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Only can watch one sport, what do you pick?


SilentLiberty

Sport you'd watch for the rest of your life?  

19 members have voted

  1. 1. Pick the sport you'd watch!

    • Football
    • College Football
    • Soccer
    • Basketball
    • Baseball
    • Motorsports
      0
    • Gymnastics
      0
    • Cycling
      0
    • Swimming
      0
    • Hockey
    • Rugby
      0
    • Lacrosse
      0
    • Cricket
      0
    • Golf
      0
    • Track and Field
      0
    • Archery
      0
    • Horse Racing
      0
    • Rowing
      0
    • Summer X Games (skate boarding, BMX etc)
    • Winter X Games (snowboarding, skiing etc)
      0
    • One I didn't list(mention in the comments)


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For me it's really hard to say. On TV I have the most fun watching College Football, in person it's a toss up between NASCAR(motorsports) and Baseball. I do love watching races on TV and I try to watch baseball through out the season. So for me it'd have to be one of those 3 and I went with the one I watch the most religiously on TV.

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I've heard that Americans really like football. This poll certainly confirms it.

Edited by Timur
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Football is the only sport I ever cared about -- that caring didn't actually begin until I was in my mid 20's, though I did become a major fan of both the actual sport and the business of it thereafter.  

That said, didn't pay attention at all last year as I was just too freaking busy with COVID work, and not feeling it yet this year either.  But preseason starts tonight, so we'll see.

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I have tried college football and baseball, but I couldn't get into them.  Mostly because baseball doesn't seem to be as much about strategy as it does skill+luck.  Football feels more like a chess game with moves and counter moves, to me, which makes it more interesting as a viewer.  There's a "what would I do" component that baseball doesn't have.  "I would...try to hit the ball with the bat, as hard as I could.  Or, if I was on the other team, I would try to catch the ball, but only if the ball seemed headed in the general direction of where I am currently standing."  Haha.

As for college football, I just don't know who to root for.  I grew up in Pitt county, graduated from Penn State but I was already well into my career and married by that time so I wasn't paying attention to the games (and that's also when they had their giant child molestation scandal my senior year, so it would have been a weird time to be a Penn State fan anyway) and now I live in Ohio State territory where being a Penn State fan is moribund (though not as bad as being a Michigan fan, it seems). 

Weirdly enough, still extremely common to be a Pittsburgh Steelers fan around here though, despite their rivalry with Cincinnati which is just about 40 minutes from where I live now. 

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14 minutes ago, vcczar said:

I thought he invented it while he was in Massachusetts?

I'd always heard it was invented at a YMCA (because I used to be a summer camp counselor at a YMCA).

This school in Springfield also has apparently heard that rumor, and THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.  (They seem kinda ticked off.  Haha)

https://springfield.edu/where-basketball-was-invented-the-birthplace-of-basketball

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7 minutes ago, MrPotatoTed said:

I have tried college football and baseball, but I couldn't get into them.  Mostly because baseball doesn't seem to be as much about strategy as it does skill+luck.  Football feels more like a chess game with moves and counter moves, to me, which makes it more interesting as a viewer.  There's a "what would I do" component that baseball doesn't have.  "I would...try to hit the ball with the bat, as hard as I could.  Or, if I was on the other team, I would try to catch the ball, but only if the ball seemed headed in the general direction of where I am currently standing."  Haha.

As for college football, I just don't know who to root for.  I grew up in Pitt county, graduated from Penn State but I was already well into my career and married by that time so I wasn't paying attention to the games (and that's also when they had their giant child molestation scandal my senior year, so it would have been a weird time to be a Penn State fan anyway) and now I live in Ohio State territory where being a Penn State fan is moribund (though not as bad as being a Michigan fan, it seems). 

Weirdly enough, still extremely common to be a Pittsburgh Steelers fan around here though, despite their rivalry with Cincinnati which is just about 40 minutes from where I live now. 

I'm not sure why anyone would rather watch High School or College football when they don't have friends or family playing on the teams. What's the point of preferring to watch worse athletes. The best of high school and college is all grouped together in the NFL! What can be better than that? 

I am actually less patient now than I was as a kid. I can't watch baseball anymore. 

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I only really care about College sports. National is always tainted by the teams that are always good paying the most money for the best players and they always win. Rinse and repeat. At least college (particularly basketball) can vary. I enjoy March Madness much more than I could ever care about anything with NBA. The tournament is just so much more fun. I like to cheer on my state (Iowa) and we have no professional teams, so that could be part of it. 

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Just now, Hestia said:

I only really care about College sports. National is always tainted by the teams that are always good paying the most money for the best players and they always win. Rinse and repeat. At least college (particularly basketball) can vary. I enjoy March Madness much more than I could ever care about anything with NBA. The tournament is just so much more fun. I like to cheer on my state (Iowa) and we have no professional teams, so that could be part of it. 

Professional football avoided that by creating the salary cap.  (It's a "soft cap" where you can manipulate things to a certain degree, but every team has the opportunity to take advantage of the exact same loopholes).

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1 minute ago, MrPotatoTed said:

Professional football avoided that by creating the salary cap.  (It's a "soft cap" where you can manipulate things to a certain degree, but every team has the opportunity to take advantage of the exact same loopholes).

Still, usually the same teams win. I like seeing new players in college and you always have the same people (even if different teams) that win in the pros. I also like the conference dynamic more in college than divisions in NFL. It feels more personal.

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2 minutes ago, Patine said:

Apparently he invented it in Kingston, Ontario. He brought it to Massachusetts to get a market of support.

My great-grandmother was her team’s basketball captain in high school within a year or two it was brought to Massachusetts 

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Just now, Hestia said:

Still, usually the same teams win. 

Eh, comes down to coaching and talent, of course.  Talent in particular gets more expensive every year, so with the salary cap, sure you can keep your quarterback for twenty years if you've got a great one...but his salary is going up every year, while his talent decreases due to age, and in the meantime while you're paying more for the QB that means you can't keep your star wide receiver and cornerback...there's a reason Super Bowl winning teams struggle to even make the playoffs the following year.  It's because you can't afford to keep a Super Bowl winning team together.  

In the past twenty Super Bowls, no team has won more than two -- other than the New England Patriots, who racked up six wins (impressive, but still only 30%) and now they've lost almost ALL of the talent on their team, so it may be twenty more years before they get back there again.  

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9 minutes ago, Patine said:

Apparently he invented it in Kingston, Ontario. He brought it to Massachusetts to get a market of support.

The link I posted claimed he was a gym teacher in Massachusetts who was tasked with coming up with an indoor sport for when football was over.  

Entirely possible he was from Canada, I didn't care enough to dive into his life story. Haha.

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1 hour ago, MrPotatoTed said:

I have tried college football and baseball, but I couldn't get into them.  Mostly because baseball doesn't seem to be as much about strategy as it does skill+luck.  Football feels more like a chess game with moves and counter moves, to me, which makes it more interesting as a viewer.  There's a "what would I do" component that baseball doesn't have.  "I would...try to hit the ball with the bat, as hard as I could.  Or, if I was on the other team, I would try to catch the ball, but only if the ball seemed headed in the general direction of where I am currently standing."  Haha.

As for college football, I just don't know who to root for.  I grew up in Pitt county, graduated from Penn State but I was already well into my career and married by that time so I wasn't paying attention to the games (and that's also when they had their giant child molestation scandal my senior year, so it would have been a weird time to be a Penn State fan anyway) and now I live in Ohio State territory where being a Penn State fan is moribund (though not as bad as being a Michigan fan, it seems). 

Weirdly enough, still extremely common to be a Pittsburgh Steelers fan around here though, despite their rivalry with Cincinnati which is just about 40 minutes from where I live now. 

Baseball is skill and luck but a lot of it is strategy too. When are you going to switch pitchers? Send a runner to steal or try a hit and run? The defensive shifts to better approach certain hitters. Pitchers selecting their pitch locations as well as pitches, catchers calling the game. There's a lot of strategy too it that often gets viewed as luck or skill. Hidden strategy if you will.

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5 hours ago, MrPotatoTed said:

The link I posted claimed he was a gym teacher in Massachusetts who was tasked with coming up with an indoor sport for when football was over.  

Entirely possible he was from Canada, I didn't care enough to dive into his life story. Haha.

Yes, it was definitely invented in Springfield

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5 hours ago, Hestia said:

I only really care about College sports. National is always tainted by the teams that are always good paying the most money for the best players and they always win. Rinse and repeat. At least college (particularly basketball) can vary. I enjoy March Madness much more than I could ever care about anything with NBA. The tournament is just so much more fun. I like to cheer on my state (Iowa) and we have no professional teams, so that could be part of it. 

But this is also exactly how college sports work. The best teams bribe the best players and the same teams win every year. Alabama has finished outside the top 2 once in the last six years and it's pretty well-known that they've been paying (whether directly or indirectly) to play since well before the NIL rule. 

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6 hours ago, Hestia said:

I only really care about College sports. National is always tainted by the teams that are always good paying the most money for the best players and they always win. Rinse and repeat. At least college (particularly basketball) can vary. I enjoy March Madness much more than I could ever care about anything with NBA. The tournament is just so much more fun. I like to cheer on my state (Iowa) and we have no professional teams, so that could be part of it. 

Hockey don't have this problem! A hard salary cap (barely any potential for manipulation) and the fact that your best players usually only play around 1/3 of the game. Teams can go from Hero to Zero or Zero to Hero all the time.

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15 minutes ago, Patine said:

No, it was invented by a Canadian physical education professor in Kingston, Ontario, who brought it to Springfield, Massachusetts to formally unveil after a disappointing reception at home.

"The history of basketball began with its invention in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts by Canadian physical education instructor James Naismith as a less injury-prone sport than football."

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