Does this mean I should stop using "sportsball" ironically? I am watching much less football these days, either because of CTEs or because Nebraska kind of sucks and it's hard to watch, especially when the coach is a former neighbor.
I have tried to like soccer but just can't. Same with hockey and hockey probably has concussions too.
I thought "Sportsball" was something women said to annoy their sports-crazy husbands and boyfriends.
2- Foolish to start an earnest discussion of the relative merits of sports, but of the major ones hockey is clearly the most action oriented with the least downtime. That's probably why people don't like watching it. For most people watching sports should be an excuse for drinking with occasional interesting stuff happening, like football or baseball (maybe too little happening in the latter) and hockey requires too much continuous attention. Soccer is similar in that anything can happen at any moment but moves at a much slower pace.
Today's Twitter gem was a picture of an explosion at a Russian fuel depot with the caption "Ukrainians take April Fool's very seriously."
4: Yes, but it's so hard to see and keep track of the puck.
I have the same problem with Shakespeare.
True and obviously one technology to address that was widely mocked and killed. If you play or watch frequently it's not so hard because you know where to look based on player behavior, but hard for occasional fans to get into it. I feel like high definition broadcast has also helped.
True and obviously one technology to address that was widely mocked and killed
What was this?
I won't watch hockey on principle, since it's where a lot of casual white fans went when other sports became too black (see also lacrosse in more affluent neighborhoods). But this "sportsball" and hating sports thing seems very 4chan, so if that's what the far right is these days (and sure, makes sense--trolling, but in real life) I believe it. These people basically want to be Heath Ledger's Joker. Would the Joker play ball? He would not.
I didn't see that one. The new Riddler was really creepy.
2: soccer has a concussion problem too, from heading the ball, as does rugby.
I know in the local youth leagues, they have rules for a minimum age to head the ball. Don't remember the age.
I didn't see that one
Honestly, I think it's hard to understand the very online parts of the American Right without knowing that Joker, and the whole "some people just want to see the world burn" line, which they embrace.
I've been trying to stop myself from reading about Qanon and the like just to help keep me more saner.
Last fall my 9yo headed the ball in a game and it was a free kick for the other team.
Anyway, I don't want to do any spoilers but the ending to The Batman was straight out disturbing because it seemed all too plausible.
20: Kicking someone in the head is worse.
22: You can give us the spoilers unless you swear that it's one of the top 10 plot twists of all time. There is no way I will watch another superhero film voluntarily. I sat through "Guardians of the Galaxy" for multi- family movie night recently and while my expectations were not high, it was kind of amazing how much I hated it. There was one funny line and I forgot it already. There may not be much to infer from this.
They have a no heading till age 10 rule here, and it's hard for me to see the point. The headers aren't dangerous until they're heading balls from punts/forceful kicks, or two kids going up for the same ball and clanking skulls. I doubt there were ever concussions in the under 10 set that have been addressed by this.
Spoiler: no one was injured and they did not score off the free kick.
Yeah the situation was totally safe- she headed it because the ball popped up softly in the air, it was about to fall on her head, so she let it hit her head.
23: Just avoid people wearing clear plastic-framed glasses, especially if they also have a gimp mask on.
9 is correct. What's amazing is that I grew up watching hockey over the air in the '70s*--how the hell could we see anything? But we did.
That said, modern hockey is so fast and crowded that I think it would be literally unwatchable with that technology. I mean, you'd have a vague idea of what's happening, but you'd never see the details at all. Even with hi-def and slo-mo, you can barely tell how any given shot goes in--it's all deflections and slipping through tiny gaps between the (enormous) goalie pads.
*on a decently large color TV; while we owned B&Ws, I don't recall a time before we had a proper color TV
I won't watch hockey on principle, since it's where a lot of casual white fans went when other sports became too black
Hockey 100% harbors white culture like that, but given that the hockey audience hasn't appreciably grown in our lifetimes, I don't think I buy that "a lot" of anything has happened. It's always been the smallest of the "big 4" pro sports, it still is, and it's always been smaller than some non "big 4" sports (eg Nascar, college football & hoops, probably soccer at this point) and still is.
I don't think I buy that "a lot" of anything has happened
I may be seeing a Chicago effect, because the Bulls sucked and the Hawks were good while this migration was happening.
Hey, thanks, internet. So there's been a small rise nationally, and a huge rise in Chicago. Maybe less racist than I thought!
It will never happen but women's hockey might be more enjoyable for the broader public if anyone could be convinced to broadcast it. It's doesn't have the bullshit fighting and intent-to-injure hitting and it's a more positional and strategic game that would be easier for non-hardcore fans to follow.
I thought the less serious fans were watching just to see a fight.
Speaking of random sports I somehow watched a bizarre game that I determined to be kabaddi (I googled the name of one of the teams, the Gujarat Giants) and I have to idea what the hell was going on.
Technically not sportsball since there's no ball.
That's what they say about casual NASCAR fans and crashes.
I think we should replace the ball with a dead goat in most sports. Let Tom Brady cheat his way to a win then.
What worries me is what will all these angry white men do with all their extra free time. Will they get more home chores done? Spend more quality time with their kids? Or will they be attending more militia training exercises?
I'm guessing this is a subset of that group and mostly they are divorced/never married and estranged from kids they do have.
Does anyone understand the other part of the OP, right wing claims that Disney (specifically Frozen?) is grooming kids to be gay? Is it because Elsa doesn't have an opposite sex partner in either movie?
3: Not sure if you're serious, but if so, being dismissive and saying "sportsball" was common in the 2000's, again in Boing Boing-ish geek-culture circles, felt like counterculture at the time, but since then there's been some backing off and realization that that can be a kind of badgering or even bullying. This XKCD shows some of that transition.
To the extent what's described in the OP is a real thing, if among a slice of a niche only, it seems like that touchstone ensconced in places like 4chan and curdled in those among them who became revanchists.
40: I thought that was because Disney is pushing back against Florida's "don't say gay" law.
42 is the immediate trigger this time, but Disney has long been a punching bag for the homophobic right for various reasons.
The way recent Disney films including Frozen have downplayed heteronormative love stories is one reason, but there are lots of others.
44: they've been on it since at least the 80s. What better way to reinforce to your kids that the world is against Christians than dividing your kids from others over Disney?
32: The Chicago backstory is that the Hawks were (a) mostly terrible through the 90s and early 2000s, while the Bulls were, well, the Bulls, and (b) owned by Bill Wirtz, who refused to let the games be broadcast on local TV.
Then Wirtz died, his son took over and let the games air on TV, and the team got really good. So they got a lot more popular.
They are boycotting Disney until they rerelease Song of the South
Also, hockey is an utterly different experience live than it is on TV. Like night and day. Turns out you (or, at least, I) can't really get a sense of just how fast they are moving over a screen.
I've seen games I play in on video* so the same format you see pros and it's unbelievably slow.
I coach an age where I can still completely dominate them, and I've played with a few people who were middling college players who completely dominate the regular beer league guys, and basically my mental math is that me:kids is like mediocre college players:me which is like pros:mediocre college players.
*There's a service at all the local rinks with automated cameras that follow the action and you can subscribe to watch kids games live if you can go in person, or for coaches to get highlights for teaching. Someone I play with decided to subscribe until it got too embarrassing to keep seeing how bad we are.
The obvious "invisible puck" fix is to have the puck be constantly on fire, and make the sticks out of tempered steel. If any of you get all fussy like "wulll, that would be a different sport," I no longer know you.
5: I'm going to hijack my own thread! What the fuck is going on? Can't be a false flag, surely, but wow.
I will revive the Ukraine thread for this. I'm troubled. As for "Frozen," it did make people like Jordan Peterson get amped up over feminism which is gender ideology which is gay gay gay, but I think the tweeter just picked the name of the biggest hit.
Ben Shapiro and his ilk just need to be reminded that professional sports teams tend to be run by racists, and the players are often anti-vaxxers, sexual assaulters and general cranks.
|| Could an FPP bump the Pittsburgh meet-up post? Thanks muchly. |>
Also, I'll be the obnoxious Canadian here and point out that the TVs are HD, the puck is black, the ice is white, and it's way easier to see a puck on TV then either a baseball or a football. I learned to watch hockey on a 16" black and white TV with tinfoil-accented rabbit ears, and I could follow the game just fine.
"You can't see the puck" cannot possibly be among the top 100 reasons why the sport is not more popular with Americans.
I'll second SP's suggestion that high level women's hockey is awesome. Less hitting means a faster game with more passing.
55.1: I suppose you're right that sports fandom is mostly about indoctrination.
I had an argument with some USA hockey execs a few years ago that they should provide a non-checking development path for kids. Currently if you're a boy you have no option to play hockey at age 13 if you don't want other teens trying to injure you every game. They were predictably assholes about it, even saying that the reason there are so many concussions now is because checking used to be allowed starting at age 11 and by learning it younger kids adapted better to avoiding hits. If I win the lottery I'll start my own non-checking youth league.
55.1: What's distinctive is this: in football, it's mostly very obvious what's happening with the ball*, and of the 22 guys on the field, 15 aren't even going to touch the ball except on occasional fumbles. In baseball, as with football, basically everyone stands still until the set start of a play, every play begins the same way, and it's rare for more than 2 people of the 10 on the field to be attempting to play the ball. In basketball and soccer, the ball is very big, and in soccer, the players are far apart.
All of which is to say that none of the things that can make the ball easier to follow in other sports applies to hockey, and black on white is all you've got going for you.
All that said, I think the truth is that the game really is fast (a pass is faster than anything that happens in any of the big ball sports, and most baseball throws aren't that fast either), the players are bulky relative to rink size, and it feels chaotic. "Can't follow the puck" is just another way of saying "it looks chaotic." I'd say it's a bit like rugby that way--if you don't know the rules, it just looks like endless running & passing punctuated by scrums and line-outs, both of which look chaotic to someone raised on American football.
*aside from trick plays and some play-action passes**
**suck my dick, RPO
57: interesting. Here in Ontario the highest levels of competitive boys start with body contact at U14, but there's always a division of competitive (I.e. "travel" hockey) that's non-contact. When my son gets to that age, that's what he's going to play whether he wants to play hitting or not. And of course local 'house league' is always non-contact.
58.1: it's obvious *if you're raised on football.* It's non-obvious if you're not. Same with baseball. I honestly find it easier to follow the play in hockey than in football, and I played high school football. 'People can't follow the play' is a consequence, not a cause, of hockey not being popular.
Hockey games here are always paired with specials on Molson and/or Labatt. I don't like one of those but can't remember which, so it's distracting.
I can also never remember if I like Evan Williams or Ezra Brooks, so I drink Jameson (which I like better than both but costs more).
Once two things get paired in my head, I can't ever remember one without the other.
Thank you. I tried keeping it on a post it, but it turns out that makes me look like an alcoholic.
59.2: Yes, I think it comes down to what you're used to -- especially what you watched as a kid.
64: No, somebody who needs a reminder of their preferred alcoholic beverage is most likely someone that drinks rarely.
It looks like a never-ending shopping list though.
Minivet's 41 was well-played-- unusually precise cultural knowledge deployed at just the right time.
Holy shit Kabaddi is weird-- raider really chants kabaddi over and over? If only there were a way to include this game in the Japanese series about a Roman bath architect who travels forward through time to the mindblowing wonder of Japanese bath technology.
Okay, not Canadian, but shiv is: it becomes easy to follow once you watch enough to follow the flow of the action instead of the location of the puck. So much of the game is about controlling the zones, and you can start to see plays develop with enough practice. Might have to live in central PA while married to a Canadian when the Flyers and Penguins both make the playoffs tho.
I think the reason most Americans aren't into it is that it's hard to watch on TV (not a set schedule) and that most of the good coverage is on cable services. So unless you're in a big market and your team makes the playoffs, it's a game you don't see often enough to understand and probably didn't grow up playing. Totally different experience with Canadians (Hockey Night in Canada etc.) and the UP.
I'll buy a summer cabin in central PA, but I don't want to live there.
When I lived in Canada, it seemed like it was easier to find curling on TV than it was to find NBA games. Maybe it would have been different if I'd been in Toronto.
I used to watch the Sharks plus playoff games and after getting used to it the only thing I felt I had trouble seeing was the really fast plays, like goals where it's not clear exactly what happened until the replays.
I found the wpmens hockey at the Olympics pretty compelling.
That was possibly the most exciting basketball game I have ever seen. Couldn't possibly have lived up to the hype, and then exceeded it.
From Twitter: "All those letters in Mike Krzyzewski and there's still room for one more L."
||
Just read about this mass shooting in Sacramento? Megan - is that near you?
|>
It is near me in the sense that it was a couple miles away. It is very far from me in the sense that it was people out and about at 2am, six hours past my bedtime.
That 11pm Eastern. So regular time.
I would like to take this thread as an opportunity to offer Coach K my final regards, in the spirit of Elton Brand.
And kabaddi is absolutely wild to watch (I don't think of it as a team sport, but I have only ever watched any at all while idly flipping through cable and seeing it on ESPN2), but I thought it was a one-on-one sport?
in the early 90s Channel 4 TV used to actually carry kabaddi nationally.