Lol

How many times in movies do they sit down to play poker and the dealer announces 'No string raises" and then everyone immediately string raises?

I grew up believing in superstition when watching sports and would constantly do stuff like switch positions, etc. to help my team win thinking I had some sort of effect on the outcome. It pisses me off that I still do it sometimes out of habit.

Now that I watch most sports on DVR so I can skip the commercials I find myself doing it even though the events have already transpired. That really pisses me off.

It pisses me off that my actions DO affect the outcome of games. I should have nothing to do with it, but here we are.

string references will not be tolerated around these parts
string theory, on the other hand...

That referees are just guessing where a punt went out of bounds

That people don’t realize that the official who marks the punt spot on an out-of-bounds punt are unaware that that official isn’t the one making the call at all.

That football is only 12~ minutes of actual gameplay spread out over 3~ hours.

Lol, yes. I was about to say american football in general, but this is the main reason I don’t enjoy it.

Like there's much meaningful action in soccer.

It's also too violent. It's a freaking collision sport.

I'd enjoy basketball more if it weren't endless scoring back and forth. I say this being one of the biggest NBA fans on this forum too.

It wasn’t a comparison. You’re allowed to find soccer boring.

I'd be more of a fan if the last two minutes weren't unbearable to watch. Also, as you said, if a team doesn't score in it's possession than they failed while nearly every other sport takes various amounts of effort to score.

It also doesn't help that I absolutely sucked at basketball as a kid and naturally had a bias against it.

Well I'm ignorant to this part of officiating

Most are, I think. No shame in it.

The guy who marks it holds his arm up. So does the referee, positioned near where the punter was. You get a better view of the OOB from back there than you would expect, so it’s not too bad of a guess usually (obviously, like any call, sometimes it gets bungled). The guy marking it mechanically marches up the sideline watching the referee until the referee drops his arm, at which point he stops and marks where he’s at as the new LOS. So he’s just a tool that indicates some other offscreen dude’s ruling.

Test match cricket might not be for you either then...

The scarcity of football (fewer games, fewer minutes of action per game) is what gives every moment such intensity.

The violence is a fair complaint and makes it a bit of a guilty pleasure. But you can’t have guilty pleasures without the pleasure, and football delivers in spades.

I find it somewhat annoying that people only count action in football from the snap to the tackle. There's a lot going on between plays.

commercials...?

i'm no sleuth, but this seems like something a horizontal sextant would say

My ex-wife was hardly ever a horizontal sextant.

Hence the ex

Fast forward for me.

The NBA badly needs to adopt the Elam Ending for all games (and not just the All Star Game):

Under the Elam Ending format, the game clock is shut off in the fourth quarter, and teams must hit a target score in order to win. The target score is set by adding eight points to the leading team's total. For example, if the score is 100-90, the target score would be 108.

8 points seems low right? If an average team scores 100 in a four quarter game wouldn't you make the Elam Ending point total 25 or something?

It kind of bothers me that people in the USA don't recognize hockey as the GOAT sport -

it's fast but the speed basically comes from the humans (so better than Nascar et al)

there's scoring but not too much; you'll see 5ish goals in a game, and each one will be consequential (so better than soccer or basketball)

the end of the game is literally the most exciting part, where the intensity ramps up and there's no sustained break and tactics exist to enhance your chance of scoring but that come at a crushing risk (so better than basketball or baseball or arguably football)

It shouldn't piss me off because whether America loves hockey or not doesn't make it any worse, and doesn't affect me at all.

I should get into Hockey. One of my best friends loves the sport and has encouraged me to watch.