty effectively proves you haven't educated yourself on this subject.
> Many people have spent a lot of their lives thinking about sports and the great lessons they've learned and memories they associate with them.
What great important lessons do people learn from professional sports? Please do tell. Remember we're not talking about playing sports, we're talking about watching professional sports.
> You must be a lot of fun at parties.
The parties I've thrown are generally pretty packed.
> Do you realize that many times people listen to things you are talking about even when the subject isn't the one they would like to talk about?
I'm socially calibrated enough to know when people are losing interest in what I'ms saying and change the subject. But if people feign interest well, I'd really rather they didn't, because there are a ton of subjects I could connect with someone on, and there's no reason for us to talk about stuff that we aren't both interested in.
> I do it all the time. Why? Because I'm interested in the person talking about it.
This is a ridiculous kind of false positivity does nobody any good. If you're interested in someone, then why settle for a feigned connection over a topic you aren't really interested in when you could create a real connection over a real shared interest?
> Either that or I have enough social skills to know how to not be a smug jerk.
"At least I'm not smug," he said smugly.
> That everyone has a different, and equally valid viewpoint.
This feel-good crap is ruining America. If all viewpoints are equally valid then why are you arguing with me? My viewpoint is valid, right? But viewpoints aren't equally valid. Some viewpoints are wrong.
> That everyone has different priorities about the shape of the world around them.
So you think if people were choosing between their kids being able to read and having a sports stadium, they'd choose the sports stadium? Because that's the choice people are making.
> Maybe you should consider looking at the opinions of others as valuable as opposed to dismissing them as ignorant and misplaced.
Not every opinion is valuable--many opinions are ignorant and misplaced, and it's extremely harmful to treat them as if they were equally valuable. Children die of diseases that should be extinct because people treat the opinions of anti-vacc-ers as valid. Global warming initiatives fail because people treat the opinions of politicians who know nothing about climate as valid. And kids are growing up without proper education because people treat the glamour of sports as a valid thing to spend money on.
I'm not going to pretend this kind of harmful ignorance is just as valid as educated opinions just to make people feel good about themselves while they're around me.
As I said before, I agree with you stance in many ways in professional sports. Yet, for some reason you felt the need to argue my hypothetical points? Strange stuff. Unlike you, I realize these things are not hard facts but opinions and best guesses bases upon available data.
Whether or not professional sports are a positive thing, depends very much upon what a persons priorities are. Many people would shut down all funding for the arts tomorrow if they had the choice. We could argue that in the same way. These discussions go nowhere because they are based on a person's individual priorities and are also why they are debated to death and never get anywhere. They are not topics with a definite answer.
The "feel-good crap" is people not telling you that the only reason you feel so strongly about this is because you have a bias likely based on some experiences from your childhood about sports. If you were rational you would think that maybe 100,000,000+ Americans are probably not idiots. But judging by the size of your ego, I wouldn't be surprised if you thought they were.
Oh and "So you think if people were choosing between their kids being able to read and having a sports stadium, they'd choose the sports stadium? Because that's the choice people are making.": You realize that sounds insane, right? Are you actually saying that in the US children cannot read because of sports stadiums?
Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. I've explained in my top post why I believe that to be true.
You're not even attempting to refute what I've said, you're just calling me egotistical and insane. So unless you have anything on-topic to say, my point is adequately defended and I'm done here.
Kids who openly show their disdain for STEM disciplines--especially mathematics--are legion. At a societal scale, courtesy is a two-way street.
- At least in America, there is a disdain among the working class for intellectual pursuits, and that manifests itself in their children leading to the more athletic (and therefore more likely to be on a sports team) students pushing the less athletic (and therefore more likely to be into intellectual pursuits) students around. It's hardly surprising that the students on the receiving end of this will reject sports as it seems to celebrate the very people that push them around.
- All of those "small towns" out there where excelling at sports is grounds for even the adults of the community to engage in academic fraud and cover-ups of criminal behaviour so that the sports team (and said students' future sports prospects) aren't affected.
I don't think that this is a good reason to just paint all of sports with the same brush. There are plenty of students that end up on sports teams that aren't necessarily one of the "cool kids" or bullies. To paint them with the same brush by association isn't a good thing, but it's understandable why this happens (and why it propagates into adult-hood).
I believe that children and adolescents playing sports is fantastic. If people want to continue playing into their adulthood for fun and health, that's great too. Casual interest in sports is fine with me. I prefer to see participation to spectatorship.
What I and many other people have a problem with is sports in schools and professional sports being treated as if it is intensely important, more important than direly serious things that keep people alive, fed, free and healthy.
It's a cliché which I wouldn't think I would have to repeat, but I would love to see people get as excited about mathematics stars in schools as basketball players. I would love to see more people who get as excited about their city council as football drafts. I would love to see the money spent on stadiums and television sports networks spent on improving peoples lives in concrete ways other than entertainment.
It's not that I don't consider sports legitimate entertainment. Clearly people feel that their lives are enriched from participating or spectating. Great. Good for them. The problem I see is a matter of priority. Society as a whole treats watching other people play sports as if it's something as critically important, heck, more important than say, hospitals.
Sports get attention because people choose to follow them under their own volitions. If you want mathematics stars in schools to get attention, then why aren't you attending Mathletes contests? Are you attending/watching at least 16 city council meetings a year (same as the number of games in each NFL team's regular season)?
"Don't make it about me personally, it's something everyone else should be doing."
Meanwhile, the very people whose lives you want the sports industries' money redistributed to are generally the ones who are deriving the greatest amount of life enjoyment out of following those very sports.
I never said I want the 'sports industries money redistributed'. That amount of resources shouldn't be devoted to a complete waste of time for society in the first place.
Anyway, I believe people should focus on helping each other survive and thrive, rather than spending billions of dollars on mindless entertainment. The idea that people woold argue with me and pick on me personally over this is nothing new - sports are popular and opposing them is unpopular, which as far as I could tell is the entire topic of this article.
So this kind of talk isn't just relegated to the "highly educated".
You're right, that hurts, and it takes a big person to not fire back.
Hint, it's not my problem.
I followed sports (pro & college football) when I had access to a television. I went to college when TVs were expensive and bulky and lost the thread of them. Discovering the college library was also a big time sink.
I didn't pursue them again until I got a 1080p television, some ...25 years later. It's still not the highest priority activity.
But to borrow from Richard Feynman , "why do you care what other people think?" Set your goals and do what you need to do to attain them. Some of the best people I met in school were largely autodiadicts anyway. The vast majority of those you'll met are not people of high value regardless of social markers and educational attainment.
And when pressed on the subject, I never use language that conveys any sense that I think others are stupid or shallow for being interest in professional sports. If anything I just say, kind of sheepishly, "You know, I actually don't follow professional sports", or something to that effect. And surprisingly, this kind of honesty has, itself, sparked interesting conversations with people, on several occasions.
Not to disagree with you, but I was under the impression that most research on social signaling has shown that it is not a conscious phenomenon.
You don't do X because you think it will signal Y. You just do X, whether because of unconscious social signals you have received or because the information that X might signal Y is contained in the genome rather than in the brain.
Can anyone clarify?
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.
"Albert suggested that sports reflect the go-to topic for small talk and building rapport across class and context"
"Sports are popular because people, in general, find them fun to watch".
No shit! Lots of people like sports. Did you really need to go to a talk at MIT to figure that out?
On the other hand, I applaud the author for challenging the social conventions of the people around him. Disdain for sports is pointless social signalling that is ultimately divisive. Another quote, that I particularly like:
"This ignorance among highly educated people limits our ability to communicate, bond, and build relationships across different segments of society. It limits our ability to engage in conversations and build a common culture that crosses our highly stratified and segmented societies"
Edit: I would also like to add one perspective that is perhaps more appealing to the intellectual crowd: Sports are a magnificent showcase of kinesiology at the highest level. The same people who scoff at football probably also marvel at the latest ATLAS robot from Boston Dynamics, which is a poor analogue of the human machines on display in any high level sporting event. I could give a dozen examples. Anything from hitting a baseball thrown at 90 mph to ice-skating to a running back evading tackles. I can't believe we take this for granted.
Imagine bipedal robots powered by ham sandwiches that have visual/control systems capable of tracking objects thrown through the air and leaping to catch them, all while evading attackers and coordinating with team mates.
So is participation in sports. People don't dislike sports because they were born that way; they dislike them because they didn't like the effect they had on e.g. their high school or college.
The question isn't academics versus athletes, it's inclusiveness versus divisiveness (or, worst case, the question of maximum long-term benefit to society). Both academics and athletes are capable of either, but at least in schools, one side is much more prominently divisive than the other.
Differentiating between things is a core functionality of the brain, and separating people into groups and categories is necessary to identify which decisions are correct or what actions to take in a given scenario. It becomes degenerate when this kind of divisiveness stops being "friendly competition" and starts being a feedback-loop of antagonistic rationalizations.
Even so, it is hard to be inclusive with people who aren't inclined to be inclusive. It's not something that you can achieve with just intent; it requires a community with the right infrastructure. And it is hard enough for individuals to control their own behavior that controlling community behavior is almost always intractable.
I'm not sure that it is inappropriately cynical to think "I'm just going to pick the side I like and criticize the one I don't. If the other side doesn't understand this and value it, then screw 'em."
It can come off as incongruous (if only because we're not used to an academic making an honest attempt to analyze his observations on sport fans, academics, and a common source of friction between the two cultures).
I could easily imagine the other way around - a stereotypical sports guy talking about academic topics in jock lingo - being exaggerated in an SNL skit or something. The way people "code switch" and just use the language of different subgroups is one of those things we're mostly familiar with and accept...even if we can see how it's a weird bit of human behavior. Stuff like that can make for either great offense or great comedy (sometimes both).
For my part, I was always drawn to more geeky/intellectual interests as a kid because I was scrawny and weird so the sports guys weren't welcoming. As I got older, being mostly unfamiliar with pro sports made it awkward when coworkers realized I was the only one who had no idea what they were talking about. I still am not a huge fan of pro sports (if only for the insane amount of hype and greed surrounding them) but I realized a while ago that a lot of my hostility toward "jock stuff" came mostly from insecurity. Nowadays I do enjoy watching football when my home team is playing. I own a couple of team T-shirts and maybe catch a baseball game in the summer or watch a few football games at the bar if the home team is playing. A big part of it was making some friends who were into computers and music and art and reading who also liked pro sports and weren't dicks about my lack of knowledge. As the author says, the social aspect is what makes it enjoyable for a lot of people and when that was bad, my thoughts on sports were negative. When my social interactions around sports became enjoyable, my general thoughts on sports became more positive.
For example, point number 4:
It’s not all great. Football, like most professional sports, is deeply permeated with advertisements, commercialism, and money.
We see that's really just a statement full of bullshit, because it's likely pretty easy to find counter-examples of things the intellectual individual thinks are great (Apple products?) which are deeply permeated with ads, commercialism, and money.
Intelligence is a highly-fluid "thing", but society tends to view it as book-smart depth in a few micro-niches... i.e. the less something can be understood, the more "intelligent" one appears. And yet that sort of "intelligence" defeats the compounding interest of knowledge, which occurs when we can communicate it to others in an understandable fashion. Even further, a mother who raises her children can be highly intelligent, but she often gets little honor from a society that defines smart as a Physics PhD.
"A bit like"? Isn't the piece pretty overtly "How I, ivory tower anti-sports intellectual, realized the error of my ways, converted to the 'working class' ritual of sports fandom, and found that it was useful for one's own social engagement, despite having some worrisome aspects."
I mean, the authors journey into sports starts with hearing a speaker at MIT claim that people who talk about "working class struggle" can't speak to the working class because they avoid sport -- and seeing themself in that critique.
It actually is somewhat impressive for its ability to maintain an attitude of disdain for sport while recognizing the utility of joining the fandom, while at the same time adding new disdain for those who don't play the same game.
It then takes off running at 20mph.
That's fantastically mysterious and incredible to me.
I'm not trying to minimize robotics or Boston Dynamics. It's an amazing field. I just think people under appreciate the movement of the human body.
Not fascinating to me in the long term.
As of late baseball has been a pitching game. It's often not high score, but it is a fascinating thing to watch, if you have this context. Now, whether you want to keep all that in your brain is another question, and I mostly choose not to, so in practice it is less interesting to me. But there are endless depths there to plumb.
When people say they "don't like sports," what they often mean is that they don't follow any teams.
I played baseball growing up, still play tennis and row. I "understand" the rules of most sports – except cricket but c'mon. I can have a good time drinking a pint with friends and listening to them discuss sports. In fact, my ignorance often leads to great conversations, as they explain some backstory about how the wide receivers played on rival college teams or the history of nation's soccer team or whatever. It's fun. Sports are inherently dramatic, and it's easy to be drawn into an evenly matched contest. Given the right context and group of peers who are passionate about the outcome, pretty much everybody will enjoy watching sports.
However, I just find the whole process of following a team to be a colossal waste of time. All of the time spent reading about drafts and trades and injuries and stats, they add up to hours every week – even without watching any games. I personally would much rather be cooking or reading a novel or playing video games or hiking. Some people would find those things to be a colossal waste of time. That's okay.
There's no reason for us all to be so defensive about what we like and don't like. I like sports, but I choose to spend my free time on other things. That doesn't make my hobbies better or worse than Joe Football's. Just different. End of story.
"Take, say, sports -- that's another crucial example of the indoctrination system, in my view. For one thing because it -- you know, it offers people something to pay attention to that's of no importance. [audience laughs] That keeps them from worrying about -- [applause] keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And in fact it's striking to see the intelligence that's used by ordinary people in [discussions of] sports [as opposed to political and social issues]. I mean, you listen to radio stations where people call in -- they have the most exotic information [more laughter] and understanding about all kind of arcane issues. And the press undoubtedly does a lot with this.
You know, I remember in high school, already I was pretty old. I suddenly asked myself at one point, why do I care if my high school team wins the football game? [laughter] I mean, I don't know anybody on the team, you know? [audience roars] I mean, they have nothing to do with me, I mean, why I am cheering for my team? It doesn't mean any -- it doesn't make sense. But the point is, it does make sense: it's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements -- in fact, it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports. I think if you look closely at these things, I think, typically, they do have functions, and that's why energy is devoted to supporting them and creating a basis for them and advertisers are willing to pay for them and so on."
And then there's the weird government/corporate partnership on stadiums. And the protected monopoly status.
The article is titled as about "professional sports", the social effect it discusses is about socially-popular professional sports in general, and in discussing them the specific example used throughout is American football.
It should not be surprised that the discussion of the articles thesis centers, then, around the same things as the article itself. "Sport" in some vague, general sense is not really the subject.
> I totally agree about the military displays, the nationalism and religious overtones that get mixed in with Football in the US. But that's one sport. There are many others, and aside from probably Nascar, none of them come close to Football in those terms.
Major League Baseball's pretty similar to Football in those regards.
Also, the sport calendar can be used to time communications, particularly those w/ a populist message. Natural events are used this way fortuitously all the time (storms, natural disasters, 9/11, etc.)
to effect a classic double flashback, fight club style, here's a dose of bread and circus from juvenal from CE 100:
"'It is scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated.' Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things----Bread and Games!"
The thing is though that applies to Odysseus, Hamlet, Charles Foster Kane... Narrative in general. Our investment in any form of entertainment is equally nonsensical.
Meanwhile, statistical approaches continue to win in the real world.
If Chomsky believes cheering for your classmates is stupid, then he must believe that we should be perfectly objective and treat everyone exactly the same. If you're a judge or President, you have an obligation to the public to act that way. But me, I'm glad I have the luxury of showing preference to my friends and family. I care about my neighbors more than people on the other side of the world. And yes, I will root for my home team and cheer when they win.
I don't believe it's irrational or wrong to play favorites this way. And even if it were, it's so fundamental to being human that we could not be any other way. Perhaps we are a jingoistic species.
Your neighbours or family or country succeeding could very well make a real difference in your life. I think those that dislike sports do so not because they reject preference or a sort of tribalism, but because beyond some short-lived feeling of vicarious success, sports are completely meaningless.
Mind you, so is a huge majority of entertainment...
It doesn't have to be one (rational and critical thinking) or the other (supporting a team). I don't understand why so many people on this thread can't see that.
"Well, let me give an example. When I'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief.
In part, this reaction may be due to my own areas of interest, but I think it's quite accurate, basically. And I think that this concentration on such topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway, without a degree of organization that's far beyond anything that exists now, to influence the real world. They might as well live in a fantasy world, and that's in fact what they do. I'm sure they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere."
Basically, sports fans aren't stupid, they just don't think they can have any effect on anything more important (ex: politics).
http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-so-m...
Perfect article for those on HN who follow pro sports ;)
So, a couple of years ago, I had a sports-fanatic friend of mine sit with me through a few football games and explain everything that was happening. This unlocked my ability to relate to others (well, men). It was nothing short of revelatory.
After a while though, my natural indifference reasserted itself and I never bothered to do what's necessary -- like subscribe to cable -- to stay abreast of things.
As for the article, I would suggest that the cause of sports disinterest might not always be a form of cultural signaling (though I find that plausible.) In my case, it goes back to childhood, where I was terrible at all sports. After a while of getting made fun of, being picked last for teams, etc... I learned that sports were simply not for me.
I think interest in sports is pretty healthy. But like all things, in moderation. But it's not so much about sports specifically, but rather having diverse interests is healthy.
Having common ground with more people is not a bad argument for learning about sports. But I do have some qualms with the author's decision.
First, I cannot stress this enough: American football is an odious sport. Players regularly suffer concussions, traumatic brain injuries, and joint trauma. Permanent and debilitating injuries are common. The average player lasts 3.5 years in the NFL. Then they are spat out and left to deal with a lifetime of health issues. Yes, players freely choose their profession. So what? The same argument can be used to defend dueling. Football is bad and people should feel guilty watching it. If you're going to watch a popular sport, watch baseball.
But really, what's so bad about being out of touch with most Americans? Why draw the line at political borders? By population, vastly more people love cricket or soccer than American football. I don't mind being out of touch with sports enthusiasts regardless of their country of origin. If you're like me and you spend most of your time with people who aren't interested in sports, there's no point in learning about football or baseball. You already have common ground. Is that living in a bubble? Yes. I like living in a bubble. Economist Bryan Caplan explains the position better than I can.[1]
1. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu....
In Europe, spectators suffer those while watching football.
I think that duelling should be legal, for that same reason. Likewise, football and boxing should be legal: the participants have chosen to engage in them; why shouldn't the spectators enjoy the spectacle?
I can watch some sports for a while (basketball and football), but after a couple hours it gets pretty boring, plus I've probably had some beers so the combination tends to make me sleepy. It was exciting when I was in college and rooting for my team at the stadium and all that, but how people connect with teams outside of such a setting has never really made sense to me. I'm from Pittsburgh, a city that loves their team, but it just doesn't connect with me for whatever reason. I'd prefer if they win, sure. But that's about all.
And there is a lot of new info to keep on top of, every day. It strikes me as somewhat of a serious commitment to be into sports, and though I like sports a bit, that commitment isn't worth it to me. As I said, I can watch a game alright (or really more like half to 3/4 of a game), but knowing which players are good, who's having a good season, who is the new coach, etc, it's just way too much uninteresting information. Like learning times tables again, or something.
When I started dating the woman who would later be my wife, I would occasionally watch hockey games with her; she is from Detroit and grew up an ardent, passionate fan of the Red Wings. After a few games of her explaining the rules and strategy, telling me about the fantastic teamwork between Datsyuk and Zetterburg, and relating the history of the team with regards to their regional rivals, I got in to it on my own time. We aren't able to watch many Wings games now that we live in California, but we've got tickets to watch them play the Sharks in a couple weeks.
The parent post is pretty spot on; you can really choose how much effort you want to put in to being a sports fan. You don't need to know who's having a good season or which players are the best if you don't want to; even just casually browsing the sports page a couple times a week to see the standings and the outcome of the latest game is enough to be able to hold a conversation about it with somebody else.
My whole family is pretty nuts about American football, so I grew up surrounded by it and can still appreciate the beauty and complexity of the game, the strategy and execution. But I watch the Superbowl and that's it. I just can't be bothered with anything else.
I used to play soccer with a bunch of Europeans who could happily discuss Champions League play for hours. Never was able to muster up the interest to do more than fake a short conversation.
I followed baseball for long enough to survive a World Series while living in the US, during which time it was impossible to have a conversation with anyone about anything that didn't involve the game. My interest lapsed the moment the last bat was swung. It was just too much work to maintain.
Why do sports leave some of us so utterly flat? I have no idea (although from reading some of the comments here apparently the world is full of people who can tell on the basis of a few short sentences the entirety of a person's motivations, which is a pretty good trick.) But it's the reality. So yeah, you can choose how much effort you want to put into being a sports fan, but for some of us the amount of effort required to engage beyond the most brain-dead superficial level is huge compared to the effort the average fan puts in following their favourite team.
For whatever reason, some of us face a wall of indifference that makes the effort of surmounting it simply not worth it.
[I half expect replies to tell me that "no I really just don't understand how beautiful $GAME is", which is the flip side of that uncanny ability to know everything about a person's motivations.]
That's totally fine! If the extent of your emotional commitment to football is "I watch the superbowl and that's it", that's still a passing interest in the sport and the sort of thing the article is encouraging.
The attitude that the article is lamenting is the people who go out of their way to avoid being interested in football, the people who take pride in their lack of interest. The sorts of people who, next Monday, are going to be saying, "Oh, the superbowl was yesterday? I figured I'd just catch the commercials on youtube; that's the only interesting part anyways. I don't even know who was playing." That sort of disinterest is cultivated.
I have zero interest in baseball, not a huge interest in football, despite being in Seattle. But we find basketball a lot of fun and make the trip down to Portland about once a month or so to see the Trail Blazers play - a team that still tries to live the "Keep Portland weird" ethos.
What's intriguing, too, is that despite her dad's best efforts - he definitely sees himself, at least in his mind, as a counter culture revolutionary who despises professional sport as being "what the mindless drones pay attention to", our step-daughter, a seven year old who alternates between My Little Pony, Frozen, and being a self-avowed pacifist vegetarian, also loves and begs to go to games because of the atmosphere - somewhat made curious by the fact she has near zero interest in watching them on TV, but at the arena she is entirely involved, cheering, chanting, dancing, having a whole bunch of fun.
Which is what it should be about.
You can watch sports, or you can participate in the watching of sports. One requires real interest in the event while the other merely requires interest in who's nearby. People are different. I'm into some sports and can't stand others. But I like being social with friends, both F2F and online.
Sports, in the context of the article, is 100% people and events.
I don't necessarily agree with the quote, I just wanted to point out that the idea expressed here is the same. I don't think that intellectuals (to use the author's term) are necessarily disinterested in sports in general. However, it makes sense to me that that they would not be interested in news, drama and specific professional athletes and their performances and relationships. In many cases, that's all there is when it comes to using professional sports as a basis for making conversation or building rapport.
Yes, sports are all about immersing yourself in the earnest discussion of trivial minutiae. Maybe that's why intellectuals disdain it. It's a tempest in a TV set.
But sports are also one of the very few venues which are: a) dramatic, b) can be shared with friends, foes, and strangers alike, c) fair, and d) largely unscripted.
Sports are a kind of platonic ideal -- a pure meritocracy: where the cream rises to the top, where talent is rewarded, where justice is done, yet tragedy may strike. In today's heavily commercialized, overproduced, and politicized world, such fields of dreams are all too rare.
Finally and maybe most important, sports play to the need we all have to cheer for for heros and heroics and to bathe in the glamour of their victory.
Maybe the inescapably gladiatorial nature of sports competition also embarrasses the fine arts crowd?
What's the value in ideas unless the affect events or impact people? It's a nice pithy quote, but don't assign it any undue deference or respect.
The fact that you ignored (or are ignorant of) this side of sports tells me that you've not actually had much practice "making conversation or building rapport" around sports.
Where I grew up (the rural South) sports is huge and the default topic of conversation. I always felt that there was something wrong with me because I wasn't that interested.
Then as an adult I moved to Vietnam, where people are only occasionally interested in football(soccer) and that's pretty much it. By default people don't care about sports. If took soccer fanatic and dropped them here, I think their behavior would be perceived as pretty peculiar.
So to me this article is:
"You should agree my cultural assumptions because that is normal baseline human behavior and if you don't then you are deliberately being a jerk."
Which is pretty silly.
Just like what you like and don't worry about it.
If you keep and open mind and follow your passions, you'll eventually stumble on something you share enough with others. My disinterest in football is quite genuine, but I enjoy the World Cup and Euro Cup. I also find it hilarious that intellectuals apparently don't go for Heavy Metal, because I'd fall in his "intellectual" category, but spent several years deeply engrossed in Metal and I enjoy the Nordic and Prog subtypes.
At the end of the day, people will like what they want. They will dislike what they want, too. Whether that is because of a valid reason, or whatever silly notion of not wanting to fit in, or anything else is irrelevant.
The point of the post is that motivation is relevant. Some people don't want to be elitist; it bothers me. If they apply some introspection to their motivations, they may discover this behavior describes them, and they may want to change. What people "want" is not some inherent immutable trait of their humanity. Sometimes what people "want" is a result of cultural expectations.
In this light, there's no need to single out nerds/intellectuals/whatevers. We can just say that cultivating an active disinterest to isolate yourself from others is generally a bad thing.
How so? Taking part in the things most inherent in your culture is arguably a good thing.
It helps you keep in touch with the rest of the world. It helps you carry on and start up conversations with your peers. It's easier to "break the ice".
It makes you feel more connected to society, which is something that I'm sure most of us sitting behind a computer screen 24/7 certainly could use more of.
Like being overweight? Eating fast food? Watching the latest wastes of time on the tubes? Because fuck everything about that. I do as I damn well please and spend my time on things that interest me. If that "alienates" losers, who cares? I have more to offer the average portly dimwitted plebian than they do me.
I'm not sure how to describe that feeling precisely - but to give you an example: most people seem to like/watch soap operas, while I actively avoid them and prefer to watch sci-fi, which is shunned by general population. And the reason is, sci-fi series have a point. There's some reason for things, some grander goal, etc., whereas what I see in soap operas are random people making dramas around love, family and money. This, so called normal life, feels so empty and pointless.
I'm not aiming to insult anyone here - what I'm saying is that I just don't grok "normal life". While I have enough empathy and perceptivity to be able to understand the life priorities of an average Joe (in my circles I'm the go-to guy if there's a conflict to fix or someone to cheer up), I don't feel them. I do feel disconnected from society, and honestly, I'm fine with that.
Is it really? I'm not a Christian but that would be an easy way for me to have something in common with most of America.
And the value of "it's good to go with the flow" isn't arguably good: http://mic.com/articles/92479/psychologists-have-uncovered-a...
In recent years there has been a swell in the popularity of metal, but there seems to be a cultural divide between certain styles despite sharing the moniker of "Metal". It's less a matter of the size of the fanbase and has more to do with a difference in sound/style.
Think about rock played on the radio vs indie rock. There is some crossover but not a large amount. Fans of Nickelback don't overlap with fans of The Walkmen. In much the same way someone who listens to Def Leppard is unlikely to also listen to Opeth or Sunn O))).
The "Anything But Heavy Metal" paper is based on data from 1993.
I'm not saying that looking down on people for their interests isn't small-minded or awful. But I definitely disagree with the idea that you have to cultivate a lack of interest in a topic.
Also, consider this instead: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case...
As a first-generation American, the fact that you're more likely to pay for college with a sports scholarship than an academic one seems completely insane to me.
When programmers engage in these kind of religious wars about their languages or text editors (other than in a tongue-in-cheek way) they are considered rude and antisocial neckbeards. But somehow it's rude or antisocial to not get behind this massive time, energy, and money sink that makes a few people fabulously wealthy?
I could understand it if it were tongue-in-cheek, as you write, just for fun's sake, but it's usually not, as best I can tell. Many of these fans are quite serious. They'll get no-joking pissed off at people over this stuff. They'll really initially dislike anyone they meet from $rivalCity. It's crazy.
Being a fan of a truly local team makes sense to me. A pro team? Not in a "ha-ha we're all in on the joke isn't this fun" sort of way? Mind boggling.
Then theres the Odell Beckham catch from earlier this year which is just an insane feat of athleticism: http://www.gfycat.com/PointedKindheartedAtlanticsharpnosepuf...
2 years ago I thought football was stupid. Then I started actually watching it and realized theres a lot more to it than I gave it credit for. Now I highly anticipate the start of each season.
Then there's guys who do both like JJ Watt
Also, often it's difficult to gauge what's happening in a football match from watching on TV. Going to a game allows you a clearer view of how the match is progressing.
However, after watching enough matches, you can pretty soon see patterns and tactics and styles of each team, and it gets pretty fascinating.
And then of course there's the ability of the players to dazzle individually, either via great passing or with tricks or great tackles or an outstanding save.
Teams sports amplify and dignify an "us versus them" dynamic. I think that part of us is one of the most problematic aspects of our nature.
Sports is the perfect example of this in that you can and should take great pride and joy in everything that makes you, you, but also realize that there's someone on the other side of the TV screen that has the same reasons for taking pride and loving who they are.
If you can both do that and appreciate the other for that, and not hate them because of it, then you've got it right.
I had a relatively blue collar american upbringing, but more or less since the day I left for college I've been predominately surrounded by people from white collar lifestyles, and this article really resonated with me.
As illustrated in the article, the difference between the cab driver and the highly educated professional taking the cab is not as great as the latter would often like you to believe it is. Life is a lot easier when you stop pretending that things like sports or certain types of music are "below you".
I freely admit not being a "middle-class" American. From my cushy software job on the 11th floor in SF, I really don't have any idea what it's like to earn minimum wage, be a single parent, go to a country music concert, or eat at McDonald's. But I don't think any of this makes me "better" than anyone else, and I still treat people with respect, dignity, and compassion -- I just don't feel the sense of guilt or need to conform, that this article seems to espouse.
I fight with my dad about this all the time, who works in a factory in Illinois, and loves reminding me how out-of-touch I am, even as he asks me what I think of Chicago sports, even though (1) I don't live in Illinois and (2) I don't like sports. ;)
Is that a thing? I've certainly never noticed it from the outside looking in on American intellectualism, or from my more direct experience with educated acquaintances.
My own take is that I enjoy athletic excellence, but disdain the laughably irrational fandom that almost always overwhelms any gathering or discussion involving major televised sports. When there is a controversial judgement made by referees, why is there such a strong correlation because the team you support and the way you think the call should have gone? Why is it always the team you support that the announcers and referees are biased against? It's just so inane and boring that I have zero interest participating in it.
But the second issue I have is an issue with the culture around professional sport, which is exactly as you described. It highlights the worst aspects of humans - extreme irrationality and willingness to go to a conflict over a completely arbitrary things. I strive to avoid participating in that.
I literally can't be arsed to give a shit about sports. I know about football and baseball and can understand most sports-related metaphors, but I really don't have the energy to invest in knowing what the Patriots are doing. (Although I followed the Deflategate scandal with some amusement; where I live the Patriots are gods among men and I confess it's a bit nice to see their reputation, er, deflated.)
So when I need to talk to "ordinary people", I fall back on other pop-culture referents, usually music and movies. Even trashy, mass market music and movies I can get into. Discussing Pokémon was once even a useful ice breaker -- in Japan.
That is absolutely NOT what the article states. The articles argument is basically "If you don't like sports, you might be condescending and exclusionary about it. Sports are a near universal conversation topic. If you try getting into them just for the social benefit, you might find you actually like them."
Plus it's OK if you suck at golf, everyone you're playing with sucks too. And if they don't suck, you make them look even better. And you get to walk around on a (usually) nicely manicured bit of grass on a (hopefully) sunny day.
"Hey, who's your pick in the superbowl?" "I like to golf!"
That never sufficed for knowing about football. People want to talk football.
They like talking pool with me too, and it's not like I was cast out of the social circle over it--but most sports conversations, in my experience, start out very specifically.
"Who you like in the SEC this year?"
"You been watching this cheating stuff with Belichick?"
Don't know who Belichick is? You're not going to fudge a conversation, most likely.
"I'm actually more of a golf guy, myself."
"Oh really? What's your favorite club?"
"I love my MegaPutt 20x6 Owninator"
"Oh yeah that's a classic! The 20x6 line has really turned MegaPutt around in recent years. Myself, I can't get enough of anything SportStick comes up with, I got walls of their clubs at home."
The idea's that a conversation gets redirected, not just stopped outright like it would with a reply of "I don't watch sports."
DISCLAIMER: I don't know how golf works beyond what Wii Golf taught me, and that was years ago.
I don't like nor have an interest in sports, I never have. I'm not going to waste my free time doing something I don't like trying to fit in.
At one point in my life I had access to a TV transmitter and an input to the head end of a cable system so I did some "Captain Midnight" things and I learned very quickly that you don't mess with people's sports any more than you mess with an animal's food.
Every so often I put new batteries in my TV-B-Gone and my experience with that is that people rarely care (and might even cheer) if you turn off CNN, the Weather Channel, CNBC, the Cartoon Network or even ESPN Sports Center but it is part of my personal code that I will never turn off a game.
Rational or not, sports mean a lot to people and you've got to respect that. Personally I don't seek out a lot of pro sports but I watch the Superbowl every year and I am definitely excited to see the Pats in it. When I am visiting friends or out and about I definitely enjoy watching a game.
This doesn't seem to cause me problems. I can talk to working class people about other topics easily. I also have no reason to go around bashing sports, so this helps I'm sure.
One thing I've noticed is that it does block me from being close friends with certain men. Because their favorite leisure activity is watching a lot of sports with friends. That's far too high a commitment for me since I truly dislike watching sports on TV.
It has certainly affected bonding with other men as well.
I do, however, have an opinion on which one if so. Supporting American football, which causes irreversible brain damage in 100% of players [1] [2], is very much not okay. Maiming and crippling people for entertainment is a moral atrocity, and shame on the author for condoning it.
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/opinion/what-i-saw-as-an-n...
In retrospect, I do kind of wish that I'd gotten into them, because they are a bonding experience for so many, and they do provide the grounds for a somewhat better level of small talk than idle chit-chat about the weather. And they certainly can be enjoyable to play.
But as it is, I just don't emotionally get it. Watching sports is boring; it simply doesn't connect. Why should I care if a group of millionaires from my town are running around on some grass with a group of millionaires from your town? Why should I be happy that my taxes are higher in order to raise money for buildings for those same millionaires? Why would I want to spend hours a week and hundreds of dollars watching rich people exercise, talking about rich people exercising and thinking about rich people exercising?
It just doesn't make sense to me. Part of me wishes it did; obviously I am unlike most people. But part of me is glad, too. In some ways, I feel like the little boy in the The Emperor's New Clothes; in others I feel like I'm blind.
As an aside, I thought this quote was just hilarious:
> The machoness and absence of women in the highest levels of most professional sports bothers[sic] me deeply.
I really wonder how one can have working eyes, possess a functioning brain and have come to adulthood and still be surprised that in almost any physical competition the absolute best competitors will be male. It takes a pretty sincere dedication to being disconnected from reality to manage that. It'd be like saying, 'avian over-representation and the absence of fish from the air bother me deeply.'
Professional sports are expensive and inefficient forms of entertainment. What is your cost (and opportunity cost) per hour for sports? Compared to films, books, video games, or board games you are burning money/time on a completely passive experience. When was the last time you learned something about yourself or others while watching a sporting event? Do they cause you to think at all?
Sports create an "us VS them" mentality that creates division. I much prefer following space exploration in which the opponent is objective based and nature itself.
Live events are used as delivery mechanisms for the marketing of inferior products like fast food restaurants, poor quality beers, fashion brands, processed foods, etc. The mentality that "I must watch it live" is constantly reenforced, requiring consumption of marketing. The phenomenon of the sports bar further encourages consumption of unhealthy food and poor quality beer (leading to drinking and driving).
For those reasons I no longer watch any sporting events. Now I watch eSports on Twitch to get my dose of live entertainment.
You're badly misinterpreting that line. It's about the fans, not whether the players compete (obviously the players compete). "us vs them" is when you hear a fan say a phrase like "we won".
It's certainly possible to get wrapped up in a fandom in eSports, but from my limited perspective it's much less common.
- When was the last time you learned something about yourself or others while watching an eSports event? Do they cause you to think at all?
The hosts of many Twitch channels talk about their philosophies on life and interact directly with their fans to have meaningful discussions.
There are many excellent cooperative board games such as Pandemic and Forbidden Island. Video games like Minecraft and Portal can be played cooperatively as well.
I am not into professional sports because they are inferior to other forms of entertainment. I have watched and understand pretty much every type of sport. My favorite is UFC. I also enjoy hockey but I would rather play NHL 94 than watch it on TV or in person.
Another thing I don't like is how little innovation there is in professional sports. It seems like I could watch an hour of highlights at the end of the year and see anything unique that might have happened. These games have been played for decades. With Twitch there are constantly new games with new mechanics and strategies and it's exciting to watch people figure out optimal play methods and new techniques.
Also, any disdain I have for the subject is entirely centered around the fans. Sports fans have a tendency to assume that everyone is a sports fan, and act accordingly. I don't shame anyone for not liking board games, don't shame me for not caring about whatever latest playoff is going on.
Also, when delays in my commute can be directly attributable to a specific event, you can bet I'm going to develop negative feelings towards it.
For example, one of Kobe's conditioning trainer's had this to say:
"When I arrived and opened the room to the main practice floor I saw Kobe. Alone. He was drenched in sweat as if he had just taken a swim. It wasn’t even 5AM.
We did some conditioning work for the next hour and fifteen minutes. Then we entered the weight room, where he would do a multitude of strength training exercises for the next 45 minutes. After that we parted ways and he went back to the practice floor to shoot. I went back to the hotel and crashed. Wow."
Later on, around 11AM, the trainer sees Kobe on the court, practicing with the USA Olympic Squad, and has this conversation:
"So when did you finish?"
"Finish what?"
"Getting your shots up. What time did you leave the facility?"
"Oh just now. I wanted 800 makes so yeah, just now."
...
This is not unique to Kobe, you find stories like this with all athletes in conversation for "greatest of all time."
Secondly, there's a lot to learn from coaches as well, especially from the perspective of a startup founder. There's a reason Keith Rabois brought up the Bill Walsh's (SF 49ers coach) book, "The Score Takes Care of Itself," in the HTSAS lecture series.
Lastly, watching sports at a high level is like appreciating great art. A great backhand in tennis, a brilliant pass by a quarterback, these all have a quality of beauty about them. I feel they induce similar awe-inspiring feelings one might find in an art museum, a great music album, etc.
Maybe I'm reading between the lines incorrectly but this post has an air of condescension and elitism. The white-collar, academic author decides to like sports because another white-collar, academic told him it was good for him. It almost feels like he chose to like sports to assuage some form of guilt.
Maybe I'm wrong and this is just normal for people in academia, I don't know.
At least he's a Patriots fan ;)
For example, if your spouse has an interest, you declined to share it until you realize it could bring you closer together, and then you pursue her interest with her then who am I to say you aren't really into it?
Just like you can develop a taste for IPA beer you can develop a true enjoyment of football. I think your point is better taken as, this is a good idea but be careful not to misuse or misunderstand it's goal.
I do agree with the premise of this article, that to communicate with more people, we should put 1% of the effort into following sports as we do into building businesses or progressing career wise.
Something I've always thought about, refreshing piece.
They also provide hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to a tiny group of people while permanently injuring players both physically and mentally. Then there's the massive transfers of taxpayer money to build stadia that sometimes NEVER turn a profit, the domestic abuse, the culture of covering up sexual assault, the homophobia, the long and troubled racial history...
Seriously, fuck sportzball. As a new way to "build common ground", try actually being a human.
Maybe I'll give it another shot. It seems worth it to be able to connect to more people.
While this is an extreme example, it shows that a love of sports is passed down by parents to their kids. Really, a love of anything can be passed down (working on your car in your garage). Love and passion, can't beat them.
I grew up without watching football or major professional sports on a regular basis. Mostly because my dad did not watch any. To this day, I really can't understand football (American) - not the game, but the obsession, TV commercial timeouts and all.
Sports is such a big part of American culture that it is part of many of our childhoods.
As one of my college friends explained to me, watching football on Sundays with the guys is not really about watching football - it's about hanging out.
Drama is predictable in a way that sports aren't. Seeing it live doesn't change that. Live theater has benefits and may be enjoyable, but it doesn't address predictability. Even if the viewer doesn't know the outcome, the outcome is fixed. And it falls within a predictable range of acceptable usually-happy endings. (Not strictly, but very commonly.)
Drama is great, of course, I love it. But sports does offer something different to complement it.
Sports has some outcomes that are narrow (win vs. lose) and others that are open-ended (the arc of a player's career, a unique play that's never been seen, off-the-field drama.) They couldn't be predictable or else betting on sports wouldn't be sustainable.
You have to get yourself to care about an outcome in order for its unpredictability to be interesting, and I can see how it seems contrived that anyone would care, but the point isn't to take it seriously.
(I guess you could call improv also live and not predictable, or find other more obscure examples.)
If you're interested in sports go for it, if you're not then avoid them. Making conversation and forming new relationships with people has nothing to do with watching football.
The degree to which this interest or disinterest is realized is determined by how much an individual wants to be part of a group.
Wine appreciation, which is associated with high status, attracts rather clunky attempts at cultivated interested.
Religious group detractors cultivate a far more antagonistic disinterest.
No one likes beer as children but because people want to fit in so much with the "fun" group, they cultivate heavy interests and tastes for it.
Sports for the most part is tied down to location. A small levels it associates you with your school, and at higher levels it associates you with your city, state, or even country.
Groups often compete against other groups for resources in a 0 sum game. Sports passion can actually be used to measure the level of "loyalty" a person has to a group. The most loyal people will put his or her group above other groups to the detriment of others.
(This nepotism is actually necessary for stable groups. We treat are friends and family this way. Also, if a morally superior alien race of 10 trillion decides the destruction of earth is a necessary evil, meritocracy requires we die willingly)
I don't care much about the state of the homeless in San Francisco. It makes me sound cold but it's the truth. To me, I don't understand why I should care more about this than the homeless in some other state, or the starving and dying in some other country.
People don't like these "free-agents" because they seem completely selfish and base everything on cold logic and meritocracy than warm immediate empathy. They can't be trusted to do what's right for the group, in fact, they may just jump ship when some other better group shows up.
Sports fanaticism is a reasonable measure of this.
Life is very simply to short to be excited about these kind of things. As it is, I don't even have time to find out everything I really do want to find out.
If I did have to get interested in something I have absolutely zero interest in, it might as well be fashion shows. I'm thinking the romance potential might be higher than with sports.
If people are interested in professional sports fine... I don't feel elitist or look down on them. I do scratch my head and wonder to myself that they don't have something more interesting to do with their time, but whatever. I don't claim to know what everyone else should like. I sure don't have to be interested though.
1. Dominance of sports culture is distracting to students in high school and college, and acts as a money sink. Playing sports is great, but I'm not sure why we subsidize it so much (talking about competitive teams here, not intramurals/PE).
2. The degree to which many people (obviously not most sports watchers, but a substantial minority) are obsessed with sports and tie up their identity in a given team is just insane. People will legit get angry about their team losing or having bad calls or whatnot, to the extent that sports riots or getting in fights because you liked the wrong team in the wrong place is a real thing. That's crazy!
That said, this may be a strategy for connecting with other people but there's all sorts of small-talk you can make with someone else, but it might involve some human vulnerability on your part. I make non-sports-related small-talk with pretty much anyone unless it's obvious they want to be left alone. I'd rather be talking to women anyways, and "talking sports" doesn't get you all that far.
Once I hit college I just wasn't tall enough to play at the collegiate level.
- 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.
Football is the perfect party/passive sport. There is so much downtime you can have entire conversations and still watch the game. I do not know what the stats are now, but the NFL has done a lot to give the offense the advantage and up the scoring. The problem I have with the NFL on TV is not showing the full 22. When you watch that view you see how little margin of error there is during the game. The QB looking left a 1/2 second sooner and a sack could have been a TD and vice versa.
If you have a chance, I recommend going to a live local MMA show. They're a lot of fun.
I think that people who engage in elitism are extremely petty and self-centered and I have told the few that I come across so. No one is better than any other person based on their passions or interests.
I just want everyone to be friends. Is that so hard to ask?
I'm glad that you enjoy that, and its great for you. I'm not sure why that should dissuade anyone else from choosing not participate in the ritual of fandom in the particular professional sports that are widely popular, or why the fact that you enjoy it should make it "troubling" that other people choose not to engage with it.
> I just want everyone to be friends. Is that so hard to ask?
No, it is easy to ask anything. It is also unreasonable. Friendship, if it is to be meaningful, is a positive commitment of time and resources. Everyone can't be friends without robbing the term of all meaning, because there are too many people.
I am not trying to dissuade anyone from anything. All I am saying to be more open to the way other people may think or have passion for. Also, from the actual post, the author correctly summarizes that sports can be something too bridge gaps between all types of people. So in effect, you are saying people do not want/need this capability? The ability to be able to talk to another human being able something mildy to fanatically interesting?
> No, it is easy to ask anything. It is also unreasonable. Friendship, if it is to be meaningful, is a positive commitment of time and resources. Everyone can't be friends without robbing the term of all meaning, because there are too many people.
You're right because I just asked it. Also, the definition of friend is relatively broad and I am half glass full kind of guy. Finally, you may taking my comments and possibly yourself a little to serious, my friend.
I do enjoy some heavy metal, though.
(btw, I am not the one who downvoted you. HN got really trigger-happy lately)
Sports have been a significant part of my life ever since I was in 1st grade. I played several varsity sports throughout high school and had opportunities for scholarships in two different sports. One of those sports was golf and I find that it elicits the opposite response in a way that I hate (but also understand).
When I've been at interviews for Google, Facebook, Amazon, wherever, I inevitably talk about sports with the other undergrads that are interviewing with me. In an effort to avoid the perception that I'm some sort of country club WASP, I rarely mention that I played extremely high level golf throughout high school. I fear that it won't fit into the "culture" of various places that I've applied to and likely won't mesh with those I'm talking to. So instead, I let my "hipster"-ish clothing, love of post-hardcore metal, and interest in all books not found on the NYT Bestseller list, craft whatever perception people may have of me.
But despite this, I can talk about the NBA and NFL with the best of them and I'm getting to the point where I don't care what people think because I've found it's too hard to worry about it. If I want to go throw some iron over my head 4 times a week and people consider me a meathead, so be it. But it's a whole lot easier to have them think that than to try to hide it for ridiculous reasons.
This is hilarious given that there have been studies showing that metal fans are smarter than non-metal fans! At any rate, the idea that interest in heavy-metal marks one as "working class" or "non-intellectual" is totally absurd. But, then again, so is the idea that "intellectual" and "working class" are disjoint sets. (Yes, you can define either or both terms to create that distinction, but it's clearly not true when using the vernacular / intuitive definition for both).
As far as sports... I have never understood the attitude some self-styled "intellectuals" have in regards to sports. There is a tremendous amount of benefit to be gained from participating in sports of various types, and if one participates in a sport at an amateur level, it follows that one's passion for that sport would extend to wanting to watch the highest level competitors compete with each other.
I suppose the analogy would make sense to the "intellectual" set if you just defined chess as a sport. :-)
I can't get into either though. I think it has more to do than intellectuals not liking spectating sports.
Because if there's anything that people compete to show their ignorance about, it's basic mathematics. I would gladly become a die-hard sports fan if it meant the average person I meet didn't talk they way they do about math.
My reasons had very little to do with academia or privileged tech culture. I grew up poor in a blue collar part of Florida. I can keenly recall that my dad is an Oakland Raiders fan while my mom favors the Minnesota Vikings.
My dislike for sports began with not being good at anything physical. Running, kickball, dodgeball, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, baseball, flag football, etc. I was jaded towards them at school, so I focused other activities (drawing, writing, reading, and of course, programming).
My hobbies were frequently disrupted by sports. Pep rallies were the bane of my existence in high school. Every time a decisive sports game was on the air, I couldn't avoid the cacophony of drunkards yelling in vain at a television. "GO GO GO GO GO!"
"Pfft, they can't hear you, morons," I would say. After a while, I invested in a pair of headphones.
I graduated from high school in 2008. It's been years since sports were in any way forced upon me. I still don't like sports. Not because it's cool to dislike them, but because it was a nuisance for so many years of my life.
But if someone else likes sports? That's cool. I'll listen and ask questions even if I don't really give a shit. It's called being a decent human being.
Does anyone enjoy just watching baseball? I absolutely love Fantasy baseball. It's a great intellectually stimulating way to just relax. Am I allowed to relax, or am I supporting some grand corporate conspiracy.
This thread is quite sad to me.
But, I LOVE college sports. I graduated from to a major SEC university (Auburn) and attended all but one home game the 5 seasons I was there, as well as at least one away game each season. Same with basketball, only my attendance wasn't quite so diligent.
But I feel a connection with that team, even years later. That's my school. When I was there, they were my classmates. I had a geology class with the quarterback. Even now, years removed from my time as a student, I never miss a game on TV and try to make it down there at least once a season.
Seeing the stadium, seeing the band, hearing the roar of the crowd at kickoff, smelling the barbecue and bourbon in the air. The indescribable thrill of seeing a live eagle fly down and land in the middle of the field. Watching the chess match between the the two insanely intelligent coaches, watching the plays executed by talented players who are still often works in progress - not finely tuned professional athletes. And stepping foot back on campus once again. All those potent memories come flooding back. It truly is a wonderful experience for me. An unbelievable rush.
Some of my fraternity brothers and I even have a long running iMessage group that sees hundreds of messages on gameday going back and forth as the four of us cheer, analyze, celebrate and commiserate. Even though we're separated by different occupations and thousands of miles, we maintain that link that was our time together and our shared interest in sport.
Stephen Fry captured it perfectly in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuPeGPwGKe8
But I've heard NFL fans talk about their teams exactly how I talk about Auburn. So I wonder if it might be different if I lived in a city that actually had a real top-tier professional team. Some way of having a connection to this team.
Now that I'm not 18 anymore, I can see where this article is coming from. I don't have the luxury of only talking to people in my peer group, and I've learned a little bit from sports about how to get excited from other people's excitement. Still, I feel like I had to leave an environment where sports were Mandatory Fun to get that enjoyment.
I remember reading an article about the British show Bullseye that pointed out that the blue-collar workers shown in the 80s episodes actually knew more about current events at the time than some educated people might today. It was expected as common knowledge and things you would talk about. These days, sport is still the key cross-section.
And I'm pretty sure that football transcends class in the UK these days (I know to be at least a little interested in Sunderland and NUFC games due to moving here, just as every Kiwi worth their salt knows at least a little about rugby).
We also have sports such as cricket which are probably a topic of conversation for the middle classes more than the working classes, but then class division is something that we've had centuries to refine!
My girlfriend recently cultivated an interest in sports so that she could fit in better with her predominately male colleagues. It seems to have worked for her. I can't tell for sure how much she actually enjoys it vs. how much she enjoys watching some play that she knows she'll will be a topic of conversation at work.
I am thinking of getting to know American Football, more for socializing than anything. Baseball is probably a lost cause for me.
(Oh, and since when is a STEM job not working class?)
... although it did get awkward when a Lyft driver opened up enough to start telling me about financial astrology. Fascinating, but awkward.
I follow a lot of people in tech on social media (mainly twitter) and while 90% its interesting and insightful when a big sporting event comes around I want to delete a lot of those people.
It seems as if they get on a podium and decided that everyone watching said sport is an idiot. It makes them seem condescending. This isn't everyone I follow in tech but enough to get annoying.
Terms I definitely know I will see Sunday on Twitter are "hand egg", "sports ball" followed by mocking of people watching the Super Bowl.
Having said that, I don't like watching professional sports. I don't like watching games; I'd rather play them myself. I don't like supporting huge monopolies of multi-millionaires playing other multi-millionaires while ruining their bodies. It's just not my value system.
I watch 1 or 2 footballs games a year, usually the Superbowl, and usually for the same reason this author decided to become a fan.
1) No one has team allegiance anymore, it is now player allegiance 2) People waste more time watching football to cover their entire team.
The NFL shoves so many shitty ads in your face it's painful to even sit there and pretend to care. I have trouble understanding why everyone watches games in real-time. Sign off twitter/facebook/whatever so you do not get updates, record the game, and fast-forward through every horrible ad/time-out/whatever else you have to sit through
I know this isnt going to be popular, but I had to say it haha.
Yeah advertisements suck, but any television programming also face the same problems. The great thing with watching football is that you're already conditioned to not pay attention to the game for 30 seconds every 10 seconds.
Anyways, I glean enough sports info from the show to hold conversations with people who are really into sports. Being able to socialize with all types of people is a good trait to have.
A huge chunk of my disinterest in certain genres of music (e.g. heavy metal) come from the same wellspring.
Of course high school was many years ago for me and I have moved on with my life. But until a strong-enough counterforce is applied, football (and Led Zeppelin) will continue to elicit a vaguely negative response.
Spectator sports, rooting for a team, appeal to the most basic and stupid tribal instincts. This is why we end up with crappy policies, this is what we can't have nice thing.
So yes, it's fine to despise it, and to look down on people who make it an important part of their life.
2) Did you even bother reading about the Nika riots? It shows the deep connection there is between arbitrary tribal affiliations, sports, and politics.
I live in Phoenix, AZ. Which is where the superbowl is taking place. There are literally ads for it EVERYWHERE.
And yet I still meet people who aren't just ignorant of what is going on[1], but seemingly proud of their ignorance.
[1]Of course some people might just not know what is going on, or assume it's just another big sporting event and not really recognize that this one is especially significant.
The design's a little dated and they're always looking for technical help.
At least the article itself isn't too difficult to get through. From his list, number 3 is the one that jumped out at me:
"Interest in sports can expand or shrink to fill the time you’re willing to give it"
I'm skeptical about the "shrink" part. The main problem I have with sports is how swallowed up some people and society in general can be. There was a recent discussion on HN about books and how impossible it is to be able to read everything that's important within your lifetime. Now, I don't even read books (yet), and I'm certainly not a good role model for spending my time wisely. But I guess there's no problem with people spending time on whatever makes them happy, and if the time people put into sports makes them that happy, so be it. I think it would be better for everybody, however, if we focused more on improving our lives in the long run. Have some more discipline. On the other hand, I think it's great to be "open minded". Give everything and everybody a chance to be worth your attention. It reduces ignorance.
At some point you have to say... this is not something that interests me and I don't really care for the environment surrounding it.
That said, I love going to a baseball game outdoors. It's like a happy hour that happens to have live action.
worth noting though, that the separation of the two groups [educated/non-sports] and [sports] is probably related to cost of activities ($basketball < $computers or tutors) and also related to the simple probability that top x% intellectuals and top x% athletes aren't likely to overlap. Everyone in-between is then forced to pick sides/friends...and sports-talk is super social/accessible.
I am a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan. I grew up when they were a dynasty in the 90s, and at the time it seemed like going to the Super Bowl is something they were supposed to do every year. I cried after some tough losses.
Sometimes I get into other local teams when they are doing well, and I've even tried to be interested in other football teams, but there's no team like the Cowboys for me. I can't feel the extreme joy nor anger or sadness when watching other teams. The best I can drum up is a "that's nice". It is actually easier watching other teams because I feel like I have much less invested.
I didn't have to cultivate this interest, there is nothing logical about it. I realize this. Realizing this random illogical love in my life has helped me to look at a lot of things differently, like politics and parties. Ignoring those indirect effects (always realize when you are a homer about something) there is a great advantage if you can reach this level of interest:
Once they stopped being dominant in the 90s, the Cowboys for years have been a team that look really good on paper, people pick them to win, and then they disappoint, often times in rage inducing ways. Being slightly younger, naive, and a homer, I'd always buy in. It didn't take until the last few years that I got their gimmick and as a passionate fan am sorry to say I didn't watch a number of games last year and/or turned them off at halftime.
This year, they were picked buy experts to be very mediocre. The first game seemed to prove this. I turned if off after the 1st quarter as the 49ers were beating the hell out of them. Same old Cowboys. I couldn't help but to watch week 2 and a win over the hapless Titans. Then they went down 21-0 in week 3 against the Rams and I turned the TV off. Thankfully, my interest and a friend goaded me into turning the TV back on to watch them come all the way back and win. Week after week for the rest of the year they did this: fell behind and seemed destined for a loss, only to fight back and pull themselves to victory. And I, conditioned as I was to expect failure, continued to turn the TV off at moments, only to turn it back on and catch the comeback.
This culminated in their wild card game against Detroit. At one point they went down 14-0. Same old Cowboys. Click. Then somewhere they found fight in them and with the benefit of a very questionable call were driving for a winning touchdown at the end of the game. Now I've seen this before. Flashbacks to January of 2008 when Jerry Jones put championship game tickets in the lockers of his players before they played the Giants, a team they had beaten twice already. But the Giants (who would win the Super Bowl) came to play, and at the end of the game Tony Romo found himself driving his team down for an apparent game winning touchdown. That time it wasn't meant to be. He threw and interception which was one of those plays which thus far has defined his legacy.
Here he was in the Detroit game in a very similar situation. This time, though, he pulled it off. When he got knocked down as he threw that winning touchdown, the crowed erupted, and face down, he slammed his hands on the ground out of joy. Romo is a passionate guy, but I've never seen him like this. He knows he is running out of time, and he wants to win. As a long-suffering fan, the joy was just as great.
The Boys ended up losing in Green Bay the next week, but I've though often about why I care about football so much and if I should. I like to be in control of my life. When you love a sports team, you are at the mercy of ownership, good or bad, players, bad breaks (sometimes literally), referees, etc. Why put yourself through all that emotion when you can't do anything about it?
But really, that's life. Because as much as we'd like to think otherwise (especially the folks here which are smart, hard-working, independent, and often successful), there are a lot of things you just don't have control over in life. You can't control whether a competitor does or doesn't come along at the right time, you can't control whether a drunk driver blindsides you, you can't control who you meet or run into. Sports is like that, and sometimes it is good to take a step back, realize you can't control everything, and enjoy the ride. Sometimes you'll feel rage or sadness, but in that rare instance when a team, your team, proves everyone wrong, when it rewrites the script, when it does what it isn't supposed to do and wins, there isn't a feeling like like it. And when you see athletes who have worked their entire lives to get to a point and they finally achieve it, it is a rare feeling of empathy and pride that you can feel for a complete stranger. I saw it with Dirk Nowitzki when he won a title in 2011, and I hope to see it for Tony Romo one day as well.
Hell, for people doing startups, or just living, athletes are the perfect sources of inspiration. The pressures they face, the pride, the struggle, the doubt, all is so similar. I've personally never been a Kobe Bryant fan, but last summer I read some articles about his work ethic, determination, and attitude, and I both respected him and it inspired me to better myself.
Sports are incredibly valuable learning tools, aside from just the avenues they open up with others. And that really can't be overstated. I see too many computer-literate people shutting themselves off from others and culture. If you can't or don't connect with the majority of the population, what makes you think you can build something which will change the world? Granted, sports is just one of many avenues to connect with others, but it is a massive one, and one with lots of benefits.
Finally, if you can't just fall in love with a team, there are other things to appreciate about sports. In baseball and basketball, I often get more interested in the process of building teams than watching teams play. There's magic in watching good GMs outwit everyone else and put together the right collection of players. There's magic in watching people like Billy Beane apply a rigorous methodological approach to try to build something (The Oakland As and Moneyball). If you can't love a team for love of sport, love it from that kind of logical angle. Maybe you'll end up loving the team for completely illogical reasons.
I've said enough, maybe too much. I needed to unload those thoughts somewhere. Hope they help someone.
I think anyone who thinks this is spending too much attention on professional sports and not enough on real life: because there is plenty of actual real-life drama, tragedy, and comedy; professional sports are not the "closest we have" to those things (though there is some of all three in professional sports.)
Unlike those, sports are not scripted, they unfold in real time. Sure, other real-life situations have this, but sports are one of the few stages where millions or billions watch and share in the same experience.
Wow, I can't think of anything you could say that would make me hate you more instantly!
The thing is, sports fans form the great majority in the US and too many of them have a habit of shaming and ostracizing people who don't share their inspiration, starting from beating up the non-sporty kids in elementary school. And they have the power to do that without any real reprisals because they are the majority and the strongly enforced norm for men is that they must like sports and play them. So I'm glad for your sake that you have a source of joy and I don't care if you want to talk to other people who share that interest. But please don't bother telling me that your interest is better than other people's interests and that something is wrong with someone who doesn't share your interest, because it's part of a broader abusive pattern.
Also, this part from the article is kind of silly:
The machoness and absence of women in the highest levels of most professional sports bothers me deeply.
Most sports are built rather heavily around the design constraints of the human body. For what is effectively organized physical conflict, the genetics favor males heavily.
It is kind of a bummer that you rarely get to see all 22 on a broadcast, because the camera stays fixed on the ball carrier. It can be hard to tell if a quarterback is having a bad season because he sucks or because none of his receivers are getting open (though any sports blog will be happy to give you an opinion).
There's precisely the same problem with soccer. Unless you're already a true expert, you'll glean almost nothing of the tactics by watching a match on TV. Go to the stadium and you can finally see things like the positioning of defenders while their team has possession.
I've tried so hard to explain this to people my entire life, and gotten nothing but blank looks in response. I LOVE playing almost any sport, and when I watch other people running around on the field having fun my only response is "shit why the hell aren't we going to the park and doing that right now?"
Watching a professional sport bores me unless I am currently playing that sport. When I am playing a given sport, then I start watching game highlights because I can learn so much from them. It improves my game play, gives me new ideas, and is just plain fun.
I find this to be the complete opposite of my experience. I never played football, but I did compete in many team sports when younger and I find my enjoyment heightened by that experience, and a high degree of understanding and empathy.
I find golf, a game even many sports fans do not watch, to be one of the most enjoyable and dramatic to watch. I think this is mostly because I play it, not in spite of it.
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2010/09/fate-of-empires-p...
Congratulations, you dismissed the entirety of American football as "roid rage violence". You also have an encyclopedic knowledge of internet memes, so I'm not sure I really trust your judgement vis a vis what qualifies as a worthwhile endeavor.
> Sports aren't intellectual
> Sports talk is glorified tabloid talk
Go to a sabermetrics conference and prepare to be baffled. Nate Silver got his start as a baseball writer.
> Sports are overly violent
So is GTA 5. Watching sports doesn't make a person any more violent than playing video games does. Sports-related violence is semi-frequent and deplorable, but blaming sports for causing drunken boorish behavior is just like blaming Doom for Columbine.
Most professional athletes are well aware of what they're getting into these days [1], so I don't buy arguments about "protecting the athletes" as a reason to ban sports entirely either (augmenting the rules to decrease injury rates, sure, absolutely).
> I'm not going to pretend to like something I don't like
That's fine. Just don't be a pretentious asshole about it. I can't even begin to count the number of times a conversation has navigated to sports one way or another, and some jackass decides to one-up the group by going on a 5 minute monologue about how ignorant they are of sports because they're too busy with "intellectual pursuits".
What a wonderful message for the children.
Me personally? When did I do it?
If someone on the internet says "roid rage violence" I am going to ignore it, not get outraged. You can cry me a river about how badly bullied you are because of hearing that phrase, poor you.