This is why I don't get why ppl like the NFL or professional sports in general.....

I'm a saints fan...I like Drew Brees, but I just turned on ESPN to find out that Drew Brees is asking for so much money that The Saints might not be able to keep a few of the key players.

This might dismantle the whole team....team on the field and team in the head.

About a month ago someone from another country couldn't understand why Americans liked college sports.

Well, with professional sports there is absolutely no allgiance. Drew Brees will walk if he wants to. Most of these professionals aren't from your state, region, town, and sometimes country. They really don't care as long as they get paid.

I live in Alabama. Here, the SEC football rivalry is thicker than blood. I HATE Alabama....with a passion. Auburn ppl HATE Alabama....Alabama ppl HATE Auburn. The kids grow up here and they are raised in that environment. They grow up with ties to that particular school....if they are good enough.

There are some exceptions to the rule, but for the most part you love your team.

I rarely ever watch sports, but I always liked college sports more. The players might not be as good on average, but the games are always more energetic. They're playing for a reason. They're striving for something important to them, both the team and their future career. Not just a contract renewal.

Well, you've got to remember that professional athletes usually only have around ten years in them before they have to retire, and a lot of them don't really have very many outstanding skills besides their ability to play sport X. They've got to make as much money as they can while they're still able to play the sport professionally. If this means that they have to run around from team to team, chasing the highest paycheck, then that's what they'll do.

But take this Drew Brees scenario for instance. He's asking for 5 mil a year. This is years past when he was superbowl MVP, won the super bowl and became a high profile player. He was making lots of money before this up and coming year. He has more money than the majority of average ppl who work their whole lives at a desk job.

It's not about getting as much as you can to survive...it's about getting as much as you can b/c you can.

I can't stand sports and think it's appauling how much athletes get paid (not saying they shouldn't be compensated for the entertainment they provide but that they are waaaaaay overpaid). I also can't stand how violent many big sports fans are (There's holes in the wall of this house due to some of the local resident's being big sports fans and putting them there when a team was losing)

They exist to promote gambling.

Nah the real reason is so they can destroy a scheduled tv program at a whim.

That is part of it. Sport's a big, serious business Whenever anything becomes a big, serious business, you can be assured that a lot of greedy, selfish, opportunistic people are going to flock to that field.

I'll take it one step further and say that I don't understand why anyone likes professional sports, regardless of where the players come from. Personally, playing sports is the most boring, repetitive and pointless activity possible, but I can understand why some people would enjoy them. However, none of these reasons apply to watching other people play the sports for you. It seems kind of silly to me.

Because their skills are impressive? Idunno, it's like asking someone why they like music or art. You just...do.

I don't understand why you need to be proud of having your team's players from the area. I'm Canadian and I like American football but Canadian football doesn't interest me.

Same could be said about video games, or watching a Let's Play series about video games.

Two words: vicarious thrills.


Well, not exactly. Competitive team sports are the equivalent of... freestyle rap, for instance.

Elaborate on this?

OP claims not to "get" professional sports then proceeds to talk about sports. Sounds like a sports guy to me.

You should maybe read the entire post...

But its about...sports. Lol, I read the first sentence "I don't get why ppl like the NFL or professional sports in general....." but the "this is why" makes a world of difference, doesnt it? Ah well.

I like playing the sports, especially if its with good friends. I'm not very great at them (hell, to this day I don't really know most of the rules to football and basketball), but if your playing for fun, I like it.

What I can't stand however, is watching sports. I just don't get it.

Eh... this will be a bit muddy:

Art has a creator, right? The product can't do anything but what the creator has intended for it to do. Most art is prefabricated. A sport equivalent would be... synchronised swimming. With music, a track always sounds the same. With books, what you read once will always read the same way in consecutive read-throughs. With video games, you have a set game-space and your character can only do X, Y and Z, and there are only so many assets (animations, textures, videos, etc.). [This is where it gets muddy... While all the assets are the same, each playthrough of a game can be different. There is a difference between a video game and a competitive team sport, though. But this is already getting long... And it blurs even more: there's not much difference between CoD and football.]

When you consider any freestyle art, though, the defining characteristic of it is that the creator is making it up as he or she goes along. It still has rules -- for instance, with freestyle rap, there has to be rhythm and rhyme.

Because competitive team sports involve uncertainty -- you don't know what the other team is going to do -- you're basically "freestyling" throughout the whole game.

Yeah. /done

Very, very ignorant comment to make. It shouldn't be an alien concept to you because you play video games.

Although I'm not surprised at the comments when you get other threads here in which the majority assert that they're either thin as a rake, overweight, or otherwise generally unhealthy.

Erm, players are employees, and the team is their employer.

There's plenty of happy employees who are fine with what they make, and then there's some who want more. In the case of Brees, you can't really deny that he's earned his pay increase, someone will pay him even more. If he wasn't worth the price tag he wouldn't be paid that much, pretty simple.

Player allegiance? Teams readily fire coaches when a team is losing, release players who don't have the most clean personal life (yet are good players when they are), so this goes both ways -- I see no reason for complaint, fair is fair.

How about why so many gamers who play MMORPGs enjoy grinding endlessly in the same areas/dungeons, why people do the same job every single day for years and decades, or clean the same area of a house repeatedly every day? People are chalk full of can easily, and broadly, be perceived as repetitive and boring. That's life.

I used to watch college sports but they seem to me to be far too exhibition-style, even if there's plenty of rabid fans. I prefer watching professional sports. (<- well, more like the NHL and sometimes NFL)

That's not the team. Those are management decisions.

For the same reason you'd watch somebody play video games.
There isn't much difference between video games and sports is the bottom line. There isn't much you said that couldn't be changed just slightly to explain sports.
Essentially what I've been trying to say through perspective.

Management is a representative of... ?

Players? Nope. You got it, the team.

No... Management is a representative of the people who own the team.

There might be and there may not be, depending on what aspects of which activity you're comparing. If you want to start a new thread, I wouldn't mind taking it up there. I don't want to derail this thread, though.

It's simple....they are like video or computer games....they are an extension of what normal ppl would like to be. If you've played sports at all in your life it's easy to get into watching them. B/c eventhough you're not a professional, you understand the logistics. Then on any given Sunday, you're suprised with something special.

Like a front flip into an enzone or a quarter back breaking a 30 year old record.

I don't care....I make threads for ppl to have a conversation.