Curling. Curious sport, can be played with a beer in hand (How very Canadian). A friend from Turkey mentioned having watched a game and my first thought was "By choice?" Extraordinarily dull to watch...until...you begin to understand the process involved and you find yourself yelling with the other fools, "HURRY, HURRY HARD!!!! Insidious.
I had only a passing curiosity with curling (apart from an NPR radio news program about curling... really, it was very cool; even the sound of the stone was fascinating) until -- get this -- it showed up in a Winter Olympics videogame for the Nintendo 64.
It was a compilation of winter sports, with GS skiing, bobsledding, ski jumping, etc. Despite all those high-speed action sports, the best one to play, especially with two or more people, was
curling. By FAR. Even though the controls were simple -- aim, set strength, set spin, then send the stone out & sweep as necessary -- it had just enough of a blend of strategy, skill, and a little bit of randomness that made it a friggin'
blast.
On to some others mentioned earlier, and my opinions on them...
Soccer. It's boring... unless you've played it yourself, played it a lot to gain some good knowledge, and can watch with close enough attention that you can see the trends in play, how much one team can probe the other's defense, setting up breakaway plays, little bits of streetball footwork that would make any of us simply fall over if we tried to stop it, etc etc.
Billiards/pool is VERY difficult at the highest levels of the game. Playing on a "bar box" among friends doesn't even scratch the surface. When you finally get to see someone in person make each shot -- and end up with the cue ball in an ideal place for the next shot
every time -- it starts getting good. When you start learning the value of putting just the right English on the ball to make it AND the target ball behave a certain way, then the true depth of the game becomes apparent.
NASCAR on TV is fucking boring. They could run a CNN-style ticker, with no video, and get the point across. Accidents aren't even entertaining to me -- they're irritating, because the actual racing has to stop. NASCAR in person, especially if you get lucky enough to be in the pits to watch the teams up close, is just badass. God, those cars sound good (if you've been around enough hopped-up engines at the amateur level, you'll realize how badly they're tuned and how amazingly well these professional motors run). The pitwork itself is a lot of fun to see up close, too.
Drag racing is okay, but for me, I'm tired of it. I'm not going to have any more fun with it unless I throw a LOT more money into the car. Driving -- that is, driving a car that's slower than, say, 10 seconds -- is way too simple, too. Get the launch and don't hit the wall. I'd rather do some turning in my racing, and autocross is where I have the most fun for my buck.
Baseball is boring... if you approach it the wrong way. If you're a stats-monger, or if you go there to hang out & watch some ball (there's a reason why it's called a "ball
park"), it's a good time. If the game is close, it's even better; lots of tension builds up between pitches when each one can make the difference between your team winning or losing. Don't expect to be hoarse the next day, though.
I can find most sports either boring or interesting depending on how much I'm paying attention and how much I've learned about them.
Noticed this post, though:
I think it's because I think the Olympics actually mean something; it's not a never-ending parade of we're number one this year, blah blah blah. It seems to me that Olympic sport demonstrates the limits of human ability at this point in time and that to me is more remarkable than any cup or series or anything else. I was moved to near tears, as many of the athletes were, at seeing the field events take place at Olympus itself. Never would I have expected such a reaction yet there it was. The magnitude of the event was simply staggering. It was one of those times I felt deeply privileged to have been born in western culture.
Man, I fucking LOVE the Olympics. Every single participant looks like they're pouring their entire SOUL into their performance. Miss this one, and they have to wait four more years before they can try again; miss that, and they'll probably be too weak, slow, or tired to even think about making it to a third.
It's the one time when every nation on the planet sends their best to DO their best. It's the last truly astonishing spectacle in sports, IMO.