"Conversation proxy" was perfect. Particularly when you're talking to someone who really wants to keep bringing the general sports discussion back around to how tough hockey players are, and how they're not "me-me-me" guys...
I moved from a specific interest in UGA to a general interest in CFB in large part to give myself something to talk about with customers who weren’t going to be interested in the Foreign Affairs/Current Events-type discussions that predominated in DC bar talk before I moved. And it worked! Probably too well!!
agita, mostly. but in years like this year, when the team I follow the most closely gets to the championship round and has a good chance of winning it all again? a steady stream of dopamine that lasts a surprisingly long time. I think I only just ran out of the dopamine hit from Super Bowl LII
I learned to love baseball through my first husband Pablo. It's a beautiful game perfectly designed to mimic the rhythm of nature: spring training, months of games that allow you to lazily take it in (now 44, I vastly prefer to listen to the game through the MLB app - love my hometown guys), and then a mad rush to the postseason just as school is beginning in Sept, all capped by exciting playoffs before the doldrums of winter set in. I love sitting in the stands with a book. I love this game. And I feel like it's one of the few connections to the man I loved, who is no longer here to watch a ballgame with me.
Fun. Enjoyment. Travel. Friends. Interesting things to talk about.
I also get especially tickled (heh) when the person who's all like SpOrTsBaLL is into gaming, anime/manga, cons, or other nerd-dom things. Y'know, the cultures where women have to share whisper networks about predators and abusers. The cultures that spawn endless waves of online harassment that flows IRL. My friends who go to cons have safety plans to avoid creeps. There are jackoffs at football games, but I don't have to go that far. And let's not even talk about the cascades of stories about abusive sex-pest authors, musicians, professors... it goes on and on and on.
TL;DR: the problems with sports, much like the problems with other things, are the problems with humans and society. They are not unique to any one type of activity.
I think you touched on it -- sports can be amazing connective tissue with the people you care about. Due to a lucky raffle win, I will be heading to Arizona next weekend with my brother for the game and we're both legitimately excited for what is a once in a lifetime sort of thing. The fact we won't have to be subjected to any commercials featuring Gronk or Kevin Hart is just an added bonus.
I love sports because I get to feel emotions - love, sadness, joy, pride, excitement, heartbreak - really feel them, experience them, cry my very real tears, and then can move on with my day: because, at the end, it was really just a sports game.
I probably, on average, cry about 3 times a week, and sports is absolutely the healthiest circumstances to do so. Gracie Gold, after fighting through eating disorders, depression, and anxiety to make a return to figure skating at 25 just has to step onto the ice to get me sobbing - but when she lays down a perfect short program at US Nationals? I'm tearing up just thinking about last weekend.
The Rockets fighting back against the unstoppable Warriors, overcoming a bad reffing call to win a game - not even the whole series, just a game - I'm done for.
Last year, watching the 'Canes win their Sweet 16 game, live and with my dad and brother - pure sobs. And being at their Elite 8 loss two day later, the furthest Miami had ever come in program history - I think I cried through the entire second half.
But the beautiful thing is, even when my team looses and my tear are sad ones, give me twenty minutes and I am ready for whatever the day has next. More sports? A hike? Fancy family dinner? No problem, because it is just sports: I can feel my feelings and keep moving forward.
It's been years, but as a former season ticket holder, I can still remember the exhilaration of walking through the concourses, and exiting the tunnel into the bowl of stadium seating. You were THERE. You were part of the moment, and man, I love that excitement mixed with the calm of knowing you're right where you ought to be.
I look at it this way - some people follow sports. Some follow comic book movies. Some cook. Some read books that I'd never finish. I can still enjoy conversation with these people by what they bring that isn't the same words I'd have to offer. Just don't try to convince me your thing is better, or that mine is inferior, and we'll be just fine.
When I was in high school, I learned a very very important thing. Other people may not like you if you're smart, but they don't care if you're smart about sports. (This also can end up applying to pop culture, but that is a whole second conversation.)
So I get finding a community that uses sports as a connecting agent to larger things, opening how we can talk about other things.
Also, sports, especially college sports, given their history, give me a sense of our place in the great chain of being. Though it doesn't resemble what it was in 1879, I was struck by how cool it was that a Michigan backup running back named Leon Franklin scored a touchdown this year against UConn, joining over a thousand players who can claim that. It's kind of neat to think that you're a part of this lineage.
From playing and coaching, I learned to appreciate teamwork and sacrifice, to develop a capability for effort and grit, and to fully understand introspection.
The first two don't really need much explanation, I don't think - sometimes, for the team to succeed, it requires me or someone else to do something unglamorous but key, and being a part of the group, where we recognized those things in our teammates, was great.
For the "effort and grit" aspect, for me(and I suspect for many of your readers), schoolwork was easy when I was a kid, and didn't require from me special effort, I "just got it." However, I hit the wall of "everyone else can do this too, now we ramp it up and you've gotta work if you want to stay even" in baseball before I hit it in any other facet of my life, and the lessons I learned from baseball there have helped me in academic life, professional life, relationships, and etc.
For the introspection aspect, well, sports are humbling by nature - half the people lose, every time(or all the people half-lose). Processing the lows and not letting it sour the rest of your day/week/month is important, just as celebrating the good results. Finding the difference between "I need to work hard to keep going" and "I can't work harder than this without injuring myself/ruining some other part of my life, I need to step back" probably wouldn't have happened for me without sports, etc., etc. By their very nature, sports are cyclical - you can evaluate what did and didn't work between innings, games, seasons, etc., and those are lessons one can and should carry to other parts of life.
In a thoroughly unsurprising development, the last "sportsball" guy I worked with was ALSO a dyed in the wool Linux dude. He'd loudly complain about having to use M$ (you could hear the $) even though it was 10000% impractical for our business/department (the type of software I write requires a lot of tools with very few users which means none of it is available on OS's that nobody uses).
This is why I curl. Chasing a high of trying to make that perfect shot and unrealistically thinking that with the proper training I could be in the running for the 2026 winter Olympic squad
This person claims they don't watch sports, but tries to engage you in conversation regarding the World Cup and the Olympics. Oh so you do watch sports, just not THOSE sports.
"Conversation proxy" was perfect. Particularly when you're talking to someone who really wants to keep bringing the general sports discussion back around to how tough hockey players are, and how they're not "me-me-me" guys...
I moved from a specific interest in UGA to a general interest in CFB in large part to give myself something to talk about with customers who weren’t going to be interested in the Foreign Affairs/Current Events-type discussions that predominated in DC bar talk before I moved. And it worked! Probably too well!!
There's one more thing that loosely ties into the community aspect of it:
An excuse to cook large hunks of meat and/or bowls of various types of chili
agita, mostly. but in years like this year, when the team I follow the most closely gets to the championship round and has a good chance of winning it all again? a steady stream of dopamine that lasts a surprisingly long time. I think I only just ran out of the dopamine hit from Super Bowl LII
go birds.
WE ALSO HATE YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR.
(Good morning, Scott. Love and honor.)
I learned to love baseball through my first husband Pablo. It's a beautiful game perfectly designed to mimic the rhythm of nature: spring training, months of games that allow you to lazily take it in (now 44, I vastly prefer to listen to the game through the MLB app - love my hometown guys), and then a mad rush to the postseason just as school is beginning in Sept, all capped by exciting playoffs before the doldrums of winter set in. I love sitting in the stands with a book. I love this game. And I feel like it's one of the few connections to the man I loved, who is no longer here to watch a ballgame with me.
Fun. Enjoyment. Travel. Friends. Interesting things to talk about.
I also get especially tickled (heh) when the person who's all like SpOrTsBaLL is into gaming, anime/manga, cons, or other nerd-dom things. Y'know, the cultures where women have to share whisper networks about predators and abusers. The cultures that spawn endless waves of online harassment that flows IRL. My friends who go to cons have safety plans to avoid creeps. There are jackoffs at football games, but I don't have to go that far. And let's not even talk about the cascades of stories about abusive sex-pest authors, musicians, professors... it goes on and on and on.
TL;DR: the problems with sports, much like the problems with other things, are the problems with humans and society. They are not unique to any one type of activity.
I think you touched on it -- sports can be amazing connective tissue with the people you care about. Due to a lucky raffle win, I will be heading to Arizona next weekend with my brother for the game and we're both legitimately excited for what is a once in a lifetime sort of thing. The fact we won't have to be subjected to any commercials featuring Gronk or Kevin Hart is just an added bonus.
I love sports because I get to feel emotions - love, sadness, joy, pride, excitement, heartbreak - really feel them, experience them, cry my very real tears, and then can move on with my day: because, at the end, it was really just a sports game.
I probably, on average, cry about 3 times a week, and sports is absolutely the healthiest circumstances to do so. Gracie Gold, after fighting through eating disorders, depression, and anxiety to make a return to figure skating at 25 just has to step onto the ice to get me sobbing - but when she lays down a perfect short program at US Nationals? I'm tearing up just thinking about last weekend.
The Rockets fighting back against the unstoppable Warriors, overcoming a bad reffing call to win a game - not even the whole series, just a game - I'm done for.
Last year, watching the 'Canes win their Sweet 16 game, live and with my dad and brother - pure sobs. And being at their Elite 8 loss two day later, the furthest Miami had ever come in program history - I think I cried through the entire second half.
But the beautiful thing is, even when my team looses and my tear are sad ones, give me twenty minutes and I am ready for whatever the day has next. More sports? A hike? Fancy family dinner? No problem, because it is just sports: I can feel my feelings and keep moving forward.
I don't know what I'd do without them.
It's been years, but as a former season ticket holder, I can still remember the exhilaration of walking through the concourses, and exiting the tunnel into the bowl of stadium seating. You were THERE. You were part of the moment, and man, I love that excitement mixed with the calm of knowing you're right where you ought to be.
I look at it this way - some people follow sports. Some follow comic book movies. Some cook. Some read books that I'd never finish. I can still enjoy conversation with these people by what they bring that isn't the same words I'd have to offer. Just don't try to convince me your thing is better, or that mine is inferior, and we'll be just fine.
When I was in high school, I learned a very very important thing. Other people may not like you if you're smart, but they don't care if you're smart about sports. (This also can end up applying to pop culture, but that is a whole second conversation.)
So I get finding a community that uses sports as a connecting agent to larger things, opening how we can talk about other things.
Also, sports, especially college sports, given their history, give me a sense of our place in the great chain of being. Though it doesn't resemble what it was in 1879, I was struck by how cool it was that a Michigan backup running back named Leon Franklin scored a touchdown this year against UConn, joining over a thousand players who can claim that. It's kind of neat to think that you're a part of this lineage.
From watching, all the things you've said.
From playing and coaching, I learned to appreciate teamwork and sacrifice, to develop a capability for effort and grit, and to fully understand introspection.
The first two don't really need much explanation, I don't think - sometimes, for the team to succeed, it requires me or someone else to do something unglamorous but key, and being a part of the group, where we recognized those things in our teammates, was great.
For the "effort and grit" aspect, for me(and I suspect for many of your readers), schoolwork was easy when I was a kid, and didn't require from me special effort, I "just got it." However, I hit the wall of "everyone else can do this too, now we ramp it up and you've gotta work if you want to stay even" in baseball before I hit it in any other facet of my life, and the lessons I learned from baseball there have helped me in academic life, professional life, relationships, and etc.
For the introspection aspect, well, sports are humbling by nature - half the people lose, every time(or all the people half-lose). Processing the lows and not letting it sour the rest of your day/week/month is important, just as celebrating the good results. Finding the difference between "I need to work hard to keep going" and "I can't work harder than this without injuring myself/ruining some other part of my life, I need to step back" probably wouldn't have happened for me without sports, etc., etc. By their very nature, sports are cyclical - you can evaluate what did and didn't work between innings, games, seasons, etc., and those are lessons one can and should carry to other parts of life.
In a thoroughly unsurprising development, the last "sportsball" guy I worked with was ALSO a dyed in the wool Linux dude. He'd loudly complain about having to use M$ (you could hear the $) even though it was 10000% impractical for our business/department (the type of software I write requires a lot of tools with very few users which means none of it is available on OS's that nobody uses).
This is why I curl. Chasing a high of trying to make that perfect shot and unrealistically thinking that with the proper training I could be in the running for the 2026 winter Olympic squad
https://youtu.be/1zd5Q5XEa5g
Also, Siena College is garbage.
This person claims they don't watch sports, but tries to engage you in conversation regarding the World Cup and the Olympics. Oh so you do watch sports, just not THOSE sports.
always love when an artist goes back to their roots