Come ask questions and give answers anonymously!
Good Sport
I'm not a sports fan. As a kid, I never played them outside of gym class; as an adult, I've never watched them on tv. I don't follow teams or athletes and, except for one major league baseball game, I've never attended events.
But I love hearing sports news on the radio.
For as long as I can remember, the words "and now, with your sports update" have made me inexplicably happy. And I'll admit, I never thought to wonder why until it suddenly occurred to me: in my life, sports news has never changed. The tone, the language--it's familiar, like poetry learned by rote. I'm not concerned with the content but I'm comforted by the sound.
So I have three questions:
Is this a common feeling (and it just took me a long time to figure it out)?
If you're a sports fan, is its familiarity (reliable rules, a home team) as important to you as performance or competition?
Outside of sports, what other things that give you this same feeling?




A lot of things are like that. Music sometimes has more to do with when you first heard it or things that happened while it was playing in the background. Smells, as well, like perfume someone you once knew wore, or a favorite dish your mom used to make for you.
There's also the familiarity of things, like seeing an old neighborhood you used to live in, and the mild discomfort with how much has changed since.
Radio sportscasting hasn't changed much, audio-wise beyond perhaps digital quality, for almost a century. Even as sportscasters change, there's a typical "sports radio voice", delivery, and cadence.
So it sounds very familiar and its constant presence is a reminder of how our civilization and existence is secure against the teeming uncertainty and chaos of an unforgiving and brutal universe in which we will all die. Our family, and friends, and everyone we know will, too, and none of us know when! But sports news is forever.
"Sports news is forever." haha. I want to write this on a tee shirt.
I guess what surprised me about this was the vehicle. I expect things like music, food, or scent to trigger feeling--not only are they unavoidable, but I actively create space for them in my consciousness. But sports? If you asked me how I felt about it, I'd say I didn't know and couldn't care less. And yet, it's in there.
So perhaps the more succinct question would have been, are there unexpected things--outside of those we actively identify, engage in or make room for--in which we might find this same constancy.
I actually have no interest in sports at all and no interest in sports news, I turn the radio off when it comes on. With the exception of NASCAR for some reason, I don't mind hearing news about that, even though I don't watch the races.