Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

mako.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 511 posts

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#331

Post by guard-of-terra »

toby wrote: post #259
kulak wrote: post #243

To my ears, this "cultivated disinterest" label comes off as something of a cheap stereotype. Simply put, not everyone who lacks interest in professional sports nurtures a "cultivated distinterest" in the subject, nor are we driven by some need to display this disinterest as some kind of marker of class rank or intellectual superiority. We simply lack interest in the subject, period. And when pressed on the subject,…

I think what he's referring to is people who are proud of their ignorance, which it doesn't sound like you are doing. You've certainly encountered people who believe saying things like "Oh, I don't even know who Kim Kardashian is" or "I haven't read a book since college" is bragging.

I really enjoy "I'm not into Pokémon".

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#332

Post by wallflower »

I remember meeting my sister's friends in Chicago once. Even before their first son was able to walk, they were putting an inflatable baseball bat into his hands and teaching him how to swing it. Giving him big smiles when he did an approximation of the classic bat swing. Later they threw a giant beach ball as the ball. They happen to be Cubs season ticket holders - so yes by the time he was in kindergarten - he'd been to more games than many adults.

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.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#333

Post by XorNot »

parineum wrote: post #293
kyllo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that NFL teams get taxpayers to foot the bill for new stadium construction and then the team retains the facility as private property, now that is what I have a problem with. Those facilities are bought with public money and should be public parks.

I generally agree with the principal you present but you have to acknowledge that the government (and therefore, theoretically, tax payers) gain value through the stadiums presence in the community. More directly through sales tax and tourism but possibly other less direct means like property values and property taxes. Furthermore, if that's what people want to be done with their tax money, that's their business. If…

We only establish or change what "people" want done with their tax money by public discourse on whether we think it's a good idea. That something is done by the government is hardly a reason to not question it.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#334

Post by austerity »

siegecraft wrote: post #322
austerity wrote: post #300

I cultivated interest in golf to build rapport with the upper class. That didn't sound right, did it? Now is there any real difference between that and what the author is saying? I don't see one.

Apparently you missed where you used the word "upper" or thought that it was equivalent to "lower," when in fact they are opposites. My apologies for this gentle correction if you are not a native english speaker.

I am not a native speaker FWIW but "upper" is exactly what I wanted to say. My point was that if you replace football with golf and working class with upper class the whole idea of cultivating interest in sport to fit with some social group starts to sound really cheesy. And that author's "noble" intent is a fig leaf on what sounds like a rather pointless exercise to me. Although I cannot pinpoint exactly why.

(btw, I am not the one who downvoted you. HN got really trigger-happy lately)

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#335

Post by refurb »

XorNot wrote: post #321
Implicated wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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…

That's not his point though. His point is that for every bit of handwringing of how ghastly some people's comments on sports are, there's the reality that the football coach is the highest (in the millions of dollars range) paid position at almost every university in the US, how the sporting department despite those figures manages to be a net budgetry drain on almost every school which has one, and the reality that…

Sports is a huge financial drain on the school? Do you have any data? What I heard was that college football tends to pay for all of the other sports at a school. If anything sports creates a lot of opportunities for students that otherwise could be done due to budgets.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#336

Post by otakucode »

Sports, like any large body of knowledge, requires a dedication of a great deal of brain-hours to become proficient at. Actually participating in sports requires an order of magnitude more investment, of course. Since human beings have limited time available to them, they MUST sacrifice something else in order to become knowledgeable about sports. For me, this is why I have no interest in sports. The game mechanics interest me, the statistics interest me, and I could find a lot of avenues to approach the subject enjoyably... but I would have to give up something else. And the other things I occupy myself with are, in my opinion, more worth my time.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#337

Post by wutbrodo »

skybrian wrote: post #96
solson wrote: post #20

When you show overt contempt for sports you are showing contempt for most everybody and that is problem with your social skills. 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 w…

I think this is getting cause and effect backwards. Many (not all) kids who became intellectuals were the last picked for the team in sports and generally suffered due to it. I went through school dreading gym class. Deciding that sports was not important to me and spending time on things I was better at was in part emotional self-defense. Of course, dividing up into different tribes is not healthy. We should ideally…

This is a bit tangential to your post, but I think there's an important distinction that's being missed in most of the comments on this thread:

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).

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#338

Post by slg »

XorNot wrote: post #321
Implicated wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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…

That's not his point though. His point is that for every bit of handwringing of how ghastly some people's comments on sports are, there's the reality that the football coach is the highest (in the millions of dollars range) paid position at almost every university in the US, how the sporting department despite those figures manages to be a net budgetry drain on almost every school which has one, and the reality that…

>how the sporting department despite those figures manages to be a net budgetry drain on almost every school which has one

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.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#339

Post by misiti3780 »

As someone who doesn't watch sports - hasn't fantasy football basically ruined football?

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.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#340

Post by refurb »

darkmighty wrote: post #182
rinon wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a valid reason why some activity is intrinsically bad (e.g. fast food) is very different from disliking such activities because they are "beneath" you. Sports are widely loved and not intrinsically bad. (I'd even argue that fast food itself is not intrinsically bad, but that's a different discussion) However, even expressing contempt for intrinsically bad activities can be interpreted as offensive and hostile.…

If you don't enjoy an activity, it is intrinsically bad for you.

What? So if I don't enjoy exercising it's intrinsically bad for me?
Post reply on HN