Guest Column: Sports from a man that hates sports

(Here's a treat. My buddy Marc, who my friends and I have put through hell for years decided to piece together his thoughts on sports in the following column. A little bit of info... Allegedly, Marc is Chinese, but I don't believe him. If you consider eating from Bao's Kitchen every night Chinese, then maybe he's got something. Marc is a famous Warcraft man, which I feel is nerdy, but I respect. He's also an ex-con, though his record has been cleared. Enjoy.)

Let me first start off by saying this: I hate sports. Athletics was never a major part of my life, or a minor, nor any part in between. I grew up playing a few sports, but only because I was forced to.

The first ever “sport” I can remember participating in was swimming. Now, some may argue that this doesn’t even count as a sport; for it is not entertaining to watch nor can any heterosexual man watch other men in Speedos swim laps in a giant toilet bowl.

The next sport that was forced upon me was soccer. I don’t know any of you have ever watched soccer, or played it, but it is a lot of fucking running. And I was a fat kid when I was young. And to add to the frustration, I had chronic asthma. Taking in all the factors we have 1. a lot of running, 2. a fat kid, 3. chronic asthma. 1+2+3=fuck this game.

The last straw was drawn with this thing called “baseball." America’s pastime can go fuck itself. I put my previous experiences aside, and decided to join a coach pitch league with some of my friends at the end of my elementary school career. Let me just point out, it was at this time that I peaked for my term as a Fat Kid. When they gave me my uniform, I almost cried. It accentuated my man breasts, and was not comfortable.

But that’s neither here nor there. This is about my hatred for sports, not my inability to function physically as a fatty. Notice that I previously mentioned it was ‘coach pitch.' Little did I know, that the term held no meaning whatsoever in what it actually was. At the first practice, I realized what I was up against. Not a generous coach pitching underhand to a kid who couldn’t hit the broad side of the McGowan household, but in fact it was a machine – the same one that is used in the batting cages. This was utterly outrageous. This was not baseball. I quit the day after the first game.

Now to 2007. I go to UConn, and I don’t even have to go into detail how insane the UConn basketball fans are. I am no longer a fat kid, and I hit the gym at least twice a week. There are a few things that I still carry with me 10 years later – my uncanny skill for video games (what else would you expect a fat, Asian kid to be good at?) and my undying hatred for all things sports.

How, how could one man hate something so much? Well, it’s simple really. I have known Daniel McGowan since 7th grade. When a group of our friends get together, there is only one topic to talk about – sports. This guy’s statistics, who’s better than who at this position, injuries, draft picks, you name it, they’ve talked about it. It’s never ending. In my opinion, who cares about baseball players on steroids, or quarterbacks fumbling snaps to lose their team’s chance at a Super Bowl? They get paid way too much to do what they do, but that’s a debate that’s been talked about in so many other places than here.

Let me call this example into play: The 2007 Super Bowl lasted approximately 5 hours. During this time, there were roughly 1.5 hours of commercials. The average cost of a Super Bowl commercial was $2.6 million dollars for 30 seconds of airtime. You can do the math there. But let’s take money out of the equation for a minute. The NFL has exclusive rights to the word “Super Bowl" and these two words used in this fashion spells trouble if you are a local Indianapolis church, where your party gets shut down by the NFL claiming copyright laws come into play when the church charges the viewers to cover popcorn costs. And God forbid you are watching the Super Bowl in your home – It was rumored that Terry Tate was sanctioned by the NFL to confiscate your T.V. if it exceeded 55. This one example is proof that the sporting industry has gotten out of hand.

So when I see kids outside of Gampel with their fold-up tents waiting for a game 3 days away in the 5 degree weather, I can’t help but laugh. I can understand when you have a passion for something, you are willing to do anything for it, but I just don’t understand how you can put yourself through those conditions just to stand for 2 hours jumping up and down watching an orange ball go into a hoop – the game is so unoriginal its pathetic. I challenge any sport-loving reader to try to argue the fact that what the NFL did was outrageous, that players get paid too much, or the fact that sports provide no benefit to society other than heated discussions at parties, and to blatantly piss me off as a contributing member to society.