Sunday, March 27, 2011

march nothingness

I enjoy March Madness for a different reason than most everyone else does. I love this stretch of time when most other people are spending time watching a sport that I don't care about and TV shows are preempted, so that I can get a bit of extra time that I wouldn't have if I were a basketball fan.

By rights I probably should care about basketball. Now that I have a degree from the University of Kansas, I probably should care how the basketball team does. Of all the major sports, though, basketball is probably the one I care about least. I really, genuinely don't care. Golf, tennis, and NASCAR don't count as major sports.

I have a few problems with basketball. First, it is the sport where physical build most obviously trumps determination. Someone who is seven feet tall is going to outplay someone who is five-and-a-half feet tall regardless of the amount of practice they put in. Second, I can't recognize most strategy in the game like I can for a game like football, so it just looks repetitive to me. Finally, I have never played basketball well, so I never had a reason to care about the sport.

The problem is, most people assume that if you are a man in your thirties and you have an interest in some sports you must like college basketball. I don't like to keep pointing out that I don't care about the sport, so I usually find other ways to deflect conversations about basketball at this time of year. This used to be pretty difficult when I was in class at KU and everyone wanted to talk about the games, the players, the history, etc. I was relatively successful in avoiding looking like I had no school spirit when that was the reality, though.

Do you have anything similar where you just don't care about something you probably should? Is there something you don't always readily admit just simply doesn't matter to you?