I’m not here to delve into the rea­sons that mod­ern spec­ta­tor sports exist, or the moral­ity of pay­ing ath­letes mil­lions of dol­lars to play games that involve balls for our amuse­ment. Instead, I’m here to talk about some­thing that I’ve never really fig­ured out for myself: what sports I enjoy watch­ing. Since I’m in a list mood, I will present this as a list of modern/popular sports, and my reaction/rating to each.

Base­ball

Amer­i­can Flags, Apple Pie, and Base­ball. It’s fairly impos­si­ble to claim that you don’t like watch­ing base­ball and yet still claim to be Amer­i­can. Luck­ily for me (I think), I don’t hate base­ball. I’m known to attend about one or two Mariners games a year, and may even watch a cou­ple on TV when I’m bored out of my mind and noth­ing else is on. Still, I don’t under­stand how peo­ple can be fas­ci­nated with this sport and fol­low every move. My ver­dict? Base­ball: an okay sport to watch.

Amer­i­can Pro­fes­sional Foot­ball (NFL)

Pro­fes­sional foot­ball has always seemed to be rather pre-scripted and dull. The play­ers are expe­ri­enced, the plot lines are tired, and the teams are pre­dictable. Yet at least 50% of my Sun­days and Mon­day evenings find me in front of a TV or screen watch­ing pro­fes­sional foot­ball. I don’t go to games, but find some­thing pri­mal and enjoy­able with this sport. Pro­fes­sional Foot­ball: watch­ing highly paid men hit each other really hard is pretty great, but I don’t care about the teams.

Amer­i­can Col­le­giate Foot­ball (NCAA)

I care a lot about the Huskies. About their games, their sched­ule, their line­ups, their coaches, their play­ers, and their record. I’m a sea­son ticket holder, and can’t explain why I love the Huskies. Except I do. There’s noth­ing sim­i­lar to watch­ing 72,500 fans, decked out in Pur­ple, caus­ing the entire sta­dium to phys­i­cally shake while they pound the crap out of lesser teams. Col­le­giate Foot­ball: OH HELL YEAH HUSKY FOOTBALL.

Pro­fes­sional Basketball

I miss the Super­Son­ics. I didn’t watch them that much, but there was some­thing oddly refresh­ing watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to their games. I still get crav­ings to attend their games. Pro­fes­sional Bas­ket­ball: Dead to me with­out the Sonics.

Col­le­giate Basketball

Don’t really care about col­lege bas­ket­ball unless it’s March Mad­ness. Dur­ing March, my care-o-meter raises from about “what? col­leges play bas­ket­ball?” to “I guess this is kind of cool.” Col­le­giate Bas­ket­ball: Don’t really care most of the time.

Soccer/Football

Now this is the sport you would think I would like to watch. I played Soc­cer until my junior year in High School, and was always really into it. When the Sounders joined the MLS, I tried to care, I really did. I watched their games, I read their news, and I payed atten­tion to their sched­ule and year. But it just didn’t click. The World Cup is fairly inter­est­ing though. Soc­cer: Unex­plained disinterest.

Roller Derby

Not really a “pop­u­lar sport,” but I love watch­ing the local Roller Derby teams. Per­haps it’s still not pop­u­lar enough to be uncool. Roller Derby: Not pop­u­lar enough, so I still like it.

Hockey

Hockey? I’ve heard of that before. Hockey: Eh?