a lot of people say that american football is a better experience through the TV than at the stadium. dunno how true that is cuz i've never been to a game, but ticket prices do make the atmosphere suck for a lot of teams.
a lot of people say that american football is a better experience through the TV than at the stadium. dunno how true that is cuz i've never been to a game, but ticket prices do make the atmosphere suck for a lot of teams.
made an account just to reply to this lol
for me it has to do with a few things:
it's awesome to see the most athletic people in the planet doing shit.
it's a lot cooler if you actually practice the sports that you are watching. it gives you a better insight into what is happening and you get a better feeling of how impressive the things that elite athletes are able to pull off.
it fills a competitive urge if you're that type of person.
i think this is the really big one. it's kind of like a TV show, probably a reality show. you have lots of "plot lines", "narratives" and drama. it's a socially accepted way for men to be able to gossip and do traditionally feminine things in a certain way. it also feels like watching a TV show in certain ways as i said before, so you have things like "is Tom Brady the best to ever do it?", "can X team stop sucking/get their first playoff win in Y years", etc.
obviously those aren't all the reasons why it's cool but they are my main ones i'd say.
i enjoy american football specifically because of how much depth it has. definitely feels like the sport where coaching and the mental aspect of the game is the most important.
football (futbol/soccer/whatever) kinda sucks right now because they are trying to monetize every last drop of it and it's making it worse. players are being overworked as hell. another thing that sucks is that because soccer is very much an international sport there's an element of 'sporting imperialism' so to speak where even though South American nations are probably the best at producing quality players in the world their national leagues are pretty bad because all their top talent goes abroad.
it's a shared experience that is easy to obtain. yea you can read theory or whatever and try to talk about it with people, but they'll just be listening unless youre hanging out with some real nerds.
What I hate about sports is that they're inherently bloodsports, but everybody pretends like that isn't true. Like, we know that CTE and other side effects of years of physical abuse/drugs takes a massive toll on athletes. So I say why half ass it? Let's go back to barbaric gladiatorial combat.
Don't replace fencing, replace something that's further away from bloodsport like soccer where no one even gets injured because they take a dive and start crying if anyone gets within three feet of them
Soccer is the most boring sport in the world and is only popular because you only need a relatively light sphere-shaped object to play and practice. If I wanted to sit and watch nothing happen for an eternity so I could be too bored and distracted for the 10 seconds where something happens, I'd tune in to the livestream of the pitch drop experiment.
I watch fencing because it's fun, the action is short and easy to follow, you get down time between points to process what just happened, and people are getting stabbed.
Don't understand why people think nothing happens in soccer. There's not much scoring but there a lot of other stuff to watch and appreciate if you have even a basic understanding of the game.
Fencing is objectively boring to watch bc it happens to fast to see what's going on, at least on tv
Soccer is just track but most of the people are standing around. Every once in awhile a grown adult trips and cries to try to get sympathy kicks from the ref, which is almost funny because of how humiliating it is. It's like a screensaver. If you wanted to follow a ball around you should just watch table tennis, where every play affects the outcome of the game.
Fencing is objectively not boring, it's literally people stabbing each other and about as close as we get to bloodsport. And again, every play affects the outcome of the game.
What kind of clownery is it to watch people run back and forth for an hour and the score is 1-0? At least be like hockey and make fist fights part of the game. Or be like basketball and at least let the final score be like 100-92.
I was not being ironic and it should not be made safe. Give the death drive what it wants by turning on your TV two nights a week to see ritualized violence in a more honest form.
I like stop and go sports better than continuous action sports. With continuous action, nothing interesting is happening 95% of the time but you have to pay attention even though it's boring and hypnotic because if you look away for 30 seconds one of the three interesting plays will happen and you will miss it.
Soccer is particularly egregious for this since it's an hour of people running back and forth and there will only end up being one scoring play the whole time, so 30 seconds of action that affect the outcome of the game in 3600 seconds of playtime. Would honestly rather watch track, where it's the same premise (people running around accomplishing nothing) but since it's linear you can tell when something interesting is about to happen and focus on it more.
Discontinuous sports are much more watchable because you're guaranteed that something is going to happen every time a play starts. Then you get a little back where you can process what just happened and think about what's going to happen next.
Ad breaks suck, but that's a Capitalism problem and not a sports problem.
I think you've nailed it, that a structure where you have distinct plays with explosions of important action makes for good TV watching. Baseball and olympic type events also work well with that formula. Other games are more continually action-packed, which is fun for players, but there's too much continuity for TV watchers.
American football is like literally the worst sport you could pick for that argument. It's like saying chess is just guys moving wood around. Technically true, but the strategic elements on display make it fascinating for anyone watching with knowledge of how the game works. And in football you obviously combine that with how athletically capable your players are of carrying out these strategies.
Soccer or Hockey are mostly just people running around. Football has all kinds of weird niche shit that makes it fascinating.
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a lot of people say that american football is a better experience through the TV than at the stadium. dunno how true that is cuz i've never been to a game, but ticket prices do make the atmosphere suck for a lot of teams.
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a lot of people say that american football is a better experience through the TV than at the stadium. dunno how true that is cuz i've never been to a game, but ticket prices do make the atmosphere suck for a lot of teams.
You ever seen rugby? It is like they took the good parts of football and made a game out of it.
Football is football. American football is not football but just boring rugby
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The English have mastered thebart if making the ritual. Like cricket? Awful game. Objectively. Great excuse to hang out and day drink
Similar soccer is about day drinking, singing songs. Getting in fights, and talkijg shit at the office
made an account just to reply to this lol
for me it has to do with a few things:
obviously those aren't all the reasons why it's cool but they are my main ones i'd say.
i enjoy american football specifically because of how much depth it has. definitely feels like the sport where coaching and the mental aspect of the game is the most important.
football (futbol/soccer/whatever) kinda sucks right now because they are trying to monetize every last drop of it and it's making it worse. players are being overworked as hell. another thing that sucks is that because soccer is very much an international sport there's an element of 'sporting imperialism' so to speak where even though South American nations are probably the best at producing quality players in the world their national leagues are pretty bad because all their top talent goes abroad.
thank you for coming to my ted talk
I’m a sports guy, feels like I’m the last leftist alive who actually is, lol. Although I’m not into American sports particularly.
Sports guy leftists unite!
most major sports are unionized too. i still like baseball, come at me. we need distractions from life. maybe im not as much of a commie as i thought.
Big baseball fan here, you're not alone.
I mean that describes most of the non-sports activities too. Gotta kill like 70 years somehow.
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it's a shared experience that is easy to obtain. yea you can read theory or whatever and try to talk about it with people, but they'll just be listening unless youre hanging out with some real nerds.
What I hate about sports is that they're inherently bloodsports, but everybody pretends like that isn't true. Like, we know that CTE and other side effects of years of physical abuse/drugs takes a massive toll on athletes. So I say why half ass it? Let's go back to barbaric gladiatorial combat.
This but unironically. We should replace fencing with gladatorial combat, but make it safe the way fencing is safer than actual swordfighting
Don't replace fencing, replace something that's further away from bloodsport like soccer where no one even gets injured because they take a dive and start crying if anyone gets within three feet of them
Soccer is the best and most popular sport in the world though. Nobody watches fencing
Soccer is the most boring sport in the world and is only popular because you only need a relatively light sphere-shaped object to play and practice. If I wanted to sit and watch nothing happen for an eternity so I could be too bored and distracted for the 10 seconds where something happens, I'd tune in to the livestream of the pitch drop experiment.
I watch fencing because it's fun, the action is short and easy to follow, you get down time between points to process what just happened, and people are getting stabbed.
Don't understand why people think nothing happens in soccer. There's not much scoring but there a lot of other stuff to watch and appreciate if you have even a basic understanding of the game.
Fencing is objectively boring to watch bc it happens to fast to see what's going on, at least on tv
Soccer is just track but most of the people are standing around. Every once in awhile a grown adult trips and cries to try to get sympathy kicks from the ref, which is almost funny because of how humiliating it is. It's like a screensaver. If you wanted to follow a ball around you should just watch table tennis, where every play affects the outcome of the game.
Fencing is objectively not boring, it's literally people stabbing each other and about as close as we get to bloodsport. And again, every play affects the outcome of the game.
What kind of clownery is it to watch people run back and forth for an hour and the score is 1-0? At least be like hockey and make fist fights part of the game. Or be like basketball and at least let the final score be like 100-92.
Really showing your whole ass by having such a totally backward view of the largest working class sport on earth
"People like it" doesn't mean it's good. People like capeshit.
I was not being ironic and it should not be made safe. Give the death drive what it wants by turning on your TV two nights a week to see ritualized violence in a more honest form.
Nah I don't want people to get hurt. That's the worst part of sports
american sports are simply boring as fuck
except for maybe hockey idk
I like stop and go sports better than continuous action sports. With continuous action, nothing interesting is happening 95% of the time but you have to pay attention even though it's boring and hypnotic because if you look away for 30 seconds one of the three interesting plays will happen and you will miss it.
Soccer is particularly egregious for this since it's an hour of people running back and forth and there will only end up being one scoring play the whole time, so 30 seconds of action that affect the outcome of the game in 3600 seconds of playtime. Would honestly rather watch track, where it's the same premise (people running around accomplishing nothing) but since it's linear you can tell when something interesting is about to happen and focus on it more.
Discontinuous sports are much more watchable because you're guaranteed that something is going to happen every time a play starts. Then you get a little back where you can process what just happened and think about what's going to happen next.
Ad breaks suck, but that's a Capitalism problem and not a sports problem.
I think you've nailed it, that a structure where you have distinct plays with explosions of important action makes for good TV watching. Baseball and olympic type events also work well with that formula. Other games are more continually action-packed, which is fun for players, but there's too much continuity for TV watchers.
American football is like literally the worst sport you could pick for that argument. It's like saying chess is just guys moving wood around. Technically true, but the strategic elements on display make it fascinating for anyone watching with knowledge of how the game works. And in football you obviously combine that with how athletically capable your players are of carrying out these strategies.
Soccer or Hockey are mostly just people running around. Football has all kinds of weird niche shit that makes it fascinating.
Tell me you don't watch soccer without telling me you don't watch soccer.
God soccer is such a dumb name, I'll call it football. Because you play with your foot and it has a ball. Foot-ball.
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american football is like a MOBA
soccer is like pong