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Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

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Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#461

Post by wtbob »

ggreer wrote: post #103

I don't follow sports, but I also don't go around professing my ignorance. If someone changes the topic to sports, I still engage with them. I ask questions, and they're usually happy to answer. A couple days ago, someone delighted in telling me the story of Marshawn Lynch. (I had to look up the name, but I did remember his antics with the press.) Having common ground with more people is not a bad argument for learni…

> Yes, players freely choose their profession. So what? The same argument can be used to defend dueling.

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?

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#462

Post by copsarebastards »

hiou wrote: post #376
copsarebastards wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultivating an active ignorance about sports is stupid--knowing more things never hurt anyone. And I definitely see that trend in my peers. 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 mill…

I would say that your comments are exactly what the article is talking about. You've decided to exclude yourself because you feel the existence and importance placed on it by others is misplaced and essentially stupid. So you are in essence calling people who like professional sports at best misinformed and at worst stupid. That's pretty much the definition of elitism as far as I know it. You think you know more than…

That would be true if I ever said any of this when people talk about sports, but I don't. I just politely excuse myself. I dislike sports but I don't have anything against people who like sports.

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?

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#463

Post by rsanek »

briandear wrote: post #455
muaddirac wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the damage American Football causes to its players a valid reason for disliking the activity?

They know the risks and accept them. If it were dogfighting there might be an argument. I don't like football simply because I find it a bit boring. However, perhaps ironically to some, I like baseball; it's like fishing, mildly hypnotic with occasional bursts of excitement.

So do people who eat fast food also know & accept the risks or are they ignorant?

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#464

Post by murbard2 »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #412
murbard2 wrote: post #379

The article is correct that one should not cultivate a disinterest in sports and talk about the "working class struggle". If you're going to be an elitist, do it right. 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 i…

If you think sports are the reason we have stupid policies then I think something is stupid and it's not sports. These supposed intellectuals on HackerNews are split between socialism and anarcho-capitalism so it can be hard to really say which of these policies are objectively stupid let alone blame sports of all things for them.

No, tribalism is the reason we have both sports and stupid policies. The hope is that by condemning sports one can make a more general point about tribalism.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#465

Post by mgkimsal »

mmcclimon wrote: post #417
HarryHirsch wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music departments are budget drains since when? The arts and humanities are actually rather cheap, they need nothing more than buildings, staff and a library. Science and engineering are the real whoppers, and as a rule cross-subsidized by A&H. Tuition per credit hour is the same, after all. The dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at a certain state school is on record saying that for the price of a chemistry profe…

Music departments tend to be expensive in terms of faculty, sine most of their time is spent in private lessons. If an oboe studio has 10 students, that's essentially 10 hours a week in lessons alone. In that same 10 hours, an English professor might teach 60 students (if you figure 15 students/class with 2 hours MWF and a different 30 students Tue./Thu.). Those are numbers for a small school; at larger universities…

Huh? Are you talking about college? I thought the OP was talking about high school. We never had any private lessons. "Band" class was... 35+ kids in one room at a time, all playing at the same time. Band was almost always the largest single class I had, relative only to gym class. Sometimes gym was larger (40-50 at a time), but I think I had a year with more people in band class than in my pahys-ed class.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#467

Post by doktrin »

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…

You sound like a complete snob.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#468

Post by mgkimsal »

remarkEon wrote: post #428
lovemenot wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

I think that's a very sad and depressive way to look at sports fans, and indeed I think the argument that they're part of some fascist tribal conspiracy is silly and immature. I guess my experience growing up as a baseball fan was less "tribal" than football fans in Europe, but I don't think that's reason to decide that the whole experience is without value...which I think is what's being implied here and elsewhere o…

re: "less tribal"

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.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#469

Post by doktrin »

s_kilk wrote: post #242
skybrian wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ha, yeah. Some of us were abused mercilessly by the "jocks". On top of that, the school administration, and wider town culture didn't give a shit, because to them the young sports players were local superstars, and could do no wrong. 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…

> 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.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#470

Post by Hasu »

mason240 wrote: post #418
Hasu wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I heard was that college football tends to pay for all of the other sports at a school. 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 ad…

>Yeah, at the most successful football schools. 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.

I didn't say anything about coaches with million dollar contracts. I was responding only to the claim that football pays for the rest of the sports, which, other than men's basketball, are pretty much universally unprofitable.

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.

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