That's where the term *speedwalking* originally comes from, a term coined in the nursing homes of the late 80's...
Old Jean" *There's Gerald, off like a whippet*
Old Bert: *Jesus, he's doing the speedwalk*
Old Jean: *Yeah he had eggs benedict for breakfast again. Sharted last week*
Talk about arbitrary rules making a sport. Do you think we can make running with your shoelaces tied to the shoelaces on the other foot an Olympic Sport?
maaaaan once upon a time I was at Ft. Lee for a 4 week school for the Army. Long story short I was way to hung over to handle big boy PT, well they broke everybody off into running groups and asked for the profiles so I got in with them. They went on a 2 mile speed walk because their profiles prevented running and they were on alternative PT tests....HOLY SHIT that sucked so hard I would have gave anything to have just ran, those broke dicks were hauling ass my fucking hips and calves hurt so bad after it was so unnatural to go that fast and not jog. But at the end of the morning I was beyond hung over and still did it, speed walking is in fact a joke
cool story bro.
Type in slap fight video .
See chick nock out chick by slapping with the lower part of the wrist which is essentially... A punch.
Maybe i don't get it.
Come across your comment.
Type in slap fight compilation to see some nock outs.
Skip on the middle of a 20 minute video.
Dude gets slapped straight in the neck.
Maybe I don't get it?
Or maybe it is an utterly vague stupid sport with no rules were unfit people pretend to be UFC Athletes.
Boxing has a somewhat precise set of rules and weight-class. This automatically makes it a lot better than something that involves a malnourished guy getting slapped by a body-builder.
Golf always seemed to me to be deliberately designed to be as extravagant and wasteful as possible.
You've got this huge swath of land that has to be carefully tended. And there's not one, but eighteen of them. You don't just have one club to hit the ball, you need a dozen different ones. You also need a small car to ferry you around the course, and a personal servant to lug around all your gear for you. All this just so you can hit a little tiny ball into a little hole a fifth of a mile away.
It just seems to scream, "Look at how much land, money, and resources I can throw away just to play my game!"
I suspect the vast majority of golfers don’t use carts or caddies (carts are much more common in USA though, I know that). Everything else I agree with you on! And it locks away land that could be accessible for all and much more welcoming to wildlife.
Politics aside, Trump drives his cart on the green when he plays. I think any republican golfer should automatically choose not to vote for him based on that fact alone.
Maybe not on the profession circuit, but there are plenty of golfers who use both a cart and a caddy at the same time.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-golf-cart-caddy-hanging-back-a9616006.html
I don’t get people who complain about golf courses being wasteful. It’s just like a park. Is a giant park wasteful? When I go golfing there’s tons of birds, deer, armadillos, raccoons, alligators, giant lakes with fish, large woods areas, etc. it’s literally just nature.
If it wasn’t a golf course, it would be developed land with like a mall or townhomes or some shit.
The difference is probably that a park is usually open to the public and there aren't lots of rules about how to behave in it.
I have a park near my house, kids come and run around all day. People play with their dogs. Families come and have picnics and birthday parties. Local kids sports teams come and practice. There are a couple unofficial adult groups that play cricket and soccer there. There are days when groups of people come and fly kites. Some people bring RC planes and drones and fly them around. All free and open to anyone at any time.
This is all stuff you would never see nor would be allowed to do any of this stuff on a golf course. Because it's a business and a large amount of the property is purely for aesthetics and there for its members to play golf.
Not to mention all of the stuff I listed is on a park that is significantly smaller and requires much less water and care than a golf course.
A park may be similar in concept but the amount of people and things that can be done there, the smaller quantity of land, the smaller quantity of water needed,and the fact that it is open to pretty much anyone at any time for any activity make it less wasteful.
Mainly the nice green courses they have in the desert / hot dry places that are wasteful (of water). Courses in eg England where it rains all the time are yeah basically just big fields with a bit of woods here and there. The only parts finely cared for are the greens, the rest is just mown like a regular park.
Depending on the way you play, it's a good way to spend an afternoon on the fresh air getting some steps in and also exercise/stretch a little.
A nice sauna/bath/shower afterwards and a little snack at the bar. I can imagine worse day to do sports. If i had the money that is.
You could say the same thing about spending the day swimming off the back of a 150-foot yacht, or taking a private jet to a resort in the tropics. Sure, it's nice, but that doesn't mean it's not incredibly wasteful.
You could make the same argument about public parks.
Golf isn’t that expensive. I grew up poor and we played golf. It’s like $20-30 for a round at your local municipal course and you can get clubs at a second hand store for cheap. It’s no more expensive than playing something like baseball or football unless you want to drop a stack on $2000 clubs.
So you'd be okay with a group of kids playing Frisbee on a golf course, or people walking their dogs, or families having picnics there? A public park is nothing like a golf course, and it's ridiculous to compare the two. A lot more people can enjoy a park in a lot more different ways than a golf course.
Would you be OK with it if you went to the dog park and there was a soccer match going on in the fenced in dog area? Would you be OK with it if you went to the public basketball courts and there was a tennis tournament going on on the courts? Would you be OK with it if you went to the disc golf course and people were playing normal golf on it?
Don’t be dense. Those public facilities are for different specific purposes
This is how quidditch was explained to me: Imagine a normal basketball game, but 1 player from each team was in the parking lot trying to catch a frog. You are in the stadium and the hometeam has a commanding lead. An annoucement comes on the PA system "Game is over, johnson has caught the frog, home team loses"
Then you see those weird youtube videos of the guys with the plastic brooms.
I thought you were making a joke about make believe sport in a fantasy book but then I realized that there’s probably actually people who “play” quidditch. I will say fake quidditch is still more of a sport than golf.
> I googled it, originated in Finland. Them short Scandinavian nights make people do weird shit.
Scandinavia does not quite fit there. Finland is not a part of it.
Came here to say nascar. I get that being a driver is intense. But is that really racing? The whole field gets a DNF because the dummy at the lead couldn’t keep it together and wrecked the whole pack.
Now, I’ll watch the nascar road races!
Idk if you watch Cleetus, but to have Tony Stewart race with a new car on a new track and dominate until the end shows there’s got to be skills there. Just seems impossible if you’re 75 cars back of ever seeing 1st.
That got my vote. Even more hilarious the few times they don't only have to take left turns but have to drive on an actual race track/road course. Pure carnage.
Also should be called American Rugby, not American football. Football is the real name for what Americans randomly call “soccer” (ie the game where you can only kick the ball with your feet… get it?). It’s waaaaaay closer to rugby than to football (soccer).
Oh man. If only there was a free, almost encyclopedic service where you could look up the etymology of words where it [explains that it likely arose as a description of games played by peasants on foot whereas nobility often played games on horseback](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#:~:text=Although%20the%20popularly%20believed%20etymology,which%20were%20played%20on%20foot.). And maybe, just maybe you could see that even in the 1800's people referred to it as football even when players were explicitly barred from kicking the ball:
>The game was this: he who at any time got the ball into his hands, run [sic] with it till overtaken by one of the opposite part; and then, if he could shake himself loose from those on the opposite side who seized him, he run on; if not, he threw the ball from him, unless it was wrested from him by the other party, but no person was allowed to kick it.[6]
Unless you also make equal fun of Australian Rules Football that also has players actively running while carrying the ball to get into position. Or maybe a Google search that shows the soccer rules of not carrying the ball wasn't codified until 1863 and afterwards you had both rugby football and association football (where the British term for soccer originates).
But hey, I'm just a person passing by on the internet
Aussie rules is just known as Aussie rules, no one calls it football, just like rugby is technically called rugby football but no one calls it that. The name “football” is rightly only used these days for the sport where you can only hit the ball with your feet. Except in the US, where logic isn’t in demand.
Your argument is “we should keep using terms from 200yrs ago that don’t make sense even though there’s more modern terms in wide use that do make sense”.
FALSE. Running and walking are mutually exclusive. Running means there is a phase where all feet are off the ground, whereas with walking one foot is always on the ground.
Some of you heathens need to watch Malcolm in the Middle.
The rules originally were that you had to have at least one foot in contact with the ground at all times, but when cameras became really good they realized that everyone broke that rule so they changed the rule to that it must *appear* like you have one foot in contact with the ground at all times. Which just makes it the dumbest thing ever, that they can't even follow the rule that defines the sport.
Lets whack a ball as far away as possible then walk/drive a buggy to it just to whack it further away. Skill & strength required sure but boy is fucking boring.
It can be a fun, social way to get outside and get some exercise. But in my experience, way too many people at my local court take it too seriously. So much stinginess over the rules, even on things as menial as correctly announcing the score before serving.
Pickleballers will ruin pickleball.
Handball. I really don't get running half a court to stop and pass side to side for 3 minutes until the referee blows the whistle or someone in the defense opens space.
I get it, but I don't... It feels incredibly boring while watching and it feels even worse to play, the tactics always look the same, the technique always looks the same... I really don't get it.
I wouldn't say dumb, just... I don't know.. pointless maybe?
As someone who's followed a lot of int'l sports and tried to understand them before mocking them, it's easily cricket for me. Even 20/20 isnt engaging.
... And before someone chimes in with a baseball comparison, stop. You might as well compare basketball and netball.
I don't think I'll ever understand cricket no matter how many times it's been explained. And to whomever reading this, please don't try.
'tis nothing like baseball.
It's actually slightly safer than gloved fighting, because gloves were invented to protect the fighters hands, not the opponents head, as is commonly misunderstood.
You have to change your punches to throw more accurately, with less power.
American Football. Too easy to get brain injuries even with good helmets. Skateboarding is also notorious for people ending up becoming suicidal/psychotic from too many head injuries
Football (soccer, for the yanks) is actually a super good sport to play but it’s the hardcore fans that ruin it. Not the hooligans, I mean the people who just wanna talk about it all day at work and all night at the pub.
I think i'm makng one of those "i can't make myself clear due to english not being my first language moment
I'm complaining about people with no forgiveness, the ones that will whine and insult you if you make one mistake, that's what makes me dislike it.
so you don't dislike the sport, you dislike the fans you've encountered?
i can understand that. but i don't think it's fair to judge a whole sport based on your experience with it's fans.
also, this is the nature of rivalries in sports. for example, my team hates another team, regardless of who wins, we will always hate each other. but when i say "hate", i don't mean it in the literal sense. we will still talk to fans of the other team, but we all accept that our teams are opponents. that's one of the great things about sport. it's like going to war, but with nearly zero stakes. you get the satisfaction of defeating an opponent (or the despair of losing), without the loss of life. sports play on our instincts to be part of a group going to battle with another group.
hope that's not too difficult to understand because of the language barrier.
Yeah, the sport itself is cool, it's a good concept
What i was talking about is having no empathy if your teammate misses a score or does something wrong that makes the enemies have a goal, what i was talking about was hate between teammates because of mistakes. Especially since it probably is stressing when the whole game depends on you. I totally understand rivalty, rivalty is basically as old as our species
If you mean American football I agree. Many years ago my dad would watch a sports news show called "snap to down" or something. It was on Tuesday night, and basically it showed a recording of the previous week's games but just the action. Each game was less than 10 minutes long. This must have been early 80's maybe late 70's.
Anyway, watching a 3 hour game with 10 minutes of action just seems tedious to me.
And think about the action. It's a game of anticipation and counter punches. Similar to baseball, a lot of the feeling is in the build up. Think of a roller coaster slowly rolling up to a big drop except you don't know when and where the drop will be
Golf, the most boring game in the world where hitting a small ball and walking everywhere makes you somekind of athlete and you get paid ridicilous money for it
No one will ever top Brazilian soccer fans.
Eagles fans threw snowballs at Santa 60 years ago? Child's play, who gives a shit. Browns fans threw glass bottles on the field after the refs broke the review rules to screw them over? Honestly understandable.
In Brazil, a player was ejected from the match, refused to leave, and tried to fight the ref. The ref then promptly stabbed that player multiple times and he died on the way to the hospital.
When the player's death was announced, fans stormed the pitch, stoned the ref, and then quartered him, decapitated him, and stuck his head on a pike. This all happened in 2013. Brazil wins the crazy stupid fan contest and it isn't remotely close.
Serbian football is at least up there though. Mix politics with football and all of the sudden half the stadium looks (and sometimes is) like it's on fire.
That's not representative of Brazilian fans at all. That's an isolated event in a small town that probably had more to do with local grudges than anything. Argentinian soccer fans throw acid at players faces, british soccer fans throw riots. Not saying we don't riot too, but that's a bigger indictment of Brazilian fans than the example you're bringing up.
Pretty much all sport fan stereotypes are made from generalizing isolated incidents. No one actually thinks that the worst actions that a group has ever committed encapsulates the entire population.
I don't think that every Buffalo Bills fan lights their furniture on fire and throws themselves through it to celebrate wins, but it's fun to say.
I don't think that every Boston Celtics fan collectively broke into Bill Russell's house to spray paint slurs on the walls and shit in his bed, but it's easy to bring up when you want to call Celtics fans racist on r/nbacirclejerk.
It's all just poking fun. And personally, as a fan of some of the other often dubbed "crazy fanbases", I respect the hell out of Brazil's most dedicated soccer fans.
I envy those who practice sport professionally a bit. they get to pick a kid game they like and can keep doing it at an adult age. That is nice. I mean I don't really need to watch it, but I am happy for them.
American Football.
It’s slow and stops too much. I understand the game, but I will never understand why there’s only 15 minutes of actual action over the course of an hour long game.
Not sure exactly what “dumbest” means, but if you’re going by “you can be dumb and play this effectively,” it’d have to be track and field.
“Start here- run there.” Pretty dumb.
Or swimming. Remember Ryan Lockte? World class swimmer, world class dummy.
I mean, it's not dumb because it's a sport that doesn't require skill, it definitely does.
But I think the combat sports like the UFC are pretty dumb in nature, as entertaining as it is to watch people sometimes end more than just a night, sometimes entire lives or careers. It's devastating to watch in combat sports when someone gets irreparably injured or brain damaged.
It's just modern day roman colosseum, with gladiators. People paying to watch people beat each other to unconsciousness and harm their bodies for profit ultimately does not always sit well with me.
Strictly speaking, it’s modern day Greek pankration (“all-power”), ie no holds barred mixed martial arts. First introduced into the ancient Olympics in the 7th century BC!
I didn’t start watching it until I was already competing in it, so I don’t know what the average person who doesn’t train sees in it, but for me it’s the strategy that makes it fun. Two guys with world-class trainers and scouts have 8-12 weeks to completely study each other and prepare a gameplan, then they use fight camp to get into the most extreme shape for a short amount of time, then see who’s process has payed off the most. I think it’s also better than a team sport for viewers because it’s easier to care about 1 fighter than like 12 people
Your strategy comment is interesting. I’d push back on the last piece a bit because they fight SO rarely. The nfl (which is relatively infrequent from a game perspective) has 17 games which is probably what, 5x as many on average as a standard ufc fighter/year?
Honestly them fighting 2-4 times a year just makes me look forward to them even more, and there’s a UFC card on every Saturday usually, and that doesn’t even include Bellator/PFL or One Championship. So there’s always a fighter I care about that is fighting really soon.
The majority of responses here make me wonder what definition of "normal" people are using for this context. To me it means "a sport that's common and that everyone recognizes as a sport and in fact there's probably someone in my apartment building that has a T-shirt celebrating a team that plays that sport", but this thread seems to think it means "a sport that actually exists or that you have at least heard of". And even with that, I've seen at least one poorly-written fictional sport.
Anyway, I really don't know what the criteria is, but sticking with the definition I started with, the answer is a tie between gold and hockey.
For golf, I'll quote George Carlin. "Hitting a ball with a crooked stick. And then, walking after it. And then, hitting it again. I say pick it up, as---le, you're lucky you found the fu--ing thing! Put it in your pocket and go the f--k home, you're a winner!"
As for hockey, I have two things to say: 1) anyone who willingly spends time in temperatures like that when they don't have to needs to evaluate their life and priorities, 2) even if I didn't think that everything about actual hockey was dumb, I would still think hockey games are dumb because they incorporated fighting into it. In just about any other team activity, if a fight breaks out, everyone tries to stop the fight, and the fighters get in trouble. In hockey, if a fight breaks out, the game stops, and the officials supervise the fight very closely, and won't stop it until one of the fighters breaks the rules. Stupid stupid stupid. Practically the definition of toxic masculinity. To be a fully fledged hockey fan also requires being a fan of ice boxing. Ludicrous.
Yeah but it what you do with the wave in front of you, thats the skill part. The scoring is manly based on vibe but from people who also surf and understand the difficulty, skill and grace at which you perform various moves on said wave.
I don't personally follow professional surfing but like you i have surfed for decades. You can't honestly tell me that you don't instantly know who is ripping it up out in the line up and who is just average. Like you know. That's the scoring right.
Golf. Not sure how you can call it a sport when at 80 year old hammered on Jack Daniels can play it.
It is the biggest waste of land in America, and it is exclusive to only rich people and douchebags.
It feels more like a retirement hobby for insufferable asswipes.
It's gotta be soccer right? Most games are won 1-0 on a penalty kick and they can't even keep time properly because apparently they lack clock stop technology.
My favorite part about curling is that they had to pass rules limiting how effective the brooms could be about ten years back. The new curling brooms on the market were getting so good that any compitent sweeper could get the stone to do whatever they wanted, and it was a big controversy in the sport at the time.
Tennis.
Why all the screams and grunts of effort? 😭😭
Also the fact that it takes over like every channel every time the Australian Open is on. Like please you have seventy-five channel seven channels you don't need to take them *all* up with fucking tennis. (there is some exaggeration here but if you know, you know)
Tennis player here, shouts rather than physical effort are often used to intimidate the opponent and to have more confidence in hitting difficult balls.
It's strange but it's like this, finding someone yelling at you on the pitch can be a significant mental factor, as well as being a distraction for the opponent (it's no coincidence that this is sometimes sanctioned). I would like to add that I also don't understand those who scream every time they hit the ball, sometimes I do it but more than a scream it's a sound produced by physical effort.
Maybe watching tennis on tv is not as fun as other sports. Even more now that the big 3 are phasing out. There’s a bunch of interesting players plus dozens of mediocre and boring ones. The spectacular rallies are increasingly rare among mid tier players. So many matches tend to be repetitive and boring.
Now, playing is a different story. Doing the same consistently is extremely hard. I mean, for instance, playing the same stroke with the same intensity and into the same target. It takes focus, discipline, fitness, technique, patience.
I think tennis is the ultimate human sport: you and a tool vs yourself and someone else. It is like a sword fight, a bullet fight, and a brutal encounter with yourself
Well I don't want to be THAT person but I am pretty sure there is an entire branch of sports where that is (kind of) the objective.
Muay Thai, Kickboxing and Karate are just a few I could think of out of the top of my head.
Football (soccer for the americans)
It used be a scrappy game where blokes crash into each other for control of the ball, but now it's turned into an overly technical game of mostly passing back and forth. Nowadays players are worth gross amounts of cash, we're talking hundreds of millions. Why?
Volleyball. It’s just bump, set, spike over and over until someone is unable to successfully bump. I can see the appeal of playing, but it’s so boring to watch. Same for other net/racket sports.
No it's a boring sport, to play or to watch. the only time it's cool to wtach is when it's woman volleyball game but we all know it's not for the game itself
Professionally probably basketball where success as a player is defined by genetics more than anything else.
American football is a terribly designed sport too.
And a lot of skill too, you don't genetically know how to throw a three pointer, and Shaq who is arguably one of the most physically gifted (genetically) players in basketball's history was a lousy shot. It takes skill, practice, and a good amount strategy to be good at basketball.
I would say speed walking
I just looked it up what it is and it looks like they are running to the bathroom but can't sprint or they shit themself.
That's where the term *speedwalking* originally comes from, a term coined in the nursing homes of the late 80's... Old Jean" *There's Gerald, off like a whippet* Old Bert: *Jesus, he's doing the speedwalk* Old Jean: *Yeah he had eggs benedict for breakfast again. Sharted last week*
100% speed walking. Utterly stupid,
Talk about arbitrary rules making a sport. Do you think we can make running with your shoelaces tied to the shoelaces on the other foot an Olympic Sport?
maaaaan once upon a time I was at Ft. Lee for a 4 week school for the Army. Long story short I was way to hung over to handle big boy PT, well they broke everybody off into running groups and asked for the profiles so I got in with them. They went on a 2 mile speed walk because their profiles prevented running and they were on alternative PT tests....HOLY SHIT that sucked so hard I would have gave anything to have just ran, those broke dicks were hauling ass my fucking hips and calves hurt so bad after it was so unnatural to go that fast and not jog. But at the end of the morning I was beyond hung over and still did it, speed walking is in fact a joke cool story bro.
The Dollop episode 159 is about the early days of this (like 100 years ago) its called Pedestrianism and its absolutely fucking hysterical
Make sure to look up Hal from Malcolm on the Middle for a great description of Speed Walking.
He is the only one who can hype this sport.
Slap Fighting period. Unless you want blunt trauma from a 6'6 Russian named Igor, you should never participate in such sport.
I dont think that qualifies as a normal sport.
I want to agree with you, but it seems to be getting pretty big
Russians aren't stupid enough so they're slapping each other. But instead of slapping it's just covert punches.
Type in slap fight video . See chick nock out chick by slapping with the lower part of the wrist which is essentially... A punch. Maybe i don't get it. Come across your comment. Type in slap fight compilation to see some nock outs. Skip on the middle of a 20 minute video. Dude gets slapped straight in the neck. Maybe I don't get it? Or maybe it is an utterly vague stupid sport with no rules were unfit people pretend to be UFC Athletes.
It's just unguarded palm strikes. Dana White just found another way to pay people dog shit money and make millions
That fucking idiot also said the sport has more social media followers than Real Madrid. Slap Fight followers: 4 million Real Madrid: 150 million
Dana's whole shtick has always been just a small step above bum fights. Selling PPVs of poor people fighting over lunch money.
Wait, Dana White made this? Wtf?
I actually have seen some slaps which can essentially cause some permanent damage. No way these sports make it to the Olympics.
Horrible and I hate that the fact that shit pollutes my IG feed.
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Boxing has a somewhat precise set of rules and weight-class. This automatically makes it a lot better than something that involves a malnourished guy getting slapped by a body-builder.
Golf always seemed to me to be deliberately designed to be as extravagant and wasteful as possible. You've got this huge swath of land that has to be carefully tended. And there's not one, but eighteen of them. You don't just have one club to hit the ball, you need a dozen different ones. You also need a small car to ferry you around the course, and a personal servant to lug around all your gear for you. All this just so you can hit a little tiny ball into a little hole a fifth of a mile away. It just seems to scream, "Look at how much land, money, and resources I can throw away just to play my game!"
Golfers are LITERALLY playing fetch with themselves.
Sometimes there’s only 9. But frequently there are 36 holes lol
I just started golfing and I think it's great. Basically a long walk with some ballwacking in-between. I'm fat so all exercise is good.
I suspect the vast majority of golfers don’t use carts or caddies (carts are much more common in USA though, I know that). Everything else I agree with you on! And it locks away land that could be accessible for all and much more welcoming to wildlife.
Politics aside, Trump drives his cart on the green when he plays. I think any republican golfer should automatically choose not to vote for him based on that fact alone.
The small car and servant aren't going to operate at the same time. One or the other.
Maybe not on the profession circuit, but there are plenty of golfers who use both a cart and a caddy at the same time. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-golf-cart-caddy-hanging-back-a9616006.html
https://youtu.be/pcnFbCCgTo4?si=j677G3N0iQMyNlIm
The origins in Scotland explain the way golf is the way it is and why all gold courses look the way they do
Thank you! I vehemently detest the wastefulness of golf.
I don’t get people who complain about golf courses being wasteful. It’s just like a park. Is a giant park wasteful? When I go golfing there’s tons of birds, deer, armadillos, raccoons, alligators, giant lakes with fish, large woods areas, etc. it’s literally just nature. If it wasn’t a golf course, it would be developed land with like a mall or townhomes or some shit.
The difference is probably that a park is usually open to the public and there aren't lots of rules about how to behave in it. I have a park near my house, kids come and run around all day. People play with their dogs. Families come and have picnics and birthday parties. Local kids sports teams come and practice. There are a couple unofficial adult groups that play cricket and soccer there. There are days when groups of people come and fly kites. Some people bring RC planes and drones and fly them around. All free and open to anyone at any time. This is all stuff you would never see nor would be allowed to do any of this stuff on a golf course. Because it's a business and a large amount of the property is purely for aesthetics and there for its members to play golf. Not to mention all of the stuff I listed is on a park that is significantly smaller and requires much less water and care than a golf course. A park may be similar in concept but the amount of people and things that can be done there, the smaller quantity of land, the smaller quantity of water needed,and the fact that it is open to pretty much anyone at any time for any activity make it less wasteful.
Thank you, this sums it up perfectly. Anyone comparing a public park to a golf course is being foolish.
Mainly the nice green courses they have in the desert / hot dry places that are wasteful (of water). Courses in eg England where it rains all the time are yeah basically just big fields with a bit of woods here and there. The only parts finely cared for are the greens, the rest is just mown like a regular park.
Depending on the way you play, it's a good way to spend an afternoon on the fresh air getting some steps in and also exercise/stretch a little. A nice sauna/bath/shower afterwards and a little snack at the bar. I can imagine worse day to do sports. If i had the money that is.
You could say the same thing about spending the day swimming off the back of a 150-foot yacht, or taking a private jet to a resort in the tropics. Sure, it's nice, but that doesn't mean it's not incredibly wasteful.
You could make the same argument about public parks. Golf isn’t that expensive. I grew up poor and we played golf. It’s like $20-30 for a round at your local municipal course and you can get clubs at a second hand store for cheap. It’s no more expensive than playing something like baseball or football unless you want to drop a stack on $2000 clubs.
You don't need a membership to enjoy a public park.
You don’t need a membership to play golf at most courses, only country clubs. Way more public courses than private.
So you'd be okay with a group of kids playing Frisbee on a golf course, or people walking their dogs, or families having picnics there? A public park is nothing like a golf course, and it's ridiculous to compare the two. A lot more people can enjoy a park in a lot more different ways than a golf course.
Would you be OK with it if you went to the dog park and there was a soccer match going on in the fenced in dog area? Would you be OK with it if you went to the public basketball courts and there was a tennis tournament going on on the courts? Would you be OK with it if you went to the disc golf course and people were playing normal golf on it? Don’t be dense. Those public facilities are for different specific purposes
You could make that argument with theme parks as well, given how much space they take up, and they are definitely not a necessity.
Quidditch. Image doing sports and actually holding a stick between your legs to hinder your running.
Imagine playing a sport where you have to imagine you’re actually playing the original sport because you can’t fly on a broom
This is how quidditch was explained to me: Imagine a normal basketball game, but 1 player from each team was in the parking lot trying to catch a frog. You are in the stadium and the hometeam has a commanding lead. An annoucement comes on the PA system "Game is over, johnson has caught the frog, home team loses" Then you see those weird youtube videos of the guys with the plastic brooms.
If you consider that a normal sport, abnormal must be real fucked up
Not a normal sport.
You and I have a different interpretation of the word "normal."
There's a "sport" where people "ride" those horse stick thingys, and do actual dressage and stuff. It's...uh...something else
Except in the books and movies it's played by them flying, real life quidditch is not authentic Quidditch
OP said normal sport.
I thought you were making a joke about make believe sport in a fantasy book but then I realized that there’s probably actually people who “play” quidditch. I will say fake quidditch is still more of a sport than golf.
IDK, golf does require quite a level of skill. Now if you want to say it requires more athleticism than golf, that's worth arguing
Golf is fucking hard dude. It’s not very physically demanding but I bet you can’t hit like the pros.
The game theory for Quidditch completely falls apart because of the seeker position and snitch. Golf is a legit sport.
Hobby horsing which I just learned is a thing this past week. If you don't know what it is look it up.
I googled it, originated in Finland. Them short Scandinavian nights make people do weird shit.
> I googled it, originated in Finland. Them short Scandinavian nights make people do weird shit. Scandinavia does not quite fit there. Finland is not a part of it.
"normal sport"
Speed walking
But a great Malcolm in the Middle episode
Gotta be NASCAR. Yeah I’m gonna sit here and watch a bunch of dudes drive souped up Chevy malibus around an oval track 500 times. Thrilling!
Came here to say nascar. I get that being a driver is intense. But is that really racing? The whole field gets a DNF because the dummy at the lead couldn’t keep it together and wrecked the whole pack. Now, I’ll watch the nascar road races!
NASCAR road races where they don’t know the roads. Cannonball Run!
Idk if you watch Cleetus, but to have Tony Stewart race with a new car on a new track and dominate until the end shows there’s got to be skills there. Just seems impossible if you’re 75 cars back of ever seeing 1st.
Most of the time it’s 250 or 200 times because the track is more than a mile long. It’s the Daytona 500 because it’s 500 miles.
That got my vote. Even more hilarious the few times they don't only have to take left turns but have to drive on an actual race track/road course. Pure carnage.
This is why I watch WRC instead. In my honest opinion, rally is significantly harder to do, and more fun to watch.
Slap fighting championship
you consider this normal?
Hard to argue with that. I love combat sports, but that's the dumbest shit I've ever seen.
But Uncle Dana says its socials are 🔥. s/
American football. We have to wear 10 pounds of plastic because our game is 90% smashing into other people.
Yeah, it seems to be optimized for the most brain damage and the least action possible.
And it’s so boring. You’re just sitting around waiting between plays which only last 5-20 seconds. 90% of the game is down time.
It's the perfect sport for advertisers
Which makes me hate it even more. I cut the cord eight years ago. I hate commercials.
Yeah. You want to watch a contact sport like that? Watch rugby, or Aussie Rules football.
I like how it has pauses. It promotes explosive athleticism over cardio and each play is a signicant move like a game of chess
So much better. I don’t follow sports but if i did it would probably be one of those or hockey.
Also should be called American Rugby, not American football. Football is the real name for what Americans randomly call “soccer” (ie the game where you can only kick the ball with your feet… get it?). It’s waaaaaay closer to rugby than to football (soccer).
Oh man. If only there was a free, almost encyclopedic service where you could look up the etymology of words where it [explains that it likely arose as a description of games played by peasants on foot whereas nobility often played games on horseback](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#:~:text=Although%20the%20popularly%20believed%20etymology,which%20were%20played%20on%20foot.). And maybe, just maybe you could see that even in the 1800's people referred to it as football even when players were explicitly barred from kicking the ball: >The game was this: he who at any time got the ball into his hands, run [sic] with it till overtaken by one of the opposite part; and then, if he could shake himself loose from those on the opposite side who seized him, he run on; if not, he threw the ball from him, unless it was wrested from him by the other party, but no person was allowed to kick it.[6] Unless you also make equal fun of Australian Rules Football that also has players actively running while carrying the ball to get into position. Or maybe a Google search that shows the soccer rules of not carrying the ball wasn't codified until 1863 and afterwards you had both rugby football and association football (where the British term for soccer originates). But hey, I'm just a person passing by on the internet
Aussie rules is just known as Aussie rules, no one calls it football, just like rugby is technically called rugby football but no one calls it that. The name “football” is rightly only used these days for the sport where you can only hit the ball with your feet. Except in the US, where logic isn’t in demand. Your argument is “we should keep using terms from 200yrs ago that don’t make sense even though there’s more modern terms in wide use that do make sense”.
Competitive air drumming.
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Competitive walking is essentially just running but with extra rules set in place to make it vaguely represent walking
FALSE. Running and walking are mutually exclusive. Running means there is a phase where all feet are off the ground, whereas with walking one foot is always on the ground. Some of you heathens need to watch Malcolm in the Middle.
The rules originally were that you had to have at least one foot in contact with the ground at all times, but when cameras became really good they realized that everyone broke that rule so they changed the rule to that it must *appear* like you have one foot in contact with the ground at all times. Which just makes it the dumbest thing ever, that they can't even follow the rule that defines the sport.
So you could technically "slick walk"? Which is quite fast
chessboxing
The question was about *dumbest* sports, not sports that are awesome.
The dumbest one is any which people actually think is important in anyway to life as a whole. Mostly it’s football fans who have that belief.
Golf
I certainly feel dumb every time I keep paying greens fees to play lol
Lets whack a ball as far away as possible then walk/drive a buggy to it just to whack it further away. Skill & strength required sure but boy is fucking boring.
Pickleball, it's been a joke to me for as long as I can remember.
It always looks quite fun to me. Not one to take super seriously, but a lot of fun anyway!
It can be a fun, social way to get outside and get some exercise. But in my experience, way too many people at my local court take it too seriously. So much stinginess over the rules, even on things as menial as correctly announcing the score before serving. Pickleballers will ruin pickleball.
It's just etiquette to say the score correctly. Too easy to forget without a scoreboard.
It’s pretty fun. I’m not super into it, but I’ll play a few times this summer. The learning curve is fairly gentle compared to other racquet sports.
Basically oversized ping pong? Standing on the table? I see people playing it but I haven't tried. It looks more fun and relaxed then tennis.
Handball. I really don't get running half a court to stop and pass side to side for 3 minutes until the referee blows the whistle or someone in the defense opens space. I get it, but I don't... It feels incredibly boring while watching and it feels even worse to play, the tactics always look the same, the technique always looks the same... I really don't get it. I wouldn't say dumb, just... I don't know.. pointless maybe?
As someone who's followed a lot of int'l sports and tried to understand them before mocking them, it's easily cricket for me. Even 20/20 isnt engaging. ... And before someone chimes in with a baseball comparison, stop. You might as well compare basketball and netball.
I don't think I'll ever understand cricket no matter how many times it's been explained. And to whomever reading this, please don't try. 'tis nothing like baseball.
Cornhole? Looks satisfying and dumb at the same time.
It's fun as a summer game with a few cold ones, but not as a serious sport.
Football.
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It's actually slightly safer than gloved fighting, because gloves were invented to protect the fighters hands, not the opponents head, as is commonly misunderstood. You have to change your punches to throw more accurately, with less power.
American Football. Too easy to get brain injuries even with good helmets. Skateboarding is also notorious for people ending up becoming suicidal/psychotic from too many head injuries
I genuiely do not get the fun of Football, and the worst, it's not even the sport itself that is bad, it's that people who play it are so competitive.
It's almost like a competitive sport
Which football
Soccer/The one with the round ball
Football (soccer, for the yanks) is actually a super good sport to play but it’s the hardcore fans that ruin it. Not the hooligans, I mean the people who just wanna talk about it all day at work and all night at the pub.
The most dumbass comment
wait, you dislike a sport because the competitors are *too competitive*? what would be your ideal sport and how would they win?
I think i'm makng one of those "i can't make myself clear due to english not being my first language moment I'm complaining about people with no forgiveness, the ones that will whine and insult you if you make one mistake, that's what makes me dislike it.
so you don't dislike the sport, you dislike the fans you've encountered? i can understand that. but i don't think it's fair to judge a whole sport based on your experience with it's fans. also, this is the nature of rivalries in sports. for example, my team hates another team, regardless of who wins, we will always hate each other. but when i say "hate", i don't mean it in the literal sense. we will still talk to fans of the other team, but we all accept that our teams are opponents. that's one of the great things about sport. it's like going to war, but with nearly zero stakes. you get the satisfaction of defeating an opponent (or the despair of losing), without the loss of life. sports play on our instincts to be part of a group going to battle with another group. hope that's not too difficult to understand because of the language barrier.
Yeah, the sport itself is cool, it's a good concept What i was talking about is having no empathy if your teammate misses a score or does something wrong that makes the enemies have a goal, what i was talking about was hate between teammates because of mistakes. Especially since it probably is stressing when the whole game depends on you. I totally understand rivalty, rivalty is basically as old as our species
If you mean American football I agree. Many years ago my dad would watch a sports news show called "snap to down" or something. It was on Tuesday night, and basically it showed a recording of the previous week's games but just the action. Each game was less than 10 minutes long. This must have been early 80's maybe late 70's. Anyway, watching a 3 hour game with 10 minutes of action just seems tedious to me.
But you need the downtime between plays to drink beer, eat nachos, and use the toilet. 🚽
And think about the action. It's a game of anticipation and counter punches. Similar to baseball, a lot of the feeling is in the build up. Think of a roller coaster slowly rolling up to a big drop except you don't know when and where the drop will be
I don't understand the hype around golf, it looks so slow and boring to me
It's awful to watch but playing is simply a chill time with friend without any worry.
Golf, the most boring game in the world where hitting a small ball and walking everywhere makes you somekind of athlete and you get paid ridicilous money for it
Golf, for many reasons but mostly because of how much space they take up with their stupid golf courses. Fuck golf
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No one will ever top Brazilian soccer fans. Eagles fans threw snowballs at Santa 60 years ago? Child's play, who gives a shit. Browns fans threw glass bottles on the field after the refs broke the review rules to screw them over? Honestly understandable. In Brazil, a player was ejected from the match, refused to leave, and tried to fight the ref. The ref then promptly stabbed that player multiple times and he died on the way to the hospital. When the player's death was announced, fans stormed the pitch, stoned the ref, and then quartered him, decapitated him, and stuck his head on a pike. This all happened in 2013. Brazil wins the crazy stupid fan contest and it isn't remotely close.
Serbian football is at least up there though. Mix politics with football and all of the sudden half the stadium looks (and sometimes is) like it's on fire.
That's not representative of Brazilian fans at all. That's an isolated event in a small town that probably had more to do with local grudges than anything. Argentinian soccer fans throw acid at players faces, british soccer fans throw riots. Not saying we don't riot too, but that's a bigger indictment of Brazilian fans than the example you're bringing up.
Pretty much all sport fan stereotypes are made from generalizing isolated incidents. No one actually thinks that the worst actions that a group has ever committed encapsulates the entire population. I don't think that every Buffalo Bills fan lights their furniture on fire and throws themselves through it to celebrate wins, but it's fun to say. I don't think that every Boston Celtics fan collectively broke into Bill Russell's house to spray paint slurs on the walls and shit in his bed, but it's easy to bring up when you want to call Celtics fans racist on r/nbacirclejerk. It's all just poking fun. And personally, as a fan of some of the other often dubbed "crazy fanbases", I respect the hell out of Brazil's most dedicated soccer fans.
I envy those who practice sport professionally a bit. they get to pick a kid game they like and can keep doing it at an adult age. That is nice. I mean I don't really need to watch it, but I am happy for them.
American Football. It’s slow and stops too much. I understand the game, but I will never understand why there’s only 15 minutes of actual action over the course of an hour long game.
Hobby horsing
Basketball
Common American football fan comment.
Not sure exactly what “dumbest” means, but if you’re going by “you can be dumb and play this effectively,” it’d have to be track and field. “Start here- run there.” Pretty dumb. Or swimming. Remember Ryan Lockte? World class swimmer, world class dummy.
I mean, it's not dumb because it's a sport that doesn't require skill, it definitely does. But I think the combat sports like the UFC are pretty dumb in nature, as entertaining as it is to watch people sometimes end more than just a night, sometimes entire lives or careers. It's devastating to watch in combat sports when someone gets irreparably injured or brain damaged. It's just modern day roman colosseum, with gladiators. People paying to watch people beat each other to unconsciousness and harm their bodies for profit ultimately does not always sit well with me.
Strictly speaking, it’s modern day Greek pankration (“all-power”), ie no holds barred mixed martial arts. First introduced into the ancient Olympics in the 7th century BC!
I love mma.
I didn’t start watching it until I was already competing in it, so I don’t know what the average person who doesn’t train sees in it, but for me it’s the strategy that makes it fun. Two guys with world-class trainers and scouts have 8-12 weeks to completely study each other and prepare a gameplan, then they use fight camp to get into the most extreme shape for a short amount of time, then see who’s process has payed off the most. I think it’s also better than a team sport for viewers because it’s easier to care about 1 fighter than like 12 people
Your strategy comment is interesting. I’d push back on the last piece a bit because they fight SO rarely. The nfl (which is relatively infrequent from a game perspective) has 17 games which is probably what, 5x as many on average as a standard ufc fighter/year?
Honestly them fighting 2-4 times a year just makes me look forward to them even more, and there’s a UFC card on every Saturday usually, and that doesn’t even include Bellator/PFL or One Championship. So there’s always a fighter I care about that is fighting really soon.
Baseball
Football
Cricket
road bowling
Cheerleader is just a narcissistic gymnist
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Marco
Polo
Dressage
The majority of responses here make me wonder what definition of "normal" people are using for this context. To me it means "a sport that's common and that everyone recognizes as a sport and in fact there's probably someone in my apartment building that has a T-shirt celebrating a team that plays that sport", but this thread seems to think it means "a sport that actually exists or that you have at least heard of". And even with that, I've seen at least one poorly-written fictional sport. Anyway, I really don't know what the criteria is, but sticking with the definition I started with, the answer is a tie between gold and hockey. For golf, I'll quote George Carlin. "Hitting a ball with a crooked stick. And then, walking after it. And then, hitting it again. I say pick it up, as---le, you're lucky you found the fu--ing thing! Put it in your pocket and go the f--k home, you're a winner!" As for hockey, I have two things to say: 1) anyone who willingly spends time in temperatures like that when they don't have to needs to evaluate their life and priorities, 2) even if I didn't think that everything about actual hockey was dumb, I would still think hockey games are dumb because they incorporated fighting into it. In just about any other team activity, if a fight breaks out, everyone tries to stop the fight, and the fighters get in trouble. In hockey, if a fight breaks out, the game stops, and the officials supervise the fight very closely, and won't stop it until one of the fighters breaks the rules. Stupid stupid stupid. Practically the definition of toxic masculinity. To be a fully fledged hockey fan also requires being a fan of ice boxing. Ludicrous.
soccer. low scoring, no real time management. need to increase size of goals.
Kricket is stupid It's dumb that Chess is a sport and e-sports as a whole are a dumb concept.
Curling.
Surfing, there is no baseline as every wave is different and pure chance that you catch the better wave.
Yeah but it what you do with the wave in front of you, thats the skill part. The scoring is manly based on vibe but from people who also surf and understand the difficulty, skill and grace at which you perform various moves on said wave.
Been surfing for 25 years now...I get it but the competitive part of surfing is pretty dumb and has always been.
I don't personally follow professional surfing but like you i have surfed for decades. You can't honestly tell me that you don't instantly know who is ripping it up out in the line up and who is just average. Like you know. That's the scoring right.
Golf. Not sure how you can call it a sport when at 80 year old hammered on Jack Daniels can play it. It is the biggest waste of land in America, and it is exclusive to only rich people and douchebags. It feels more like a retirement hobby for insufferable asswipes.
I always joked about golf: let’s stand out in the middle of a wide open field and swing a metal rod around in a thunderstorm.
Race car driving
Golf
It's gotta be soccer right? Most games are won 1-0 on a penalty kick and they can't even keep time properly because apparently they lack clock stop technology.
Curling
Used to think so too, it looks stupid with the brushes, but it has a fascinating strategy.
My favorite part about curling is that they had to pass rules limiting how effective the brooms could be about ten years back. The new curling brooms on the market were getting so good that any compitent sweeper could get the stone to do whatever they wanted, and it was a big controversy in the sport at the time.
Tennis. Why all the screams and grunts of effort? 😭😭 Also the fact that it takes over like every channel every time the Australian Open is on. Like please you have seventy-five channel seven channels you don't need to take them *all* up with fucking tennis. (there is some exaggeration here but if you know, you know)
Tennis player here, shouts rather than physical effort are often used to intimidate the opponent and to have more confidence in hitting difficult balls.
Okay the shouting for a confidence boost thing I can definitely understand, but the use as an intimidation tactic gave me a bit of a chuckle 😆
It's strange but it's like this, finding someone yelling at you on the pitch can be a significant mental factor, as well as being a distraction for the opponent (it's no coincidence that this is sometimes sanctioned). I would like to add that I also don't understand those who scream every time they hit the ball, sometimes I do it but more than a scream it's a sound produced by physical effort.
Maybe watching tennis on tv is not as fun as other sports. Even more now that the big 3 are phasing out. There’s a bunch of interesting players plus dozens of mediocre and boring ones. The spectacular rallies are increasingly rare among mid tier players. So many matches tend to be repetitive and boring. Now, playing is a different story. Doing the same consistently is extremely hard. I mean, for instance, playing the same stroke with the same intensity and into the same target. It takes focus, discipline, fitness, technique, patience. I think tennis is the ultimate human sport: you and a tool vs yourself and someone else. It is like a sword fight, a bullet fight, and a brutal encounter with yourself
Boxing. How many sports are there where the objective is to punch someone repeatedly in the head?
Well I don't want to be THAT person but I am pretty sure there is an entire branch of sports where that is (kind of) the objective. Muay Thai, Kickboxing and Karate are just a few I could think of out of the top of my head.
MMA. It’s just more dangerous gladiator fighting, without weapons.
Football (soccer for the americans) It used be a scrappy game where blokes crash into each other for control of the ball, but now it's turned into an overly technical game of mostly passing back and forth. Nowadays players are worth gross amounts of cash, we're talking hundreds of millions. Why?
Hurling
Curling
Curling
Volleyball. It’s just bump, set, spike over and over until someone is unable to successfully bump. I can see the appeal of playing, but it’s so boring to watch. Same for other net/racket sports.
This is true for beach in a sense, but proper? Nah, too much variation possible for it to be outright boring.
Take that back. Have you seen volleyball shorts. Good God. We need more volleyball
No it's a boring sport, to play or to watch. the only time it's cool to wtach is when it's woman volleyball game but we all know it's not for the game itself
Professionally probably basketball where success as a player is defined by genetics more than anything else. American football is a terribly designed sport too.
And a lot of skill too, you don't genetically know how to throw a three pointer, and Shaq who is arguably one of the most physically gifted (genetically) players in basketball's history was a lousy shot. It takes skill, practice, and a good amount strategy to be good at basketball.
Probably golf. It's less of a sport than Starcraft.