I admit I have a College Football and World Cup addiction - though the WC is recent (and strange, as I really otherwise could care less about soccer [sorry, international football]). I'm not a huge fan of other professional sports; I loved the Browns growing up, but lost interest in the NFL when they relo'd to Baltimore.

Football, Tennis, Cricket, Golf (ish), F1, Rugby Union (not as much now I'm at uni), ProTour cycling.
Those are ones I follow, and I play a lot of sport as well.
Add all those together, then the fact that I'm on here far too much and its not really a surprise I don't keep up with my workload!

Your complaints are exactly why college sports are 80x better than pro sports.

"Drug-addled muti-millionaires..." Watching a guy that is 2560 pounds of solid muscle move like a dancer, taking physical abuse that would KILL YOU is pretty incredible, actually. The skill and concentration of a wide reciever lunging through the air to catch a ball - KNOWING he will get creamed on the way down - and yet still remembering to get two toes down before he crashing out of bounds is simply an amazing feat. When I see somebody use the derogatory terms you use it demonstrates you have simply never payed much attention. Watching a play form, watching guys make their assignments on blocks, watching a quarterback stand in the pocket...football is actually a pretty damned sophisticated game.

Oh...that's 250 pounds! lol

Sports is a fun way to exercise and blow off some steam.
I can't stand going to the gym and pulling up weights like a fucking masochist monkey.
Tennis, soccer, basketball my choices.
I love the first one.

Have you ever played any sports? If you like a sport chances are you'll like watching it, especially when played well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoOG32BXuvQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUBpfCHhwbw

i love sports. must say i'm too tall and clumsy to play most. (used to be ok at basketball just found it not as fun anymore) I'm an american and my favorite sport is soccer. talk about the minority. i find baseball boring beyond belief. my sports i watch are International Football ( Germany national supporter and USA too. also for clubs i'm a bayern munich fan overall. English premier i like Chelsea and i have a weird liking of Celtic) as far as other sports i watch college ball. I will root for Kentucky for everything but i also like Michigan football. for NFL i like the colts but i find myself watching it less and less. i hate the NBA they be thugs. i have a new foudn love for hockey. go avalanche. i'm hoping chicago wins the stanley this year though.

Hitting a ball 400 feet is amazing in itself. Doing that while a 90 mph fastball (that reaches from the mound to home in .4 seconds) is incredible. And on top of that, the pressure of playing in front of some 40000 fans puts a lot of pressure on you.

Why is it that American sports governing bodies like to reward failure? In every European sporting league worth its salt the losing team(s) at the end of a season gets relegated to a lower league and suffers the huge hardship that results. Go to the States and the losing team not only gets to stay in the league but gets the first pick of new players in ridiculous draft systems. The winning teams are punished and the teams that fail to achieve get supported by the system in what can only be descirbed as sporting socialism!

It is time the US cast aside the sporting welfare state mentality that has crippled the growth of their sportsmen for so long, and adopted a bit of good old fashioned European capitalism! Bloody Commies...

"English premier i like Chelsea" ~ And I had all that respect for you :P

Ummm because America likes to keep things fair.

@Octavius: Wow, you really have no understanding of US sports and the idea of fostering competition...

Indeed, I can see the logic for having pooled players as far as keeping things fair goes.
However, I don't think it does much for supporters when the player is *SO* obviously there just because thats what the money says.
Now I know footballers move around, and earn a lot of money, but that isn't all there is to it.
If it was just about the money, Fabregas, Gerrard, Lampard and Torres would all be at Real Madrid. But it isn't, they love their clubs, whether they're still there (G&L) or they still respect the clubs they came from (F&T).

Also, I wouldn't say sports are 'drug-addled', although I must say I'm still rather cross Ferdinand got such a light sentance for his doping offence.

In most cases I can't agree with you more Tolstoy. I always prefer to play soccer/football or ultimate disc, but every once in a while I don't mind watching a a good game, preferably one of those I play.

When I was in Spain for a month, my stay just happened to coincide with the Euro Cup, and who won but Spain. That was the first time I watched a sport on a regular basis to the end. So I'm seriously considering watching the World Cup now to fill up some free time. GO SPAIN!! and I suppose the US too!

In short, it's entertaining to watch.

In less short, it represents a competition of physical fitness and co-ordination, which are considered beneficial and attractive traits. While these may not be as important in the developed world of high capital to labour ratios, these were extremely important traits for the rest of human history and evolution. In the past, physical fitness affected your income and success in labour heavy occupations (most of them) and hunting (if we go back further), your health and longevity (still true), your ability to defend yourself and survive violent encounters (far more common in the past), and consequently, physical fitness affected your status and reproductive prospects. Despite that technology is making physical fitness and good co-ordination less important, it is not really surprising that competitions involving these traits would be popular given their historical and prehistorical importance.

I think a better question is why do people view sportstars as role models? It's such a scandal when a sportstar is caught doing something morally questionable, but seriously, why does the ability to hit a small white ball into a little hole have anything to do with expected moral virtue?

"I'm not a role model... Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids. " - Charles Barkley

If I went to space and met aliens I would teach them the one thing I know best
Walter Berry

@figle - there are plenty of die hard players for particular teams in the US as well. There are guys like Johnny Bench, former catcher for the Reds, who played for the Reds and only the Reds for his entire 17 year Major League career.

@figles i'm sorry i lost some of your respect. my ringtone right now is blue is the colour. haha i noticed your an arsenal fan. you must of been raised on the wrong side of london.

and about this rewarding the worst teams thing i disagree. it would be different if they relegated but since we don't do that for any of our leagues its only fair that the worst team gets good young players. otherwise if the best teams kept getting the good players there would never be a change of who is good. the same teams would be on top every year. you have to share the love. Must be an American thing

Sport, my sport, is tribal. It goes beyond mere liking and disliking.

Being in a huge crowd singing You'll Never Walk Alone, especially when your side is losing badly, is an amazingly uplifting experience.

Of course, winning gives a decent kick as well.

And Ivo put his finger on it: I love football (it is football - no hands remember) and played when I was younger. Lots of injuries, lots of memories but I understand the game because I played it.

NEED 4 MORE
gameID=30850
My sport is American Football

Relegation would be awesome in baseball, and could possibly work, if you could ever deal with the pipeline issues.

American sports socialism has developed primarily do to the franchised structure of our professional sports. In Europe, my understanding is that a millionaire can simply by ownership of a club and develop it to his liking. I believe Hoffenheim in the Bundesliga is the best example of that. In the US, millionaires have to gain approval from the rest of the team owners. Though I'm sure someone will take the utmost joy in explaining why I'm technically wrong, you could essentially describe American professional sports leagues as a cabal or a cartel.

US sports is NOT a socialists endeavor by any means. In the area of the draft you can (weakly) make the argument....but if you want to make more money, you play hard and be the best. If an individual isn't good enough to play, they not only can't demand higher wages, but may not even play. As an overall orginization, they "socialize" the draft order to keep the league competitive...so they can make more money. It's an economic decision, not some equity decision. As I implied above, if you think US sports are "socialist" you truly have no idea how US sports are run. It's pretty much one of the most capitalist ventures in the world, run pretty much purely on the ability to increase profits...and thank god for that, because our athletes are the best.

i agree. example. 6 teams might go to the pac 10 from the big 12 for TV revenue

Nah, American sports are pretty socialistic. Europe's leagues don't have have salary caps, revenue sharing, luxury taxes or strong player unions. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but very few European teams have their local governments subsidizing their stadium construction. Another point is that Europe has multiple avenues for their clubs to make money through cup competitions at the national and international level. In the US there's only the playoffs.

Yeah, but American football is still far more profitable than soccer. The fanbase for European soccer is enormous, and yet the only soccer franchise in the World that is worth more than the Dallas Cowboys is Manchester United. With a fanbase much much smaller, and even with the "socialized" draft system that keeps teams from being an dynasty like Man U, the Cowboys still manage to pull in a crapload more revenue, despite the fact that on any given Sunday their game might only be broadcast in Texas and whatever state the team that they're playing comes from.

Also, I have no way of proving this, but I'd be willing to bet that the athletes in the NFL are more formidable than their European counterparts.

American sports are more profitable because you have 300 million people following 30 teams in each sport. That's 10 million people for a team. Slightly more for the sports that include Canadian teams. These clubs/franchises have no threat of relegation so always have the predictable income. If they do poorly, they get better draft picks. If they're in a weak region, they have an easier division. Salary caps keep spending down but there's no "price" cap to keep income down, so obviously profits soar. Compare this to Europe where there are about 30 top teams (all 'big' teams, ie Toronto Blue Jays as well as New York Yankees) in each country (4-5 top top teams, ie only the Yankee tier of teams). Spread that over the whole of Europe and that's about 100 big teams, and at least 25 "very" big teams for a population of about 450,000,000. Then there is promotion and relegation to make spending a lot more dangerous, no government subsidies (for most countries), no draft or salary caps. There are teams with average attendences of 500 in the same league structure as Manchester United. If you take all these lower level teams and folded them into the top 30 like American sports do, England's football league alone would make more than the NFL (although that's obviously over simplistic because the league and system itself would lose a lot of appeal). I don't know how someone could make the argument that American sports aren't socialist. They have a welfare system by establishing a salary cap. They have a security net with the draft. The clubs themselves essentially have a union protecting them with no promotion and relegation (the closest to being 'fired' a club can get).