It’s the harmless version of “my tribe battles your tribe” for thousands of years, without the bloodshed. We’ve evolved to enjoy competition in general.

Not everyone of course. But I find sports fans to be not that different from chess fans for example, in their passion, armchair strategy, and sheer emotional ups and downs.

My personal favorite sport is Formula 1. It tickles all the same parts of our sports fans brains, but also tickles my nerd brain with the strategy, lap math, and all the precision and tech (apart from the fact that I personally looooove driving and Kart racing)

About the tech, you’d be amazed at the amount of tech involved in F1. Just the bandwidth used for telemetry. The supercomputer simulations performed during races, etc. and that’s just the computer tech.

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moffkalast 10 hours ago | parent [-]

F1 I sort of understand, there's a lot of aspects to it even though it is at the end of the day, a bunch of people driving in circles. The memes are good anyhow.

With foot/basketball, hockey, etc. there is no technical aspect if you don't get into pro tier shoe and ball design or whichever non-strictly rule defined straws one could competitively grasp at, but I guess most people relate through familiarity of actually playing it themselves? But there is a sort of chicken-and-egg problem there where to play it well enough for it to be actually fun you need to already be a fan and have a good grasp of the rules, otherwise it's just people running back and forth on a court.

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atonse 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah I actually used to find soccer boring until I started watching it with my son, the sheer skill levels, there’s a lot of strategy involved. Yeah they don’t go into shoes or anything.

But for example, forcing a foul at just the right time, or causing offsides by positioning yourself, etc. those carry some level of strategy, at least how much I can grasp.

But the one common thing with every professional sport is the skill level for that particular skill in the sport is unlike anything we can comprehend.

I remember a friend recalling a professional baseball game he attended, and he described how those guys were warming up, and they were just playing catch to warm up their arms… they were able to throw the ball to within inches of the recipient’s glove every time from hundreds of feet away.

That sort of skill makes it enjoyable to watch human performance levels if you can appreciate how hard that particular skill is, especially if you’ve tried it.

Equivalents in F1 are how a race engineer will tell a driver to slow down by half a second over the course of a full lap to preserve their tires, and they more or less do it.

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mbreese 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I like to think of it as the game within the game. There’s “the game” with the set of rules and lines, etc. But then there’s “the actual game”, where you can watch the strategy, the skill, and that’s at a completely different level. Similarly, once you can watch a football/soccer game and appreciate how someone is moving on the field without the ball, then I think you’re just starting to understand the game.

To me, that’s the technical aspects of soccer — watching the strategy play out, aside from where the ball is, or what the score is.

	▲	avh02 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And then there's all the pretend injuries and exaggerating little scratches for the camera and ref. I don't watch sports but seeing that crappy behavior vs what rugby players go through is embarrassing to the footballers. I was also surprised to hear the ref's conversation with the players (mic) in a rugby game on TV. Made it so much better to all the miming that goes on in football. Also don't enjoy the ref slowly trotting across the field dramatically to go look at the video replay... Just get another ref to do it and report back or give the lead ref a damn phone to view it on.

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haskellshill 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I will never understand F1 fans. So many engineering hours and so much gas wasted just to drive in a circle a bit faster than the other guy. It's not even remotely applicable to any real task due to the myriad of arbitrary rules. At least football players are physically fit.

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shdhsjaha 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The F1 guys are probably as fit as a top footballer. They're dealing with black out levels of lateral G forces whilst slamming on the brakes within a fraction of a second of loser times or crashing out.

The MotoGP guys are far more fit - they have to use their bodies as counter ballast to make the curves. That's why MotoGP races are so short, they're at the limit of human endurance.

Look up any of these guys' gym routines

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Yeask 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And you don't get to see what makes teams win, the engineering.

	▲	anonzzzies an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, the people who did the engineering don't get medals.

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sien 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've played football (soccer for Americans) with people who were very good who didn't watch the game at all. Similarly for basketball.

People watch sports because it gives them an emotional investment in something that has a new result each week, is not scripted and shows incredible skill and fitness.

It's also a lot healthier than the people who follow politics like sport. They get moral when their team loses.

Do you watch TV, Internet videos, film, or read books ?

That's just another form of entertainment.

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emsixteen 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Insanely ignorant.