International I Hate Sports Club

Earl wrote:Sometimes I get tired of the conflict. I get tired of getting mad at people who are not speaking to me in person, most of whom I'll never have the opportunity to meet in real life. Since I'm naturally friendly, sometimes it depresses me, such as this latest spat.

Safety wrote:I love this forum so much. Every now and then a sports fan will come along and try to "enlighten" the nerds here as to why sports are good for society, and why the bad experiences that they've gone through personally shouldn't represent all of the sports fans in the world.

But what about the people who maybe considered being against sports, but ultimately reached the conclusion I just listed -- that a small margin shouldn't symbolize all sports fans. So, instead of despising sports and posting about it on an internet forum, they continue with their lives with that thought in mind.

"All sports fans are different, so I shouldn't judge them as ignorant and mindless." But that's the way that sports fans and /sp/ users feel about you. They think that you're ignorant, mindless, and intolerant, despite what the homepage says.

Neither sports fans nor anti-sports fans can reason with each other because they're both too intolerant to accept each others beliefs. There's no point in reasoning with the forum users here or the sports fans. While you may listen to each other, you will never agree with each other.

This is depressing. Why can't we all get along? I'm going to start the love movement.

I wrote:
When I was in high school (I'm 40 now, so would've been mid-to-late 1980's), we had to take "health" class for half a year and PE for half a year. It was the same dumbass gym teacher who taught both. "Health" was a joke. The very first day of school, he told the class, "Look, I don't like health, and you don't like health, but we'll just get through it, and then we'll really have some fun in phys. ed.!" He taught things in class that were blatantly false (like about anatomy, medicine, etc.) and couldn't even pronounce most of the scientific terms. In biology class, the teacher there, when told that Mr. so-and-so from health class said it was such-and-such a way, openly laughed at him and said to take whatever he attempted to teach with a grain of salt. There were units in health about sexuality and STD's, and he told us that if any of us ever got a venereal disease, to let him know and he'd drive us to the VD clinic to get a shot for it. "I won't tell your parents and I'll make up an excuse to tell the principal to get you out of school, so don't worry about any of that," he said. This was about the time AIDS was becoming a serious issue, but he glossed that over -- he said, "Oh, there's this new disease out there called AIDS, but I wouldn't worry too much about that -- it's mostly just gay guys that get it anyway, and I'm sure none of you guys are like that!" At this, all the jocks in the class starting laughing and cheering "hahahahaha -- them fags", etc.)

In PE class, we had to do a "Marine Corps physical fitness test" that was supposed to be age-appropriate once at the beginning of the semester and once at the end of the semester, and the ending one counted as your final exam. Supposedly, we would have improved so much during PE that it would be reflected in our final grade. But, as Earl has talked about, there was no focus whatsoever on fitness during the entire semester. It was all just sports, sports, sports -- and always a "tournament" where the losers had to run laps around the gym, the worse you did in the standings, the more the laps. In volleyball, he told the class how to do a "hit the spastic" drill, as he called it -- he said to find the "spastic" (the worst player on the team) and always aim the serve toward them. During one practice, I hit a ball backwards and out of bounds, and the gym teacher laughed and said, "I guess you guys found your spastic!" and then all the jock kids started calling it the "hit the Chris" drill.

Of course, the jock boys who did good at the sports, the gym teacher attempted to recruit for his baseball team. (He'd put his arm around them and say, "You ever thought about playing baseball? We could use a guy like you -- practice starts next month!") So it seems PE was nothing more than a way to recruit boys who *already good* at sports onto the school teams, and the rest of us be damned. No advice was ever given on fitness techniques or how to improve our scores on that fitness test. Needless to say, I failed it both times, and got an F on the "final exam" for PE. Only failing grade I got in any class or any exam -- in fact, I graduated 13th out of about 125 in my class.

Turns out this gym "teacher"/baseball coach became the winningest high school coach in the state of Ohio (or some accolade similar to that) and some years after I graduated, a new baseball field was built at the school and named after him. That's right -- this dumber-than-dogshit "teacher" and officially-sanctioned bully -- got a *building named after him* at *taxpayer expense*! There was an article in the local paper about what a great role model he was at "molding young men". They're damn lucky I no longer lived in that town and paid taxes there -- I would have protested and likely would have leaked everything I just wrote above to the press.

Since we've talked about saying things on here we wouldn't ordinarily say....I don't give a shit how many stadiums they name after this asshole, or how many games he won, or how many "young men he molded" by teaching them the extraordinarily valuable life skills of hitting a ball or catching it -- I still think HE WAS A FUCKING DICK who doesn't deserve a damn bit of honor for anything! (So, Earl, you had asked about some of my conflicting feelings toward sports and things I would ordinarily say -- there's a small snippet! )

Also, I remember in junior high, on a *science* test, the teacher (different from one above) had a bonus question about who won some college basketball game, tournament, whatever. I also remember getting criticized by some other students for "blowing the curve" (getting too high a score on tests and reducing the grades of others). I later came to realize why "grade curves" were instituted -- so that the sports stars would be able to get barely-passing grades and stay eligible! Same way with the bogus extra-credit questions.

In a lot of the book subjects, the teachers were coaches. In U.S. history, it was the basketball coach, IIRC. He didn't lecture once the whole year, I don't think -- he just wrote notes on the board at the beginning of the day, and each class period took the whole class time to copy the notes down, then we'd be given a pre-printed test at the end of the week. The teacher/coach wouldn't say anything other than to point out when the test would be -- he'd spend the whole class at his desk either diagramming basketball plays or reading sports magazines. No discussions of the material or anything.

I also took an astronomy class in senior year, and the teacher had arranged to do a presentation at the local public library about some recent scientific news and discoveries, and he encouraged all of us to come if we were able. About a week before, he abruptly announced he had to cancel the library presentation. When someone asked him why, he replied that he had to hold a game, practice, whatever, for some sport (he wasn't a sports-minded guy at all). He told us he wasn't happy about it, but the administration had told him that coaching sports was part of his job, and he needed to put that ahead of any other programs or commitments he had, including the library presentation. Never mind that the presentation was *in his field of study*, and that giving an intelligent talk at the library to the public (who, by the way, *pay taxes* for the both the library and the school) would have been an excellent opportunity to promote the school and its *academic* programs. But nooooo....sports was way more important than all that! I sure got the message the school district was sending.

A few years after graduation, I saw my former astronomy teacher working in a computer software store, and he recognized me, so we chatted a little. He said he was managing the store now and loved it, and that he was no longer in teaching. Looking back, I can't help but wonder if the school's promotion of sports over academics influenced his decision to leave the profession, and also how many quality teachers our country may have lost over the years precisely because of attitudes like this.

daves336 wrote: Now, you say that sports dont bring anything good, as you dont need them to keep fit. What about the competitiveness, leadership and how it brings people together? What's wrong with me going out to play tennis in the evening with a few friends? We get out, we get exercise and it's competitive. But, not in a bad way, if were friends, were not gonna get angry now are we? And when Im playing a football/soccer match, even with 'chavs' - I meet new people, they are always respectable and its sociable. The fact that 'hooligans' dont act like thugs when they play football is brilliant - would you rather they were out breaking into cars or smashing windows?

So, in addition to just working out or running (which is actually a sport I'll have you know) sports excite people and get them hyped up. As someone that grew up not liking sports and feeling much how you do, and now that I play and watch them all the time - I can say the feeling of playing sports, scoring a goal ect is unparalleled. Even WATCHING. It' not as if Im watching them have fun - I enjoy watching how a competitive environment is shown over a few months. Its makes me want to get out and play sport - and then I can get exercise.

ChrisOH wrote:One other thing, as far as being "unsociable" the reason for not liking sports, I decided I'd rather be "sociable" with people who have something more intelligent to talk about throwing, kicking, or carrying a ball around, thank you very much!

Earl wrote: Hey, Safety (and daves336), please note what I'm about to say: Some individual boys should go out for sports. However, the rule should be whatever works for the individual. Boys are not all the same. Some boys don't need sports; so, sports shouldn't be crammed down their throats against their will.

ChrisOH wrote:It would seem this type of activity promotes both teamwork and positive competition, plus teaches relevant knowledge, without sports. Events like these put the lie to the claim that "sports are necessary to teach children teamwork, blah blah blah".

Earl wrote: