Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports • Hacker News Board

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#381

Post by znconrad5 » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 1:21 AM UTC

canvia wrote: post #314

There are several reasons why I dislike sports. 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 yo…

What eSport are you watching where it is NOT "us VS them"? Starcraft is a 1v1 game. LoL is a 5v5 game. Not sure what other eSports there are, but the major ones are always pitting humans against eachother...

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#382

Post by lovemenot » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 1:29 AM UTC

SapphireSun wrote: post #358

remarkEon wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's the coming together / tribalism part that unnerves me. 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-f…

I think those effects are good, but I also recognize that because these effects are unmoored from anything real we're dealing with nearly pure social signaling amongst a mass responding to tribal tendencies. 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…

Your argument is cogent and expresses my own thoughts well.

>> 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.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#383

Post by pfeyz » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 1:37 AM UTC

martythemaniak wrote: post #21

I don't like the message of this post. I do understand (and see) the cultivated disinterest he's talking about, but I would never suggest you try and make yourself like something for the sole purpose of fitting in, ie cultivating disinterest is bad, but so is cultivating this interest. If you keep and open mind and follow your passions, you'll eventually stumble on something you share enough with others. My disintere…

> I also find it hilarious that intellectuals apparently don't go for Heavy Metal

The "Anything But Heavy Metal" paper is based on data from 1993.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#384

Post by jpindar » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 1:39 AM UTC

SapphireSun wrote: post #296

remarkEon wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. 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…

It's the coming together / tribalism part that unnerves me. There's no rational reason for people to get so excited about it, so it rubs me the wrong way the same way most political rallies do. Small scale sports don't have quite the same effect on me, but large heavily marketed ones do as there is a pressure to conform (i.e. care, participate, hold certain opinions that positively reflect on the enterprise).

Is there a 'rational reason' for anything animals do by instinct? Perhaps you are entirely rational, but most homo sapiens are not so different from our primate ancestors who lived in tribal groups.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#385

Post by onewaystreet » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 1:52 AM UTC

kyllo wrote: post #175

metellus wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/nflexempt.asp 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 d…

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.

The decision to construct a new stadium is often done through a referendum, so taxpayers do get a say.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#386

Post by chrisan » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 1:55 AM UTC

Thrymr wrote: post #373

XorNot wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 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 can't speak for every school, but I will share my own insight on a big football university

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

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#387

Post by jpindar » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 1:58 AM UTC

electronvolt wrote: post #285

tjradcliffe wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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 fo…

I think even among those who don't necessarily care for sports, calling them 'sports-hating snobs' is often at odds with 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 ma…

That would explain a lot of the hatred on reddit, for instance.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#388

Post by code_duck » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 2:01 AM UTC

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…

It's definitely a sign of maturity to be able to treat sports and people who are obsessed with sports seriously when you know better. The fact is, the truth is unfortunate. Professional sports are a bunch of grown men playing little kid games who receive an incredibly and disgustingly disproportionate amount of money and adult attention.

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.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#389

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 2:03 AM UTC

bglazer wrote: post #84

I'm not sure how I feel about this article. On the one hand, it had a weird highbrow tone. It reads a bit like an ivory tower academic discovering what "the poors" are up to. Some choice quotes: "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.…

[deleted]

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#390

Post by nemo » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 2:11 AM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #233

pekk wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about sports. If you start a conversation with me about sports, it'll be short. I'm not being mean to anyone who likes sports, I just don't care. You don't get to tell me that I'm wrong for not sharing your interest. Liking sports isn't obligatory.

The ability to talk to people about things that interest them but not yourself is a very important skill to cultivate. The intersection of yourself with "people worth knowing and talking to" is bigger than the intersection of yourself with "people who share your interests".

I am not into most sports, and know nothing about football/basketball/baseball but somehow can manage to make conversation with whoever. It's not like the general populace is monomaniacally obsessed with sports to the point that they are incapable of communicating with people who aren't sports fans.