How a Non-Sports Fan Sees Things When They Look at Sport On Screen

Without all the hype that all these little sports that most people on planet Earth seem to adore, but I think don’t make the cut to be classed as any kind of serious entertainment, might work as a little distraction to help send you to sleep, but the hype just destroys it and makes the sports seem ridiculous.

Football

Boring because they’ve got to get the ball into this small area by kicking it from supposedly clever places, most of the game is spent waiting eons for this to eventually happen (they’ve got it, and now they’ve managed to get it off them ad nauseum) and then when they do everyone erupts into the kind of hysteria that would usually happen when the average persons has just found out that they won the lottery, you’d need to win that more or less to be given a plastic seat in one of the hallowed premier league’s precious grounds which look almost exactly the same as each other or have your TV screen legally be allowed to show Sky Sports 1.

Managers seem permanently pissed off and on interviews, players and managers alike spout really obvious crap such as: “If we had just gotten some more of the ball possession in that half, we would have won the game“, yes, if only you had scored one more than the opposition you’d have won, wouldn’t you? You should have thought of that.

The dull action isn’t even freeflowing, the action comes to a full stop every time the ball dares to cross the line all the way round the pitch, and this happens often, painfully often. Why don’t they just let it bounce?

It’s a nerdish special interest but the media treats it with reverence whilst some of the same fans would diss most other special interests you could possibly think of.
A national radio station talks about it all day long, it’s mostly all CityTalk 105.9 actually talks about outside the Pete Price phone-in, they don’t have a science radio station, one just for entertainment news, not even a proper national general talk station (unless you count London’s LBC).

Encourages silly little rivalries between geographical areas of the UK which most non fans couldn’t give a shit about, i.e. who cares which city between Manchester & Liverpool is better. They’re both boring big cities with different good things about them as well as bad things. I actually slightly prefer Liverpool but I have a new fascination with Manchester now too.

Rugby

It’s football but the sports are also allowed to carry it, it’s probably about the extent of my knowledge in that sentence!

Cricket

It’s mainly just someone standing in front of something trying to stop it being hit and then someone running before the ball can be found.

American football

The action stops more often than a Ford Transit would have to if it were making a delivery in Central London.

Golf

More interesting to play than watch, I’d like to see it dismissed as a toffs boring obsession because Golf always seems very pleased with itself in much the same way as football always does, but at least it has a bit of variety in terms of the skill in trying to get the ball into those difficult places and the course layouts are much more individual than the same old boring football stadiums where they could be playing on the moon and it would look the bloody same.

Formula 1 Racing

They just seem to follow each other round, very mundane, advertising-laden courses with barely any drama, they hardly scrap with each other or overtake much.

Snooker

It’s really difficult to knock a small ball into tiny little holes placed on the ends of a rectangular propped up board, I think we get that now! Sometimes I can do this clever little trick where I knock a ball into another ball and I can make THAT go into the hole, isn’t that amazing! Pinball is a bit more complex and varied, why don’t they have tournaments around that?

Tennis

This is just Pong isn’t it. It’s just someone hitting a ball back to another person trying to make them miss it, and THAT’S IT! for 9 hours!

Bowling

One I can almost go with, the objective is still absurdly simple, it’s amazing that you can be charged £10+ to go into a building where you can roll a ball into some things to try and knock them all over, but it’s surprisingly difficult to find the sweet spot that’ll knock the 10 pins over the so called strike.

Wrestling

For WWE at least, it isn’t a sport because they make the whole thing up, it’s actually got more in common with Coronation Street than a sporting tournament, only the storylines are about 20 times cheesier than anything the street can offer about yet another affair. The best it’s got is they sometimes say and do funny things, and it’s a pantomime.

Horse Racing

Have you ever looked at a group of animals in a field and wondered which one would be the fastest? Most horse racing fans are probably just wondering, will I win my bet? Therefore they are really the betting shop races. There is also another breed of horse racing fan, who I like to call, “I don’t watch any horse racing whatsoever unless it’s the Grand National and then I put a bet on like it’s my religion.”

Skiing

Nice scenery because it’s in the mountains, they slide down a hill whilst demonstrating that they’re good enough to not simply fall flat on their behinds. They win by reaching the bottom, first.

The ideas in some video games are way way better in terms of entertainment.