Men and their Sports

As a little girl I grew up watching sports.  I remember my dad watching sports on Saturday and Sundays and I don't think he ever missed a game of Monday night Football. Saturday afternoons were always "Wide World of Sports" on ABC with Howard Kosel.  We only had Channels for CBS, NBS, ABC, and a couple of other UHF channels. There was no satellite or cable TV then, our television came to us through a large antenna on the roof of our house and rabbit ears on the top of the TV Set or Console. Yes our televisions were once large enough to actually be considered pieces of furniture.

Anyway, I digress. On Saturdays we watched Howard Kosel as he announced everything from ice skating to boxing, to track and field. Whatever the sport was, my dad was watching.  On Sundays, my siblings and I got up and had breakfast (Sunday breakfast was always Dad's day turn to cook) and then we got dressed and caught the white bus the church sent around to take us to Sunday School.  Daddy never went to Sunday church, so he stayed home and watched his sports.  Sunday's were football and car racing, and he loved it.

Monday nights were Monday night football. Daddy would come home from work and eat dinner with us, (in those days we actually sat down to dinner as a family around the dining room table every night) and then he would watch the news just before the game. Being Monday he spent all day working hard so he was tired at the end of the day.  As he sat on the couch every Monday night watching the game he would inevitably fall asleep.  He was funny though. No matter how deep in sleep he might be, no matter how loud the snore,  if you tried to change the channel (which I admittedly attempted many times in my teenage years when my "bedtime" was later) he would wake up instantly, and remind you that "I'm watching that, turn it back". Granted changing on a channel then wasn't stealth and silent like it is today with remotes, it was dial than clicked and snapped every time you moved from one channel to the next.  I wanted to point out that he was actually sleeping, but I knew it was futile, so I returned the channel to the football game and let him finish watching it through his closed eyelids.

Flash forward 40 some odd years (yes they have been odd) and my Jeff will watch any sport he can when given the opportunity.  It's actually quite funny.  There are literally dozens of channels that broadcast sporting events for us to chose from today, 7 days a week .  And many providers actually offer packages that will give even more depending on the season and the sport. Direct TV offers an NFL Package so you can see EVERY game on Sunday. There are Nascar packages, Baseball Packages, Golf Packages, Basketball Packages, and more.

I refuse to by the packages (priced at hundred of dollars for the season), so Jeff has to suffer with the dozens of channels he already has, poor guy.  Anyway,  I find it crazy that he and many men watch so many sports, even ones they don't really care about or like.   For instance Jeff is a baseball, football, car racing, golf guy. He doesn't really follow basketball, tennis, motor-cross, winter sports, and other miscellaneous.  But when desperation sets in and nothing else can be found he suddenly sparks an interest in one of these sports which are obscure in our household.  Its not uncommon for me to wake up at 5 a.m. when he is have a difficult time sleeping and to see tennis, or water polo or some some other oddity on TV. Even in the sports he follows, there are occasionally games and events that he doesn't like or want to watch, but...and here's the crazy obsessive part....even if he has no interest, just because he needs his sports fix, he will watch anyway.

You may wonder what sparked this whole blog, well it was the Ryders Cup.  Yes, for those who don't already know, this is a golf tournament played in which Americans compete against the Europeans.  There are a series of rounds which include teams, couples, and singles and at the end they determine who is best, Americans or Europeans.  Jeff has stated many times how much he hates this event,  and yet,  when he could find no other sport to occupy his time, he watched it anyway.  Its the equivalent of me saying I hate Southpark and then sitting down to watch a 3 day marathon of it.

I've acclimated to the sports enthusiast Jeff is,  and I can even embrace it in measure.  I join him in his football picks each season and have even won in the past.  I don't mind a little sport in my life and even surprise myself and Jeff when I know a little about it in conversation now and again. When I get bored, I grab a book or find  something else to entertain myself with.  The only thing I don't understand and I lose patience with is the need to watch a sport or event just for the sake of watching sports.  If you have no interest, no desire to keep up with it, then why waste your time.

Are most men like this?