It's the off season. The very fact that we call it the off season and not "basketball season" or "baseball season" means that we prioritize football over those other sports. So my question for discussion is why? What is it about football that makes all other sports fillers in between the NCG and labor day?
Or, if you disagree with my premise, what is it about other sports that makes it easier to be a fan/watch the game?
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When it comes to Virginia Tech, we call everything not the football season the offseason, because historically, there really hasn't been anything worth paying attention to during those months. Hopefully that changes going forward. Would love the school year to be defined as football season, basketball season, baseball season.
That being said, I do find it humorous that this thread is titled "Opinion Poll: Best Spectator Sport" and then the thread is about why we supposedly prioritize football over all others. Not sure the title matches the content.
"Historically?" Alum, you are talking recent history. Used to be, we had decent basketball and decent baseball teams, and an awful lot of us thought so. I won't go into the names like Dell Curry and Bimbo Coles or Franklin Stubbs or Mike Williams or...well, I am sure you get my drift. I do understand that recent grads didn't have the pleasure of those days, but let's not dismiss them altogether.
Yep, football is king for me too, but when they ain't playing, I'm very happy to get into the basketball and baseball season, and because I'm a Hokie fan, I pay pretty close attention regardless of the team's accomplishments, or lack thereof.
Yeah, I mean what I said.
The NCAA Tournament has existed for 75 years. Of those 75 years, we have made the field 8 times. Of those 8 times, only once did we advance to the Sweet 16. It has been 48 years since that happened. In our entire history, we have won 6 NCAA tournament games. There aren't many programs with a resume worse than that over their entire history.
And, again, I beg to differ. You said there "hasn't been anything worth paying attention to". I think there certainly was a lot worth paying attention to if you were a Hokie fan during those days. If the only measure worthy of attention from a fan is national ranking, then I guess you could be right, but, well, VT wasn't much on the national scene in any sport in those days. Somehow, we fans and alumni still managed to stay engaged and to enjoy basketball season, baseball season, and, ironically, our woeful football seasons as well.
I don't think you are wrong, exactly, you make your case, although maybe some of our NIT appearances in Bball could be considered significant. I do think our perspectives are different, though. It could just be a time and age thing, or maybe we're talking apples and oranges, and I just fail to see it. Either way, here's to even better days ahead.
Personally, my favorite sports to watch are football and soccer, and they're about equal in my book (although it doesn't get much better than a night in Lane). Which works out nicely as there always seems to be something going on in at least one of the two. So really the football off season isn't so bad for me.
As for why I find them both fun to watch, I think there are a lot of similarities as well as differences. Both feature a lot of pageantry and thrilling atmospheres. Football has a lot of waiting in between plays, which builds the anticipation for each play and there tends to be a lot of tense situations, even down to a 3rd and short. I appreciate soccer for the continuous action (and no commercials), and for me there's nothing in sports more exciting than a goal by my team in a close, hard fought match.
My dad was an all state player in baseball and even got a scholarship offer to Stanford and had "pro potential". He ended up playing for the Naval Academy instead but never lost his love for the game and passed that on to me. Now my favorite season is still Football Season but it would probably be a lie for me to say my favorite time is not enjoying a beer and peanuts will spending time at a ballpark, especially since he has been gone for a few years so it is a good way to remember him.
"...what is it about other sports that makes it easier to be a fan/watch the game?"
I find it very easy to be a fan/watch women's volleyball, for obvious reasons.
let me know when you start tailgating for volleyball games
Hockey is the best spectator sport.
Football is the best television sport.
Baseball is the best radio sport
golf is the best newspaper sport
UVA is the best toilet paper sport.
Sunday afternoon nap-time sport
hockey on the radio is awesome. DC isn't great, but Kenny Albert with Dave Maloney for the Rangers is fantastic. I kind of wish they would replace Sam Rosen and Joe Michiletti with Kenny and Dave.
The advantage of baseball is the slower pace allows for some great radio moments. Hockey on the radio is just so frantic. I've only ever heard the Capitals crew though
If you ever get the chance, if you're in NC during a Canes game, try to find the broadcast. Chuck Kaiton is absolutely one of the best in the game. Between him on the radio and John Forslund on our TV broadcasts, we are a bit spoiled with excellent announcers during games.
If only they had a team playing at the level those guys deserve to be calling.
It's amazing how underrated hockey is. Playoff hockey is some of the best sports action all year.
The best playoff in pro sports, in my opinion.
And possibly the worst run league.
I'm curious towards which angle you're coming from in regards to this
I don't think the average sports fan is interesting in a 2-1 hockey game. Coming out of the lockout, the league promoted scoring and awarded an average of 5.85 powerplays per game. That number has come down to 3.13 in the current year and 3.27 in the 2013-2014 season. http://www.hockey-reference.com/leagues/stats.html. On the other hand, the NFL is promoting offense more and more every year with the restrictions they are putting on the defense and which in turn produces more scoring.
On Monday the NHL outsourced their coverage of the trade deadline to TSN in Canada, as they always do. TSN does a great job covering the deadline but they really focus on the Canadian teams unless there is a big deal.
Gotcha... Thought for a second you were going to go with the "too many teams in the south" argument I hear far, far too often from the Northern elites.
I agree with your basic premise. The NHL out of the 2005 lockout was really good. They really cut down on the clutching and grabbing and allowed teams to showcase their skill and speed. Slowly, that emphasis went away and we're back to the teams who can grind out wins will be the ones with success. This leads to defensive snoozefests. That needs to be fixed.
Wow, the "too many teams in the south" is a horrible argument. It is unfortunate that they have a such a great product and can't seem to put everything together.
In my mind, there is nothing that matches the intensity of playoff hockey. I grew up playing baseball primarily, and still coach. Baseball is more of "my" sport.
However, it is a rough transition from watching playoff hockey to spring baseball...
I enjoy watching other sports, but nothing like football. I think it's the build up before every play and that anything is possible by the time the whistle blows. When a baseball play starts, there are really only a couple options for how it can end. Combine that with the physicality and it makes it fun to watch. That alone wouldn't make me split my calendar into football season and off season. You also have a culture surrounding football that I just don't see other sports having. You can't really tailgate for basketball. I never grew up somewhere where going to baseball games had nearly the atmosphere that football did. For baseball games, you brought a picnic...and a book.
Ironically I love soccer as a sport for all the opposite reasons I like football: focus on individual skill, game manager coaches instead of play calling ones, uninterrupted flow of the game. I suppose if I lived somewhere with stronger soccer atmosphere (say, England) I'd probably say that soccer season was the only one that mattered.
Wait, wait... There's OTHER sports besides football?
Yeah for me it's been the offseason since Germany pounded home the World Cup. Ah well, my offseason is 3 years 11 months long. In the meantime, I post senselessness on a website.
Shouldn't it either be track season or treadmill season for you?
The staccato nature of football makes it a very viewer friendly sport. If you need a trip to the john or to grab another beer you know you're pretty safe if you go right after a punt. You have time to send a text (celebratory or trash talk) between downs. You don't have to give it you're constant attention.
Baseball is probably the second most accommodating for viewers with the break between the top and bottom of each inning, but some people think it's a boring sport to watch, period.
Basketball, soccer and hockey require you to pretty much pay attention for the duration lest you risk missing the play of the game at any unannounced moment.
I don't understand why anyone watches golf or NASCAR. Neither can hold my attention.
Nascar is a great spectator sport. It is the only sport that I am aware of where you can bring beer in the venue. Also, the tailgating is insane, on par or maybe even better than football. The only problem with Nascar is it is just so damn loud. Seeing a race at a smaller track sucks because the noise is non stop for 4 hours. If you go to a track like Daytona the noise lasts for about 5 seconds then you get a minute or so break and you don't leave the track with a killer headache.
I think baseball is the best though.
So it isn't the sport itself but rather the things that surround the sport that make it better. Would you still watch nascar if it was solely just car racing around the track?
NASCAR and golf are both pretty exciting if you know what you are looking at. One of the best races I have ever watched was the final race of 2011 when Stewart and Edwards finished 1 and 2 and tied in overall points for the Sprint Cup.
If it's US in a World Cup Match, or the Hokies in soccer, I will watch, reluctantly, but just do not see the attraction of it otherwise. Hockey could disappear tomorrow, I'd never notice. I think I'd like playing it if I could skate, but honestly cannot understand the allure.
As soon as you can see the immense skill it takes to make some of the shots and saves that NHL players do and how much speed they play with it becomes way more interesting.
And my soccer loving friends say much the same thing about their passion. I see it, appreciate the idea of it, then yawn and turn on Beverly Hillbillies reruns or something.
That's a shame. Hockey is the most difficult mainstream sport in the world. It really deserves a bigger following than it has based on the skill and coordination required. It combines the hand eye of baseball with the physical contact of football with the foot coordination of soccer and the danger and reaction times of nascar, all while playing an 82 game schedule like basketball.
I grew up in the south and hockey wasn't an option. Nobody played it or watched it or talked about it when I was young. Went to one hockey game in Norfolk decades ago, but it didn't appeal to me. Same with soccer, lacrosse, and where I lived, racing wasn't a big deal either. I will add that the fighting turned me off, as well, but that's not the reason I don't care to watch it.
Very interesting opinion topic.
I'll start by saying that the most exciting part of spectator sports is the experience. If you're surrounded by other passionate fans, it's more likely (IMO) that you'll have a goosebumps-laden experience. A lot of that goes with success, but some of the most passionate (and often annoying) fans I've encountered recently are cheering on bad teams (watch a game surrounded by Buffalo Sabres fans and you'll never know they're the hockey equivalent of the 2014-15 Knicks).
Regular season-wise, I'll take College Football and College Basketball. College sports are so unique, because if you're a student of the team, you truly feel like a part of the team. You can be from a city and root for their sports teams, but if you're a VT student, you're really represented by the logo on the helmet (or jersey). Pro-wise, I'd take regular season NHL over anything else in the US if you're considering a standard game instead of a playoff-push situation. I haven't been to a real soccer game (only a DC United friendly vs. a bad English team a few years ago), but I imagine Premier League games are insane.
Honestly, I've never been to a playoff game in any sport that has lacked intensity (and this is coming from an all-DC sports fan who has never seen his team win anything). I'd still say hockey wins here, but found the NBA playoffs really exciting as well. Don't sleep on playoff baseball even if you find the game boring - it's edge-of-your-seat exciting because so many times, one swing of the bat can completely change the complexion of a game.
I will say, I'm not a big fan of attending live NFL games. Too many drunks and fights (and FWIW I attend more than just Redskins home games).
You don't even have to go overseas. MLS games can be very exciting from the stands. In fact, some of my best spectator experiences have come at Crew Stadium in Columbus. The Nordecke (their name for the hardcore, singing, yelling supporters) is wild and keeps the energy flowing all game long.
I don't doubt that - I've heard good things about Barra Brava as well (DC United), just haven't gotten myself out to RFK in ages.
My personal favorite in person is college basketball. In no other sport can you heckle the players in such an intimate setting, along with give the refs and opposing coaches the business. Prime example was when we made Marcus Smart look like a kid when he came to Cassell, the crowd rattled him so much it was probably one of his worst games in college. Football is a close second.
Any sport involving a Hokie team is a better spectator sport than any other team! And College football and College basketball are both better than professional as a spectator or viewer on TV.
The only, and I mean only, crappy thing about college basketball are how many unnecessary timeouts there are. Seriously, the last five minutes of regulation during a close college basketball game end up being about 45 minutes of real time. The NCAA really needs to do something about how many stoppages there are during the game. It really ruins the flow, especially if you throw in a few questionable calls that the refs spend valuable time looking at.
The last few minutes of a college basketball game are absurd with how long they take. Timeout after every basket by the team making the basket. Timeout after an inbounds. Timeout after a foul... Timeout after a timeout.
That part of the game just kills me. I hate it.
Meanwhile Coach FML is sitting back thinking "fools, don't you know all those timeouts could rollover?"
College basketball is a great spectator sport. Not just because you can heckle the players (which is very fun), but you also get a lot of excitement from the student section, and Cassell can be downright deafening at times. It's fairly easy to follow too, just wish there weren't so many TV timeouts.
A great sport to watch even if you know nothing about it is wrestling. The first time I had ever watched a match was at the Moss Arts Center against UVA. It was incredibly entertaining and the rules are easy enough that you can pick up on most of them pretty quickly without any explanation.
Not saying that NFL is worst, but its moving in that direction and is becoming difficult to watch during regular season. Too many stops for timeouts, reviews, penalties, commercial breaks ... or heaven forbid a player injury. (Not sure but NFL officials seemed to losen their grips on flags during playoffs this year, so that was a plus)
When your at home you just go grab a beer. In an NFL venue you wait at your seats or in a line for consumables or their exit. I find it very painful to watch especially when the game play is sloppy and your walet gets emptied.
I've found, unlike any other sport I enjoy watching, that the NFL is pretty boring when your team is trash. Like I can be happy sitting down and enjoying any CBB game on TV, any NBA game, and especially any CFB game. But aside from the Super Bowl, the NFL playoffs are lost on me if the Redskins aren't in it (and they've been in it twice since I was born, so...). I don't watch a ton of MLB, so this could probably apply here as well, but I consider myself a pretty casual Nats fan so they've actually been decent as of recently.
I'm probably far in the minority, but for me it's football & soccer or bust on tv. I love going to baseball games but rarely watch them on tv unless the O's are in a big one. I don't mind going to a hockey game here and there but have never gotten into it. Basketball bores me out of my mind. There are tons of people that can't understand being bored with basketball and not soccer, but soccer to me is so suspenseful. A giant can tumble with one misstep, a goal can happen in the blink of an eye. I've never made it to a game in England but I've been to 3 Liverpool games stateside and the atmosphere is incredible. Last summer here in Charlotte, the energy from the traveling Kop put Panthers fans to shame.
Football is an all day, if not an all weekend event. You food shop differently for football. Out of towners pack differently for football. You plan trips to football games with a large group of people, whereas baseball/basketball games are attended in smaller groups.
You get one day a week to watch college or NFL football (I know this is changing, but for argument's sake, you get one day). Football leagues have the ability to limit the market regardless of demand. You get an absolute maximum of 15 opportunities to watch VT compete each year. College basketball and baseball have twice that (don't even get me started on MLB...).
Cricket
Well, statistically speaking...
yeah, but that word "best" in the question comes into play...
seriously though, have you been to a cricket match? or a 3 day test? let alone a 5 day test? excruciatingly boring
it is the worst sport I have ever been to. However, I hear that the Indian league is something to see. The shortened the game, made it faster paced and added cheerleaders.
Being from North Carolina I enjoy watching College Basketball. I remember some of my teachers letting us watch the ACC tourney games during class. The first week of the NCAA Tournament is filled with so much intensity and excitement both on TV and in person.
Don't know if its my favorite, but I'm with you on the first weekend of the NCAA tourney. The wall to wall basketball from noon until after 1 am, the upsets, and coming up with dark ops plans on watching at work are very special.
Probably in the minor here, but the NBA Playoffs is by far my favorite postseason action of any sport. The only problem is that the regular season is way too long and the playoffs feel like a second half of a season. Aside from AAU teams, no one should still be playing basketball in the middle of June. But nonetheless, the action is great and usually the first round is better than the Finals.
I agree with you.
I was gonna say Hockey Playoffs and NBA Playoffs are the best
Cyclocross. Combines tailgating and racing. Google it.
*forgot heckling too.
Fencing, but I'm biased.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PjlChEUx1Y&t=48m27s
Check out this footage of the USA Women's Epee Team from the 2012 Olympics. It's pretty high drama stuff. Sadly embedding is disabled by the uploader.
I think that football, both pro and college, is so far ahead of every other sport because of the difference in amount of games. I think that if you made college basketball an all day type event on saturday, like college football, and played only like 18-20 games (mainly conference) from November-March in a season it would be just as electric as college football. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are way too many games in all of the other sports like basketball and baseball, and if you limited the amount of games, it would give the fans more incentive to come and support, tailgate, get hype for, etc., like football games. I know that the financial part and TV issues of everything probably wouldn't work, but I still think it'd be pretty awesome.
Women's beach volleyball.
Best spectator sport.
Hey, I know girls that watch football to see the guys bend over every 30 seconds, what's good for the gander....
Snowboard cross.
It's like the movie brink, on ice
Brink....I didn't know anyone here would wtf that is. Aggressive Inlining used to be a hobby of mine. That was a weird 3 year phase for me.
Sports fans are funny.... they like "their sport", and almost see it as a competition to prove to fans of other sports why their sport is better. I like all sports for the most part, and I at least respect the ones that I don't actively watch.
Lil Wayne explains how I feel in this opening monologue
Football is the only sport that I go out of my way to watch on TV, but I also enjoy basketball. The one hockey game that I've been to, I had trouble following what was going on, understanding the penalties, and overall staying interested (though the game had a really great atmosphere) I enjoy playing baseball/softball but the game moves much too slow for me to enjoy watching it. Soccer is similar in that I enjoyed playing it as an intramural sport in college, but other than a little bit of Team USA in the Olympics and the World Cup, I haven't really been that interested it watching it.
I've only seen part of one game that I caught late on ESPN one night and highlights online, but Australian football is really fun to watch. It has the speed and agility of soccer, high scoring of basketball, and and the spectacular catches ("marks") and contact of American football (big hits or "bumps" aren't as frequent but the players aren't wearing pads either). If I had the opportunity to play any organized sport besides football, Aussie football would be the one I'd want to try.
It confuses me when people say they have issues knowing what is going on in a hockey game, yet have no problem understanding every little intricacy of football without any issue. Hockey is simple. You can't hit players with your stick, you can only hit them when they have the puck. The puck has to cross the oppossing blue line before any attacking players can pass the line, and shooting the puck the length of the ice from behind the middle red line is not allowed. Everything else stems from those few rules.
I wanna know why they would ever call a penalty on icing. It's the best part of a cupcake. If you're going to make icing illegal, then I don't want any part of it. You can keep your sport, Canada...
It's not a penalty. when there's icing, everyone gets to stop play and enjoy it for a little bit.
Another reason to join #TeamPie
I understand the intricacies of football because I've played it in some form almost all of my life, starting with touch games as a kid, 27 games in pads (7 little league and 20 high school) plus practices, intramural flag football as a college student and staff member. I haven't ever played hockey past the point of hitting a can or baseball around with a broom. I think the other thing that made it hard to follow for me was that it was really fast paced with continuous action and unfamiliar patterns of movement.
Ah man that Arsenal/ManU match today is why I love soccer. Maybe not the cleanest performance, but that's the kind of nail biter I like in an FA Cup game. I love to hate ManU almost as much as I love to love Arsenal!