Introductions

[Silence]

Thanks for the welcomes.

Most of my frustration now comes from high school. It's annoying how football gets so much recognition, at times I just want to go up to whoever came up with the idea of having sports in school and just tell them to stop the entire thing. I also hate the stigma that goes along for not playing sports, I mean... It's ridiculous to me that you needed to be called a "fag" just because you don't like to chase a ball around? And they spur on academic achievement as something weak or ridiculous.

Also, the amount of people that know me from the Football team, the freshman team especially, also contributed to my already growing hatred. I mean, I just cannot stand hanging around them so much. I know some athletes are good people, I'm not trying to attack every athlete in existence. It just shocks me how... Incredibly immature during school hours. Every time when a group of them calls my name, I get into either a state of shock or become extremely angry, because there's no reason for them to do that. Unless they like to annoy me or anything...

I'm not saying sports is a bad thing that needs to die immediately, I just wish it hadn't gotten so extremely big that it just gets plastered anywhere AND everywhere, to the point where people would be nonchalantly be pushing it down on other people's throats.

[recovering_fan]

I mean... It's ridiculous to me that you needed to be called a "fag" just because you don't like to chase a ball around? And they spur on academic achievement as something weak or ridiculous.

Hello Silence,

I am sorry to hear about this. It sounds like you attend a very backwards school where they not only attack people for disliking sports but actually attack them for academic achievement. My only advice is to make friends with other kids whom you respect, in your most advanced courses. Spend as much time with them as you can, and think about joining activities that they like. Ideally, you should also focus on seeking out happy people, rather than miserable ones, because emotions are contagious.

But my life at 30 is far from perfect, and my advice is based on what I think should have done in the past. What do others think?

--recovering_fan

[Silence]

Thanks for the kind words recovering_fan.

Well, I don't really have very much advanced courses at the moment. I'm only a freshman in high school so my choices are a wee bit on the limited side. Plus, my inclusion in a CP English class instead of Honors has been a thorn on my side. I never expected to hate an English class so much, no matter how much I actually liked it in the past. The noise level is terribly high, and I always leave the class with some form of a headache.

I've been trying to really focus on my French class, learning a foreign language is so fun... I'm already developing a keen liking to the culture and language, and I'm eager to continue studying French all throughout my high school years.

I don't have a lot of friends either. I have one close friend that I only see during PE class, and I try to be at least not so happy. My friend understands my hate for sports, and is willing to listen to me whenever I start venting about it, at least verbally... But outside of that, I have none really. I'm not very social, and I seem to attract the worst of people. Honestly, I guess there's something about me that deters me from being around others, or maybe it's ther other way around. Argh, I'm rambling.

Living in a sports crazed is hard, but I try my best, and I'm sure many others here try to as well.

[Earl]

Let me extend a belated welcome, Silence. Iâ??d like to add to recovering_fanâ??s good advice, as well as trying to give you a morale boost. I hope I wonâ??t end up insulting your intelligence. For the record, Iâ??m a happily married middle-aged man and the father of two young women.

Donâ??t make the same mistake I did when I was a teenager. Donâ??t view high school as simply a four-year ordeal to endure. Take advantage of the educational opportunities you now have. If you havenâ??t already done so, start thinking about your future. Find a vocational endeavor of your choosing (in other words, one or more academic subjects) and become proficient at it. When choosing a career, be sure to consider what futher education and training will be required, as well as learning about what the actual daily routine of the job will entail. Donâ??t wait until your senior year to start planning for your future.

You also need to remember that high school will not last forever. It may seem like it will when youâ??re not having a good time at school. If you end up being a truly productive person, the best time of your life will definitely not be the four years you spent in high school. The best is yet to come. Years after you all have graduated from high school, more than a few (if not many) of the football players will become overweight because they wonâ??t change their diet when they stop playing.

I hear you about â??sports onlyâ? mandatory P.E. because I had to go through that experience when I was a boy. This traditional approach was always filled with hypocrisy. â??Physical education,â? my rear! There never was any. When I was forced to take â??sports onlyâ? P.E., there never was even any mention of exercise programs. There wasnâ??t even any instruction as to how certain games were played or how to develop any skill employed in playing a sport. For over two years Iâ??ve been working with a personal trainer on a bodybuilding program at a local health club. I get more exercise in a single workout session that I ever did in an entire year of mandatory â??sports onlyâ? P.E. All that I ever learned in those classes was to fear coaches and athlete classmates. So, I know where youâ??re coming from. There now is a movement to reform P.E., which means some educators have finally realized that what nonathletic students need is to get on some sort of exercise routine instead of having sports imposed upon them (which often has amounted to institutionalized bullying).

To use an expression familiar to those of the â??baby boomâ? generation, Iâ??m going to sound like a broken record to those who have been reading my posts for over a year now; but theyâ??re going to have to bear with me so I can hopefully give you some encouragement. Iâ??m amazed that stupidity manages to be passed from one generation to the next. Of course, what Iâ??m referring to is the mentality of calling nonathletic boys â??fagsâ? simply because they have no interest in sports. Homosexual men have always participated in sports (including football), just as they have participated in just about every other realm of human endeavor. Just to cite two recent examples: There was a college football player named Brian Sims who did not bother to conceal his homosexuality. His teammates supported him because he was an asset to their team. When he had retired from the NFL, a former professional football player named Esera Tuaolo (who had played in at least one Super Bowl game) disclosed in his autobiography that he was gay. There are other gay football players who wonâ??t come out of the closet for obvious reasons. You can do a bit of Google searching to verify the veracity of my comments.

There are many men who never had an interest in sports who have shown great courage. I respect physical courage, but moral courage is even greater. Iâ??ve mentioned the manâ??s name so many times that undoubtedly some of the members of this forum are sick and tired of reading my comments about him; so, Iâ??ll just mention his name as an extremely courageous man who, in the words of his half-sister, â??detested competitive team sports.â? Do a Google search on Raoul Wallenberg, who was one of the greatest heroes of World War II. Heâ??s only the third foreigner to be granted honorary citizenship by the United States. Thereâ??s an en.wikipedia.org article about him. There are many examples of nonathletic men who have shown great courage and/or have made invaluable contributions to our society. On the other hand, true wimps -- in other words, moral cowards -- come in all sizes and shapes.

You might be surprised that even some men with considerable athletic backgrounds reject the sort of machismo that apparently afflicts some of your football-playing classmates. Iâ??ve posted a link to an interesting article whose text Iâ??ve also copied and pasted below that I highly recommend you read. Perhaps Iâ??m naïve, but it might make an impression on some of your classmates.

http://www.racematters.org/joeehrmann.h ... abetterman

Joe Ehrmann



By Jeffrey Marx
Published: August 29, 2004

Young faces usually filled with warmth and wonder are now taut with anticipation and purpose. Eyes are lasers. Hearts are pounding. This is nothing unusual for the final minutes before a high school football game. But a coach and his players are about to share an exchange that is downright foreign to the tough-guy culture of football.

The coach, Joe Ehrmann, is a former NFL star, now 55 and hobbled, with white hair and gold-rimmed glasses. Still, he is a mountain of a man. Standing before the Greyhounds of Gilman School in Baltimore, Ehrmann does not need a whistle.

"What is our job as coaches?" Ehrmann asks.

"To love us!" the Gilman boys yell back in unison.

"What is your job?" Ehrmann shouts back.

"To love each other!" the boys respond.

"Masculinity ought to be defined in terms of relationships," says Joe Ehrmann, "and taught in terms of the capacity to love and be loved."

The words are spoken with the commitment of an oath, the enthusiasm of a pep rally.

This is football?

It is with Ehrmann. It is when the whole purpose of being here is to totally redefine what it means to be a man.

This is lofty work for a volunteer coach on a high school football field. It is work that makes Ehrmann the most important coach in America.

In his eighth season at Gilman, Ehrmann's r´sum´ is anything but ordinary for a defensive coordinator. After 13 years in professional football, most of them as a defensive lineman for the Baltimore Colts, he retired in 1985 and began tackling much more significant challenges. As an inner-city minister and founder of a community center known as The Door, Ehrmann worked the hard streets of East Baltimore. He also co-founded a Ronald McDonald House for sick children and launched a racial-reconciliation project called Mission Baltimore. Now he's a pastor at the 4000-member Grace Fellowship Church and president of a national organization that supports abused children.

"He's a lot of things to a lot of people," says Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. "He's really an opinion leader. And what I love about Joeâ??it's not just the messages. It's the messenger. He's a very unique man. Gentle. Principled. Committed. And effective."

The Challenge for Men

Aside from the X's and O's of football, everything Ehrmann teaches at Gilman stems from his belief that our society does a horrible job of teaching boys how to be men and that virtually every problem we face can somehow be traced back to this failure. That is why he developed a program called Building Men for Others, which has become the signature philosophy of Gilman football.

The first step is to tear down what Ehrmann says are the standard criteriaâ??athletic ability, sexual conquest and economic successâ??that are constantly held up in our culture as measurements of manhood.

"Those are the three lies that make up what I call â??false masculinity,'" Ehrmann says. "The problem is that it sets men up for tremendous failures in our lives. Because it gives us this concept that what we need to do as men is compare what we have and compete with others for what they have.

As a young boy, I'm going to compare my athletic ability to yours and compete for whatever attention that brings. When I get older, I'm going to compare my girlfriend to yours and compete for whatever status I can acquire by being with the prettiest or the coolest or the best girl I can get. Ultimately, as adults, we compare bank accounts and job titles, houses and cars, and we compete for the amount of security and power that those represent.

"We compare, we compete. That's all we ever do. It leaves most men feeling isolated and alone. And it destroys any concept of community."

The Solution

Ehrmann offers a simple but powerful solution. His own definition of what it means to be a manâ??he calls it "strategic masculinity"â??is based on only two things: relationships and having a cause beyond yourself.

"Masculinity, first and foremost, ought to be defined in terms of relationships," Ehrmann says. "It ought to be taught in terms of the capacity to love and to be loved. It comes down to this: What kind of father are you? What kind of husband are you? What kind of coach or teammate are you? What kind of son are you? What kind of friend are you? Success comes in terms of relationships."

"And then all of us ought to have some kind of cause, some kind of purpose in our lives that's bigger than our own individual hopes, dreams, wants and desires. At the end of our life, we ought to be able to look back over it from our deathbed and know that somehow the world is a better place because we lived, we loved, we were other-centered, other-focused."

The Way We Learn

How is all of this taught within the context of football?

From the first day of practice through the last day of the season, Ehrmann and his best friend, Head Coach Biff Poggi, bombard their players with stories and lessons about being a man built for others.

They stress that Gilman football is all about living in a community. It is about fostering relationships. It is about learning the importance of serving others. While coaches elsewhere scream endlessly about being tough, Ehrmann and Poggi teach concepts such as empathy, inclusion and integrity. They emphasize Ehrmann's code of conduct for manhood: accepting responsibility, leading courageously, enacting justice on behalf of others.

"I was blown away at first," says Sean Price, who joined the varsity as a freshman and is now a junior. "All the stuff about love and relationshipsâ??I didn't really understand why it was part of football. After a while, though, getting to know some of the older guys on the team, it was the first time I've ever been around friends who really cared about me."

Helping Others

Four hours before each game, the Gilman players file into a meeting room for bagels, orange juice and Building Men for Others 101. Ehrmann and Poggi tell their players they expect greatness out of them. But the only way they will measure greatness is by the impact the boys make on other people's lives.

Ultimately, the boys are told, they will make the greatest impact on the worldâ??will bring the most love and grace and healing to peopleâ??by constantly basing their actions and thoughts on one simple question: What can I do for you?

That explains the rule that no Gilman football player should ever let another studentâ??football player or notâ??sit by himself in the school lunchroom. "How do you think that boy feels if he's eating all alone?" Ehrmann asks his players. "Go get him and bring him over to your table."

There are other rules that many coaches would consider ludicrous. No boy is cut from the Gilman team based on athletic ability. Every senior playsâ??and not only late in lopsided games. Coaches must always teach by building up instead of tearing down. As Ehrmann puts it in a staff notebook: "Let us be mindful never to shame a boy but to correct him in an uplifting and loving way."

Whenever Ehrmann speaks publicly about Building Men for Othersâ??usually at a coaching clinic, a men's workshop or a forum for parentsâ??someone inevitably asks about winning and losing: "All this touchy-feely stuff sounds great, but kids still want to win, right?"

"Well, we've had pretty good success," Ehrmann says. "But winning is only a byproduct of everything else we doâ??and it's certainly not the way we evaluate ourselves."

"I was blown away at first," says Sean Price, now a junior. "It was the first time I've ever been around friends who really cared about me."

Win for Life

Unless pressed for specifics, Ehrmann does not even mention that Gilman finished three of the last six seasons undefeated and No. 1 in Baltimore. In 2002, the Greyhounds ranked No. 1 in Maryland and climbed to No. 14 in the national rankings.

Much more important to Ehrmann is the way that his team ends each season when nobody else is watching. Before the last game, each senior stands before his teammates and coaches to read an essay titled "How I Want To Be Remembered When I Die."

Here is something linebacker David Capernaâ??reading from his own "obituary"â??said last year: "David was a man who fought for justice and accepted the consequences of his actions. He was not a man who would allow poverty, abuse, racism or any sort of oppression to take place in his presence. David carried with him the knowledge and pride of being a man built for others."

The most important coach in America sat back and smiled. Win or lose on the field of play, Joe Ehrmann had already scored the kind of victory that would last a lifetime.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffrey Marx is the author of "Season of Life," a book about Joe Ehrmann, just published by Simon & Schuster.

To Be A Better Man:

Recognize the "three lies of false masculinity."
Athletic ability, sexual conquest and economic success are not the best measurements of manhood.

Allow yourself to love and be loved.
Build and value relationships.

Accept responsibility, lead courageously and enact justice on behalf of others.
Practice the concepts of empathy, inclusion and integrity.

Learn the importance of serving others.
Base your thoughts and actions on "What can I do for you?"

Develop a cause beyond yourself.
Try to leave the world a better place because you were here.

I realize that there may be no point in arguing with unreasonable people, but I hope that something I've said or provided in this post will be helpful to you.

[Silence]

Thank you very much for the welcome Earl, I really do apprecate it. I very much enjoyed reading your letters from 2009 and can really relate.

Donâ??t make the same mistake I did when I was a teenager. Donâ??t view high school as simply a four-year ordeal to endure. Take advantage of the educational opportunities you now have. If you havenâ??t already done so, start thinking about your future. Find a vocational endeavor of your choosing (in other words, one or more academic subjects) and become proficient at it. When choosing a career, be sure to consider what futher education and training will be required, as well as learning about what the actual daily routine of the job will entail. Donâ??t wait until your senior year to start planning for your future.

Well, I've been weighing my options ever since I started attending high school. English has been one of my favorite subjects, and I'm planning to take some AP English classes if I am qualified. Plus, I also really enjoy Biology and French, if there are any classes that are able to help expand my knowledge on those two subjects, I'll gladly take them. But please do understand that I am still only a freshman, so I do not completely know how many options I have.

Very interesting article, I was only able to skim through it but Joe Ehrmann sounds like someone that I could admire. I'll try my best to show this to some of my classmates.

I too also feel sorry about your experience with "sports-only" PE. I really did feel a bit humbled and ashamed that I was raving so much yet there was someone else who went through the same fate as I did.

Thanks very much from the bottom of my heart Earl, your post gave me some hope for my future. I know High School is only a small blip of your life, but it's possibly one of the more overwhelming parts, at least in my opinion. Maybe it is just me, but I've gone through more emotional turmoil than I did in the 6th or 7th grade combined. Anyway, thanks for the post, I greatly appreciate it.

[recovering_fan]

Yes, thanks, Earl. Your advice was slightly more helpful than mine ... maybe. Slightly. Or perhaps ... slightly more than slightly.

Cheers,
recovering_fan

[recovering_fan]

Hi again Silence,

(You might want to take a week or a month to digest Earl's advice before reading this. I don't want to overload you with ideas, seeing as how you're a still Freshman and all.)

It is difficult to add anything to the advice Earl gave (which was really good), but I'd like to point out one thing that I found within the article he posted which meant the most to me. The people in the article refer to "the capacity to love and be loved."

You could also say: "to like and be liked."

On the subject of friends...

Sometimes, when a guy braces himself for negativity because he expects it, it can be hard to hear all the positive things that are being said.

In the school library during my senior year, a girl from my Civics class came up to me and said: "John [not my real name], you seem to be fairly clear-headed about politics and don't seem taken in by the political rants on either side. What do you think about the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Clinton impeachment?" And that point I chose to just disregard the compliment she had paid me, and I answered her question like I would have if it had appeared on a test. I went home that night, more entrenched than ever in the view that I was a nerd and an outcast, and that my only friends in the world were a handful of other nerd-outcasts. Was I deaf or something?

If I had heard all the compliments back then, the world would not have seemed so hostile. They can be hard to hear, but the compliments are there. In your case, compliments may come more often in French class than anywhere else. And people who are paying you compliments could be potential friends.

Again, I'm sorry if this is a lot of info for one day.

Later,
RF

[i_like_1981]

Hey all, another fellow sports hater here. I'm sort of glad to find likeminded people like myself, it was getting disheartening when everyone around you had this crazy obession with things like football and can recite game scores and/or stats.

Let me tell you the things that had let me to my hatred of sports, it was in the sixth grade I think. During the NBA playoffs, my peers around me were discussing more and more about the games. It also did not help matters when my PE teacher was also a sports fan. In short, I did not have a very fun time during middle school. PE class had managed to derail my studies and greatly decreased my self-esteem, since it was so sports focused.

I'm greatly sorry if I started to sound like I'm ranting, or whining. I am glad to be here, and hope to engage in discussions with you guys.

Welcome Silence! And may I say, it is good to see quite a lot of new members joining us as of late. This forum needs more activity. Critically underacknowledged, this one is.

I understand your high school sports problems. I think it is the high school years that turn a lot of good people into full-on sports haters, as for some reason, the ability to throw or kick around a ball or know a lot about men who are throwing and kicking a ball for millions of dollars or pounds is highly revered in a school setting. To add to the absurdity, you're branded as a freak or a loser or suspected of having homosexual tendencies if you don't see the immense fun in this. Honestly, since when did people not only become so easily-obsessed, but also intolerant of the interests and feelings of others? They'll do a lot to make you think that sports are fun and enjoyable but the case is very much the opposite if you're not that good at them or interested in them. Something fun and enjoyable is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I don't expect everyone in the world to share the immense joy of old music with me as I respect the fact that everyone has different tastes. Yet some sports fans... they'll go absolutely batshit insane if you so much as show a tiny bit of ignorance towards the masses of sports information that exists - don't try and preach to them about live and let live, as with them there's only one way to live - like sports or suffer!

It depresses me to know that schools, seats of learning which should be promoting academic activities and skills, are allowing their best students to suffer in the name of something that doesn't have anything to do with academics, and even giving students superior treatment for playing with a ball even though those people really couldn't care less about learning and abiding by the traditional purposes of a school. Don't let this spoil your studies. The absurdity of the entire system is being acknowledged, but sadly, it just doesn't seem to have changed the high school hierarchy. The madness will continue! Look forward to seeing you again sometime.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[MrsNoir]

Hello from the Dallas/Fort Worth area! I've never seen a place so infested with sports-obsessed automatons in any of my travels. The past few weeks, I've been in some sort of baseball hell having to do with the Texas Rangers being in my backyard. I don't understand the appeal of any of it and I really wish 99% of the people around here would acquire a life.

I grew up here and I've hated sports as long as I can remember. This has often made me feel like a social pariah. Not being able to join in the assanine discussion among coworkers can absolutely affect ones' upward mobility. I find that highly disturbing and maddening.

While I abhor sports, I love reading, sewing, sculpting, roller coasters, writing and a whole host of other things. My life is interesting and full despite the fact I've never sat through an entire professional sporting event. I'm a bit proud of that.

It's so nice to know there are others!

[Fat Man]

Hello from the Dallas/Fort Worth area! I've never seen a place so infested with sports-obsessed automatons in any of my travels. The past few weeks, I've been in some sort of baseball hell having to do with the Texas Rangers being in my backyard. I don't understand the appeal of any of it and I really wish 99% of the people around here would acquire a life.

I grew up here and I've hated sports as long as I can remember. This has often made me feel like a social pariah. Not being able to join in the assanine discussion among coworkers can absolutely affect ones' upward mobility. I find that highly disturbing and maddening.

While I abhor sports, I love reading, sewing, sculpting, roller coasters, writing and a whole host of other things. My life is interesting and full despite the fact I've never sat through an entire professional sporting event. I'm a bit proud of that.

It's so nice to know there are others!

Good morning MrsNoir.

Let me be the very first to welcome you to our anti-sports forum.

Yes, not only do the asinine discussions among your fellow employees interfere with one's upward mobility, the obsession with sports here through out the entire USA has also interfered with my trying to get a decent education.

I was born in Minnesota and my family moved down to New Mexico when I was 13 years old ('m 59 now) and it seems that almost everywhere the quality of education in our schools has been going down the crapper.

I also live in Texas, a sprawling redneck village of over 600,000 people (mostly drooling morons) here in the Scum City of El Pisshole!

Oh yes indeed! There is so much more to life than just sitting around talking about sports.

I don't understand this obsession that so many people have with sports to the exclusion of everything else in life. I have absolutely no interest in watching simian morons in tight pants chasing an oval shaped ball, or light-in-the-loafers Nancy Boys prancing around in baggy shorts putting a big round ball through a metal hoop, or a bunch of guys in pajamas hitting a little white ball with a stick.

Enjoying an occasional game is one thing, but watching nothing but sports to the exclusion of everything else, you'd think that sports was all there is, and we know it isn't.

There is a whole universe of things out there to explore.

My mother taught me how to read and write before I even started school, and when I was only in the 2ed or 3dr grade I was already reading at the high school and adult level, and when I was 13 years old I scored 150 points on a standard IQ test.

I have always been interested in science, especially Astronomy.



When I was in school, I was often bullied around by the jocks, and was called a fag or a sissy boy because I didn't like sports.



But we know that bullies who go around beating up on those who are not athletic or as physically strong as they are, they are cowards, and the real wimps.



We love the stars to fondly to be fearful of the night.



sports is absolutely worthless, and as far as I'm concerned, the life of a typical jock means nothing to me.



Just like eating too much candy rots the teeth, watching nothing but sports rots the brain.

Sports is so boring. It's as about as exciting as watching paint dry.

To me, there is nothing more exciting than exploring the Cosmos. I enjoy watching educational programming, science fiction movies, and listening to music both classical and rock.

Another thing that gets me really pissed off about Texas is that in our state board of education (indoctrination) some moron, Don McLeroy wanted to have Thomas Jefferson removed from the history textbooks and replace him with John Calvin, a religious fanatic who a few centuries ago had people tortured to death, which is not surprising when we consider that the Bush Administration used torture on war prisoners. Also, they want to insert Creationist fairy tales into the science textbooks.

One does not read up on a lot of astronomy books without also reading about The Inquisition, and how Galileo was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, and interrogated for many long hours, and eventually forced to sign a false confession recanting his convictions that the earth and planets revolved around the sun, and then he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest.

I was only in the 4th grade when I checked out adult level books from the public library on The Inquisition, and that is what sparked a feeling of rebelliousness in my at such a young age. I was already becoming more and more anti-establishment even before I was a hippie in my teenage years.



Well, I don't claim to know everything.



Anyway, now you know where I'm coming from.

Allow me to introduce myself.

I AM FAT MAN!

I AM DA BOMB!



Anyway . . . . .

Once again, welcome to our anti-sports forum.

[recovering_fan]

Welcome to the club, MrsNoir!

Hello from the Dallas/Fort Worth area! I've never seen a place so infested with sports-obsessed automatons in any of my travels.... I don't understand the appeal of any of it and I really wish 99% of the people around here would acquire a life.

Well, as a recovering sports-oholic I think I may be able to explain the appeal of it, although the truth in what I say tends to rankle a few of the "Sportsmen" here. The appeal of sports is that if you follow sports, then you don't have to get a life. Talking about sports serves much the same role as talking about the weather. It allows people to communicate without actually saying anything, and by bringing individuals together it helps the group to bond. (Note: to succeed within the group, you have to follow sports exactly the same way as the other people in the group follow it. If you say anything too insightful about, say, a team's strategy during a game, the group leaders will view your remarks as a challenge and may try to take you down a peg by attacking your views.)

I grew up here and I've hated sports as long as I can remember. This has often made me feel like a social pariah. Not being able to join in the assanine discussion among coworkers can absolutely affect ones' upward mobility. I find that highly disturbing and maddening...

Yeah, just check out what this high school kid from Kansas had to put up with everyday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kThybf06 ... re=related
(I doubt that he and friends are really into curtains, but that just makes the video even sweeter.)

While I abhor sports, I love reading, sewing, sculpting, roller coasters, writing and a whole host of other things. My life is interesting and full...

Please do post about your hobbies on my "chess and coffee clubs" thread in the "Off-Topic" forum. (Or start a thread called "Hobbies" if you think my own title is too vague.) I have recently given up sports forever, and it has created a void in my life. So I am always looking for ideas on things to do.

I've never sat through an entire professional sporting event....I'm a bit proud of that.

That's pretty amazing. I've sat through hundreds. Sobering thought, isn't it?

Cheers,
recovering_fan

[i_like_1981]

I grew up here and I've hated sports as long as I can remember. This has often made me feel like a social pariah. Not being able to join in the assanine discussion among coworkers can absolutely affect ones' upward mobility. I find that highly disturbing and maddening.

While I abhor sports, I love reading, sewing, sculpting, roller coasters, writing and a whole host of other things. My life is interesting and full despite the fact I've never sat through an entire professional sporting event. I'm a bit proud of that.

It's so nice to know there are others!

Hello and welcome to our forum. I haven't got round to checking the Introductions as of late so I've overlooked a post from a person in a very similar position to me. You may not come back to the forum, but I'll respond anyway. I get similar problems at my place of work; there are quite a lot of sports fans there. They're not unfriendly, but when there's an important game on, I really don't have a bloody clue what they're on about and seeing as how I've made my disinterest in sports known to them in recent times, I will occasionally get someone cracking a joke about it or asking me something I clearly don't know. It's not in an abusive way, but it does make me feel like an outsider, and that position is very much consolidated when there's something big happening, like a World Cup tournament or Euro championship. Or a local derby. It's daft, I know. I'd like to say my life was interesting but it would be a bit of an exaggeration. Things can be a bit bleak over on my end, but I do go to the gym once a week in the interests of health and keeping myself active. I like reading and writing as well. Constructive hobbies, eh? What do they matter to a hardened sports fan? Nothing. If you're not into sports and couldn't care less who won the big game on Saturday, you're worth nothing to them! And people like that really do exist, although I'd hesitate to say my office has anyone quite that bad.

There are others who share our contempt for these overhyped play games. I was most relieved to find that out as well when I discovered this website. I knew all along that other people out there in the wide world shared my disinterest and even dislike of not necessarily sports, but the huge culture and financial industry built up around them, and the intolerant attitudes of certain fans and players who will drive people's self-esteem into the ground if they dare to show any contempt or disinterest in the sports they love so much. I don't hate the thought of physical activity or people being very physically able, but I hate the people who will insult, attack and torment those who don't share their interest in sports. It has affected me in the past, and ultimately brought me here. I appreciate this site a lot as well. So, MrsNoir, I shall hope you return to this forum. If not... good luck getting by in your sports-crazed area. I know just how you feel.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[Antigone]

Hello everyone. I very much looked forward to using this site to publicise my boxing website. However, one thing troubles me.

'Not Everyone is a Brain-dead Sports Fan!'

Does this mean that all sport fans are brain-dead? The answer to this question is essential to my continued involvement in this here thing. You see, I do not like prejudiced people -- I find them very nasal. So I cannot grace a site that is quick to make such a blanket judgement on a group of people.

I see Jocks are not popular here. I am Ok with that judgement call as I cannot abide Scottish people.

Please clarify this for me. I shall return shortly to post links to my boxing website.

Remember, 'all determination is a negation'. John McEnroe was what said that when playing at Wimbeldon. I think he is wrong. I am sure it is a double-fault on the googly. What do you think?

[Antigone]

I do like your font.

[i_like_1981]

Boxing website? Yeah, did you bother to check the site name before signing up to this site? Obviously you did. Hard to miss, isn't it? Well, do what you will. But I can guarantee you - any sports-related links won't last on here. So don't try that game.

I believe that statement is an exaggeration as well. Not every sports fan is brain-dead. We've had quite a few intelligent sports fans posting on here and making fair arguments. We allow them to express themselves on here. However, our website has got to cater for people who are utterly sick of the overwhelming influence of sports in today's society, like myself, so that would probably explain the presence of such a statement "Not everyone is a brain-dead sports fan!" That's all this site is - RELIEF for some people who are unfairly made to feel like outcasts because they don't share such a manic, obsessive interest in sports. I doubt anyone would honestly believe that every sports fan is stupid. I don't.

You are aware of the fact that when we mention "jocks", we're referring to abusive athletes who insist on tormenting their less-powerful and less-popular ilk as a way of soothing their immense egos? Of course you are. I'm aware of the double-meaning too, being from Britain myself.

Good luck trying to promote your boxing website, by the way. You're definitely going to need it on here.

Best regards,
i_like_1981