Anyone know why sports seem so popular than nerdy pursuits?

[JamalChristophr]

Just hand over your lunch money and stop talking.

… (just kidding)

Sport is something visceral and really plays on the the human passions strongly. Just like in the days of the gladiators and the Roman Coliseum. It gets people stirred up inside. The intellectual activities of man, being rational, play a much lesser role because it does not activate human emotions as does “sport”.

 

[DisorientingSneeze]

Like these? I remember them, lol!
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Oh my Grandfather had one of those! We used to dare eachother to use it and then scream our heads off. ( If you’re kid height it really shakes your whole world) He kept it around insisting it helped break up kidney stones.

 

[Joe_5859]

Written by Conan O’Brien, too. He didn’t write many episodes, but the ones he did write are classics.

I still sing “I am so smart. S-M-R-T…I mean, S-M-A-R-T” anytime I do something clever—which, I guess isn’t all that often.

 

[TK421]

Because to me athletic stuff shouldn’t be as important and many jock types remind me of those who used to bully me for being a nerd in school and took my lunch money. I feel that academic pursuits should be more focused on, plus it may not be every athlete or sports fan,but most seem kinda dumb. Like they don’t know about stuff like history or such or know about any books.

I think at least as many (probably much more) people have interests in brainy things: even a hobby like cooking is all about chemistry and creativity. Academic hobbies aren’t usually spectacles though, so they don’t attract crowds the way football does at the World Cup or something.

Sports are a healthy agent to build discipline and unity and friendship. You shouldn’t look down on them. Pope St John Paul II was an athlete and a scholar. Most scholars are also a little bit athletic.

I’m sorry you’ve had negative experiences at school and that you were bullied. This is very painful. I don’t think their rudeness and abuse has anything to do with the sports they play. It has to do with other things, like the kind of home they come from.

Peace.

 

[jesusmademe]

What if they stoped broadcasting football and started broadcasting academic stuff instead?!
I dont really underatand why football is so popular around the world but…neither is Mass academic to twll you something important.

 

[TK421]

They do broadcast academic things all the time.

 

[PetraG]

What if they stoped broadcasting football and started broadcasting academic stuff instead?!
I dont really underatand why football is so popular around the world but…neither is Mass academic to twll you something important.

You’re a bright person. Why should all of TV revolve around what interests you?
There is plenty of academic programming on the internet. (Do not get me started with what happened to the “History Channel.”)
You could not have chosen a more interesting time to be “nerdy.” Besides the special-interest programming online, there are on-line and real-time conventions of the like-minded for every sort of nerd, and I do mean EVERY kind. There is no reason to obsess about what other people do with their free time. Whatever you want to do with yours, there is someone out there with similar interests.

 

[blackforest]

Great poetry doesn’t activate human emotion? Anna Karenina? The Eureka moments of the mathematician? Beethoven’s Fifth? Western cultures have fixated themselves on a centuries-old false dichotomy of intellect-vs.-emotion.

But can great athletics require intelligence? Can intellectual activities require passions to be stirred as a motivation to pursue them?

I’m not trying to launch a debate so much as stir our “brain-pots” a little.

 

[jesusmademe]

Instead of football: sorry, Arsenals vs Mabchester will not be broadcasted. Instead there will be a two hour long discussion on 17th century philosophy! I say this since I dont understand football! Not that i get philosophy

 

[jesusmademe]

Credo I is emotional but not too “animal” like in sports.

 

[jesusmademe]

Blessed John Paul II Speaks to Athletes

Homilies, Messages and Speeches on Sport Edited by Kevin Lixey, Norbert Müller, and Cornelius Schäfer Introduction by Bishop Carlo Mazza Copyright © LIBRERIA EDITRICE VATICANA Photo on the front

thesportjournal.org

As John Paul II noted, “Christian life is like a rather demanding sport, combining all a person’s energies to direct them towards the perfection of character, towards a goal which realizes in our humanity ‘the measure of Christ’s gift’ (Eph 4:7).”

What do you athletes think about this?

 

[JamalChristophr]

Oh, it’s true, but these pursuits require greater application of the mind. People will get mad at me if I denigrate sport to awfully much. It’s really all about following the golden mean, at least in some measure.

Playing sport against intellectual activities is problematic. But I think America , in general, is too caught up in the world of sport. I don’t want to get you intellectual sports fans riled up, though. I know there are plenty of you here on CAF.

 

[on_the_hill]

No reason one can’t be a jock and a nerd at the same time.

My son loves video games and goes to Magic:The Gathering pre-release parties at the local comic book store. You wanna talk about nerds? Go to an MTG release party.

He also plays tackle football, throws the shotput and discus, and swims. My daughters aren’t nerds, but they are excellent students and on cross country/track teams.

I myself didn’t participate in any scholastic sports. After Little League, at which I was awful, I avoided sports and jocks pretty nearly until I graduated college. Then I joined the rowing team. I was shocked at how many graduate students, PhD students in STEM programs (mostly computer science) were not only rowers, but were rock climbers, mountain bikers, triathletes, etc.–one had even been a professional racquetball player.

I will say this: our middle child (a girl) was a rec-soccer phenom when she was 7 years old. My wife and I were shocked at a) how many people around the rec-soccer league started to recognize our daughter and b) how popular we ourselves had become.

Whereas when our oldest child (a girl) played rec-soccer, we had friendly conversations with the other parents on the team. But when No. 2 started playing, people we didn’t know were seeking us out to talk to us. It was eye-opening as to how important sports performance is to people.

 

[on_the_hill]

One of the greatest of all time.

 

[Joe_5859]

You wanna talk about nerds? Go to an MTG release party.

I’ve been to a few recently. This is accurate.

 

[on_the_hill]

I used to plead with him. “Do you really want to spend hours and hours inside like that?”
But–it makes him happy.
So does weight lifting make him happy.
I let him do it now and try not to guilt-trip him.
He’s 13, by the way. Aside from a couple of his friends, I think the other players are all in their mid 20s to mid-30s.

 

[Joe_5859]

My niece and nephew have been getting into the game, so my brother and I go along with them. So we are older than most of the people there and his kids are younger than all of the people there. Prior to that, the last time I regularly played MTG was 25 years ago. That reminds me, I need to sell a few cards on ebay. I found out my dual lands from the Revised edition go for hundreds of dollars each, apparently.

 

[PetraG]

Great poetry doesn’t activate human emotion? Anna Karenina? The Eureka moments of the mathematician? Beethoven’s Fifth? Western cultures have fixated themselves on a centuries-old false dichotomy of intellect-vs.-emotion.

But can great athletics require intelligence? Can intellectual activities require passions to be stirred as a motivation to pursue them?

I’m not trying to launch a debate so much as stir our “brain-pots” a little.

I would venture to say that the emotional investment and release are both real but quite different from each other.

This does not happen at the opera:

Apple Watches thought fans watching Saints-Vikings were having heart attacks

The incredible finish was not for the faint of heart

www.cbssports.com

 

[Allegra]

I’d say that the majority of universities accept anyone that can find the means to sign a check. Whether or not individual schools within the university will take you on is another story, but that’s why most have a college of arts and sciences.

 

[ZMystiCat]

What if they stoped broadcasting football and started broadcasting academic stuff instead?!

How else do you think Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson got so famous?

Instead of football: sorry, Arsenals vs Mabchester will not be broadcasted. Instead there will be a two hour long discussion on 17th century philosophy!

As someone who doesn’t mind debating or reading arguments, debates are pretty boring to watch. It’s two people talking to each other, often in a predictable fashion if you’re at all familiar with the topic.

Sports, in contrast, tell a consistently unique, unpredictable story. There’s the story of heartbreak as a country watched its national team in their favorite sport lose horrifically while hosting a worldwide tournament, all while the rest of the world laughed and cheered. There’s the story of a team who had to overwork their defensemen against the largest, most aggressive team in the league through the longest game in their ninety-year history and managing to come out on top. There’s the story of the hometown hero who frustratingly left to go win a championship but later returned and lead his team to the first major championship victory that the city had seen in decades. Then there’s the team who, in their first year of existence, almost won the championship, only to lose to a team who had flirted with victory for years but always came up short.

Really, sports is as much the beauty of play as it is the stories it tells. It’s pretty hard to capture that same excitement with a discussion of philosophy from a few hundred years ago.

You wanna talk about nerds? Go to an MTG release party.

But the smell!