Detroitsportsfan08 wrote:Also, you guys have it all wrong about 99 percent of sports fans, which leads me to believe you don't know any sports fans. Look around on message boards, just because people are discussing sports doesn't mean they think it's life or death. Every sports fan I have ever met(online or real life) knows there is more to life, and sports are a game. Just because people get happy over a sporting event doesn't mean they think sports are everything, and just because they get mad doesn't mean they think it's the end of the world. Rooting for a sports team is something done just for fun, and as a means of entertainment and escape of everyday things. It's also done because people love the game, whether that be baseball, football, hockey, basketball, or whatever.
This is nonsense. And it is my experience with sports fans, both in simple blue collar and white collar job situations, I deal with them all the time. And they have always had the same fucking attitude towards me, time and again,
regardless of how deeply they were involved with sports. Regardless of how much or how little they screamed at games. Regardless of how much of their lives they dedicated to sports. A perfect example would be the 'Fantasy Football' bunch. I have never in my life seen a more annoying group of happy twats in my life. People who spend less time working and more time planning these things. People who send out e-mails every day in a large corporate environment, and who don't get their supervisors in a fit about it, because their supervisors are in on it, too.
People who come to me and expect me to just automatically join them because I'm 6'1", stocky and weigh 250 lbs.
People who get annoyed when I say no.
People who offensively make fun of me for not even understanding, nor wanting to understand what the fuck a 'Fantasy Football Team' is after pestering me about it repeatedly.
I've had this situation happen now with several different jobs in Texas.
Detroitsportsfan08 wrote:People who got picked on in high school by jocks, I truly am sorry. No one deserves to be picked on or made fun of in any way. However, I doubt you were picked on because you didn't like sports. Maybe a couple of isolated times, but i doubt that was the sole reason. The bottom line is, some kids can be mean in school, and for whatever reason they picked on you because you were different than them. Don't blame sports for that, because they are not to blame.
You make a more cogent argument than most of the sports fans on here, but pardon me while I blow bazooka holes into this particular monologue. Most of us got stuck in some P.E. class, and if we were bad at sports, we got picked on by the other jocks, period. Maybe even threatened with violence for missing an outfield catch and losing some stupid nerf indoor baseball game in the gymnasium. If we were males and weren't skilled at sports, then even more ostracizing took place among our peers. I was far from a weakling, but when you're picked on enough times, the human psyche tends to make itself believe that you're not good at it. Therefore you become not good at it because you lose belief in yourself. This tends to happen when no one around you promotes an occasional aw shucks, well try again, you'll get it attitude. I took this mental route of believing I was worthless, but I also took a step back from it and saw with my own eyes how other kids were picked on in the same fashion.
Let's be honest here. Your sugar-coating words 'different than them', is nothing more than a gentle euphamism for 'not as good as them'. Maybe we weren't. Did that qualify us for persecution among our peers? To be made to feel like dogshit for not physically performing a task correctly? A task, I might add, that doesn't compare in terms of importance to things like bussing tables, operating a construction crane, designing a building, managing a group of people, even helping your dear mother carry in the groceries. Kids would shrug off any of these tasks if I told them I failed at performing them. But something gets ingrained into their heads if you let a soccer ball get past you and into the goal post that it is their duty to yell, hit and or verbally abuse you.
Now, let's fast forward to the high school years. Nothing's changed, only most of us nerdy people who didn't prefer P.E. chose to try to opt out of it if we could. I know I did. And just as a side note, Physical Education in high school should be renamed to S.C.F.C.S., which is what it really is. Sampler Class For Competitive Sports. Why did we try to get out of it? Because we had learned by then, nothing had changed.
Sports are to blame, because the way they are presented in schools invokes a sometimes selfish, even violent minded competitiveness that most of us might have gotten past if we had been treated with respect. Where does that respect start? With the teachers/coaches, for one, who are usually sports fanatics themselves. They had the power to tell people to treat their non-sports inclined peers with respect, or they didn't get to play that day. Oh, but wait, we were the minority. They didn't want to deal with those sports loving childrens' angry parents on the phone, so they simply told the sports kids to 'knock it off' when they started threatening the not-so-good-at-sports children with violence or verbal abuse.
This doesn't change when we grow up. Sports fans are just as vicious in their attitudes towards us, they just take a different form of delivering it most of the time. It all becomes pyschological, and occasionally physical, like some of the stories I've been reading on this forum about drunk sports nuts starting fights during or just after a sporting event.
How ridiculous is it, to any of you reading this, that someone is ragged on, put down, maybe even having gotten the shit beaten out of them (in the neighborhood I grew up in at least) for something as simple as not having caught a baseball in the outfield? Or, the same punishments being doled out for not having the ability to throw it?
And yet, in spite of that, I still wish success to people in whatever they do, including sports. But you're just going to have to either forgive me, or continue to pretend, close your eyes and act like you don't understand where I'm coming from when I say that the very nature of popular competitive sports puts a very bad taste in my mouth.
There's a place for everyone in this life, my friend. Scholars, Doctors, Social Workers, Construction Workers, Musicians, and even Athletes. The point of this website is to address not sports itself, but I personally believe
the site exists to address the poor attitude that comes with most sports fans. The persecution that comes with the attitude. If you still refuse to believe it, look at some of the idiots who have come here to champion it besides yourself, particularly Captain America's colorful post.
Even in an adult world, socializing with a sports fan that isn't likely to call you a miserable cur for not liking what they like, that same sports fan also has the likelihood of joining a mob of sports fans, complete with a ringleader who WILL call you out for hating sports.
Detroitsportsfan08 wrote:Ultimately, one of the main things you guys despise, sports fanaticism, is nonexistent. 99 percent of sports fans do have lives outside of sports.
1. Everybody has a day job outside of sports. Everybody has a day job outside of anti-sports. That's just life, and that has no bearing on fanaticism, which leads to...
2. Fanaticism? Nonexistent? What plastic bubble have you been living in?
Yes, it was nonexistent in Texas those two crappy years the Cowboys won the Super Bowl, and the three years after that when 'nonexistent fanaticism' was at such an 'all time low' that I was routinely late for work on Sundays because I had to pass by Texas Stadium on 183 and STOP ON THE HIGHWAY because Cowboys Fans were crossing the fucking HIGHWAY to get to the stadium because the parking lot there was already full. Fully garbed, half of them already drunk, screaming, raving lunatics.
Detroitsportsfan08 wrote:Sports also help some people escape poverty.
You know, I never qualified for a Pell Grant, and I always wanted to get an education, but I'm just barely above the poverty line and can't afford rising tuition costs. And I am a fairly intelligent human being that would love a greater opportunity than I have now. And for some reason, this statement irks the hell out of me more than any other. I could get straight A's and finish my degree with the funds that go to some asshole that knows how to do nothing but shoot hoops. Can I change that? No, but it pisses me off. I like arts and crafts. I am a 20 year musician. When have I ever been rewarded for my talents? Life isn't fair, and I'm over it, but that's not my point.
My point being, you need to see the other side of your own point of view now that you've stated it.
Detroitsportsfan08 wrote:As far as athletes being bad people, there are some, no doubt.
You are downplaying this with an attempt at altered perception. In my experience, this statement is more than adequately inaccurate. This isn't about athleticism. This is about sports fans, and their attitude towards the non sports fan.
Detroitsportsfan08 wrote: In the end, sports have much more of a positive impact than bad. They help tons and tons of people be happy everyday, while they don't make nearly as many people mad or sad. The only negatives would be jocks in high schools being big headed about how good they are and picking on people, and getting special treament.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. The negatives are not just at repressive jocks. The negatives are at anyone who chooses to make someone else feel bad for not being 'part of the gang'.
I'm fat and sassy! I love to sing & dance & stomp my feet & really rock your world!
Mine was definitely one, ex-Navy. Ugh.