hands down the best sports

hands down the best sports. no sport can compare to boxing/mma !!!!!!!!

 

MMA is great in that you get to see what martial art is the best. If you only have a good stand up game you would get destroyed. You need to be very well rounded, have a wrestling background, etc.

Sports I really like are: Soccer, Rugby League, Tennis, and Cycling.

Besides the TDF I don't really watch much cycling though. It's not very spectator friendly much like poker I prefer being involved in the activity instead of watching it.

 

I have to answer by type of engagement:

Participating in: table tennis
Watching on television: Summer Olympics Track and Field (swimming and diving, too)
Watching the kids play: soccer
Gambling on: Jai Alai

 

ROFL!!! Ditto! It's entertaining to watch but getting your ****s kicked takes away all the fun in that sport lol

 

American Football and Basketball by far. You get to see amazing athleticism almost every play. Boxing and MMA is entertaining as well but not like Football and Basketball. Plus you can be a fan for life with a football and basketball team. You get to enjoy the good years when your team is on top and relish those good years even more after living through some or many bad years. Boxing and MMA fighters have a relatively small span to cheer for. All the Ali fans are still die hard but they can't watch a new Ali fight. Lakers fans have had their ups and downs but were able to watch a new game today (definitely a down).

 

Cycling, snowboarding and swimming

 

That is a good point. A lot of times I think it has to do with the home town pride or in state pride. The professional team represents a large metropolitan area or even a state and that gives a type of ownership to the people of that city or state and they just continue to root for the home team good or bad.
As for me I played football, basketball, tennis, and ran track in high school. I played a year of football in college but now I usually just play some basketball or go surf when time permits.
Do you play any sports?

 

I have often wondered about this myself and my conclusion is that it is simply a continuation of the "home town" cheering that goes on in high school sports. In high school sports, it is your friends and neighbors that are competing against "strangers" from other towns, so the loyalty to a sports team is localized and based upon reasonable principles. That all goes away with college and professional sports, but the majority of fans continue to root for the "local team" out of habit, I believe. That said, there is always a percentage of people who do not root for the "home team" and they are viewed as "traitors" by the loyal base. Being in New England, I put up with the diehard Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins and Celtics fans all of the time. As a guy who does not really follow professional sports and has no team favorites in any of them, I am viewed as a real anomaly that no one knows how to deal with. I cannot be shamed or talked into depression when a local team loses and, likewise, I do not get excited when a home team wins.

What I have never understood is how joyful or despairing some grown adults get over the results of a particular professional sports game that has NO effect on their lives. I have seen grown men come into work mad as hell the next day after a loss and let it affect their mood for many hours or days beyond that. I will ask them: "Has this cost you money or hurt your family or caused anything of significance to happen to you personally?" I ask the same question to people who are buoyed by a "big win." Silly, if you ask me.

I briefly watched the end of a rugby game last night between NZ Black and some sort of U.S. team that was put together quickly to "compete" with the NZ team which is on tour. The U.S. lost 72 to 6 or something like that. I found myself enjoying the advanced play of the NZ team (they were obviously professionals playing against amateurs) and the spunk of the U.S. team that kept trying, despite being outclassed. I think that both teams "won" this exhibition. But I suspect my attitude would be viewed as "traitorous" to some fellow citizens here.

 

Well, I would not worry too much about the next 20 years or so. Look at how long the U.S. has had both college and professional soccer teams and they still are not really of the same caliber as the top teams in the world. U.S. football, baseball, basketball, and hockey will continue to get the bulk of the athletic talent in the U.S. Hard for any "new" sport to compete with them.

 

i think jogging with rope jumping good these days in winter

 

jrbiz I see your point that the US has little success with soccer but it's success or lack thereof has more to do with soccer and rugby not being nearly as popular nor profitable. I agree with sarahk that if the US population did focus on rugby the way we focus on American Football and Basketball, and rugby was as profitable, then the US would dominate. I would have to add on to sarahk's comment that not only the much larger population of the US over NZ, but the capital investment that Americans put into their sports greatly outmatches most other if not all other countries.

 

That was my intended point when I commented that the four traditional American sports get all of the talent. It is because of the popularity, money, and attention paid to those sports, of course.

 

Ah, yes, I can see that now. Sorry about arguing your point with the same point.
Rugby is gaining a lot more traction here in Hawaii as well as the state of Utah in the US. It is really popular amongst Polynesians. When I was in high school back in the mid 90's here in Hawaii rugby was a sport that most of our fathers and uncles played, but we played football. Now my high school has a rugby team and it has gotten really big here in the Hawaiian islands. So maybe it will only take the US 15 years for Rugby?

 

This is an interesting thread, but being a marketer at heart I found @sarahk's comment of strong customer loyalty to substandard products fascinating. You do see this loyalty in the commercialized product industry (ahem...Apple), but I don't think it is a strong as a sports team. Having grown up in Denver and lived in Pittsburgh, two dominant football towns, I've watched fan loyalty even when the teams played consistently bad.

Even more intriguing (and quite sad) is the deep devotion fans have when the star players are dubious or criminal. When Ben Roethlisberger (Pittsburgh's quarterback) had charges of rape brought against him I was blown away the way people would defend such actions. They had no connection to the alleged victim, but had somehow created a strong fictitious connection with Rethlisberger to come to his defense about such horrible actions. I am sure if it was their daughter or sister they would feel differently. I would be interested to see if this was also the case with Oscar Pistorious's fans in South Africa.

These reactions even seem more ludicrous when you consider @jrbiz's comment about how fan loyalty is created even though there is no true financial impact on the fan (mostly). If you could create this sort of customer loyalty in a commercial product or service you could take over the world! Oh, wait, is that Google's and Facebook's plan Ü.

 

You know, I think that U.S. soccer is growing in popularity a bit, but it has been a looong haul. I had a friend who became a pro soccer player in the league that was around in the 1970's. Not sure how far they made it into the 1980's before closing up shop. Recently there has been a professional soccer league around for a while and the local team (New England Revolution) plays in Gillette Stadium (when the Patriots are not using it, of course) and their games are broadcast on a local cable sports channel. The team and the league seem to be profitable. So some progress has been made over the past 40 years, but not a lot.

So, I really don't know how long it would take Rugby to become a mainstream U.S. sport. Lacrosse is another potential up and comer and it is a native sport that has gotten some traction in the past 20 years or so. One of my current sales reps is a former professional Lacrosse player. He also played at Yale. There was a World Championship or something like that in June in Colorado that he had planned to participate in his age bracket, but it did not work out.