I see.

worst post ever

trying to pigeon hole all serious sports fans into some type of natural order is focking pointless

This is just wrong.

I've been a rabid Knicks and Mets fan my whole life and I'm a liberal, well-read cinephile. Generalizations don't do anything but offend people. I get that you don't like sports, Jeff and I respect your right to not watch them. But don't talk about how much smarter you are because of it. You ride a motorcycle, something that hurts and kills thousands of people a year, but I don't think you're stupid just because you ride.

Funny that you bring up betting. Succesful betting is almost always a case of finding angles that others have missed, having the guts to go against the perceived wisdom, being capable of original thought... basically refusing to defer to the "order.

Jeff, this opinion sucks. I've followed sports for the majority of my life. I usually vote democrat (but don't hold me to it), graduated college, enjoy history, so on, etc. I see quite a few of people that fit the mold you describe, but think about it, how many are you not seeing at home with the bigscreen and surround sound system? To say they're uneducated is pretty blanket statement.

Wrong. (While I'm here I would like to wish my Dolphins a hearty farewell to 2007 as they sink deeper into the Atlantic for one more season...)

My God... this post is so inane I'm having trouble believing that you're even serious. I'm a sports freak very much the same way I'm a dedicated movie buff, and very much the same way I'm a fan of literary fiction. Almost any argument so broad is idiotic by default.

i think all you need to do is read some bill simmons on espn's website to find that hardcore sports fans can be as literate and intelligent as anyone.

It sure must have sucked getting your ass kicked on a daily basis back in high school. I'm guessing that's what this is all about, right?

Well, this post is quite broad, but good for you, Jeff. Of course there are plenty of intelligent sports fans in the world....but I've met very few of them. Most sports fans I know are fuck-heads of the highest order.

I'd reply to this post, but I'm too illiterate to understand it.

I agree with Wells only to the extent that sports focuses society's passion and energy towards what is essentially an empty and useless pursuit. If only people would spend time, effort and money on something that actually helped or enriched people instead on the endless cycle of scoring points.

You will find no greater drama than that of a close pennant race, taut playoff or even a close regular season game whether it be baseball, football or basketball (see last night's UGA vs. Alabama OT). No scripted drama comes close. Now, the TV networks may have you believe all fans are a bunch yahoos with their coverage which highlights nothing but the LCD of the viewing audience (proof of that is Ryan Secrest is the game day host for this year's Super Bowl on FOX). Still, the games are so good you have to ignore the broadcasters and focus on the game.

Wells to Sobchak, berkguru, et. al.: I say this as one who loves sitting in field-level seats near the baselines and smelling the grass and the soil as I slurp down cups of beer and yell at the errors and wrong calls.

Somebody please tell Nick Hornby that he's not literate. And I seem to remember that JD Salinger is one of the biggest baseball fans around. Or was that James Earl Jones. Either way, a pretty inane post. The majority of sports fans are illiterate slobs because the majority of people are illiterate slobs.

What about Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Jack Nicholson, Billy Wilder, and all of the other highly artistic, creative filmmakers who also love sports?

Not to mention authors such as John Irving, Ernest Hemingway, Pat Conroy, Stephen King and others.

Simply a spurious argument without any foundation in reality. You idiot.

Wrecktum, sports ads a lot of fun to this world, and doesn't need to justify its existence beyond that. But ir we didn't have sports, we'd probably have a lot more war.

By the way, if we concentrated more on art than sports, our society wouldn't be one whit better or wiser.

Good point, Pelham. Especially with baseball, where there is no running clock, and each tense moments can stretch out to eternity--this is something as suspenseful as Hitchcock, and some of the television crews are pretty talented at visually ratcheting it up.

Plus, didn't Walt Whitman write about baseball? What about George Plimpton, a HUGE sports fan whose books about amateur attempts to play pro games in baseball and football (Out Of My League and Paper Lion) are fantastic writing? And from a guy who founded the fucking Paris Review!

I'll concede that most sports fans are total morons, but I'd argue the true sophisticates are the ones who are able to enjoy the beauty in literature, music, art, AND athletics.

Also big up to whoever mentioned ESPN.com's Bill Simmons. That guy's an intelligent, hilarious sports writer with a great taste in film and music.

Wells response: The obvious fact that nobody's reading what I wrote and responding to the notion that sports fans aren't literate is in itself supporting evidence. What I said (try reading this time) is that most super-serious sports followers I've known have been literate in a passive, somewhat dutiful, non-voracious sense of the term. I'm trying to adhere to personal experience and not throw a big blanket over everything....jeez.

Bill Simmons is not a shining example of literateness or intelligence... not unless you watch "Karate Kid" and "Hoosiers" 32 times a week.

But Jeff's opinion on this matter is still absurd, shortsighted and just wrong.

Off the top of my head... Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Ernest Hemingway, Don DeLillo... and that's just because I can't concentrate right now because my Redskins just lost to the dreadful Giants.

Yeah... I agree with others. Worst post ever. Jeff, what are you talking about? If only movies were as consistently entertaining and enthralling as sports. From one dude to another, shame on you. I hate it when stars stand there with their Oscars and say how it's not about awards, yada yada yada, when Hollywood is just as much about competition as sports are. Sport is the realest drama that exists. Man, you are way off on this... are you a former athlete or speaking strictly as a fan. The only time I've ever cried from sheer happiness was after winning an all-out, balls-to-the-wall, come-from-behind overtime victory. I know that Judging from all the scandals this summer you wouldn't be able to tell, but sport iss are transcendent in a way art, music and movies can never be.

"By the way, if we concentrated more on art than sports, our society wouldn't be one whit better or wiser."

I never said we should spend more energy on art. I'd prefer spending resources on poverty, suffering, ending war. You know, all the stuff that liberals advocate.

The billions and billions spent on sports, a child's pursuit, is completely misallocated.

forgive the typos
and simmons is one of the best sportswriters and pop culture authorities out there -- it's cuz he's from Boston-- Represent!
go sox. a-rod sucks.

"...communing with worlds that exist outside their safety zone."

So when was the last time you went to a conservative event?

Simmons is a one-trick pony who's been getting by on "dude-osity" for too many years.

I do love watching those Patriots, though.

Wow, Bill Simmons has come up as a topic on HE? My worlds are colliding!!??

The thing that jumps out at me about the post is that being conservative means being "deferential to order". I guess in the sense that conversatives since 2001 have become less libertarian. But this was in response to a specific event, and doesn't define conservatism. I think Republicans are probably more deferential to order, but that's not the same thing.

Conservatives, classically defined, are suspicious of government. You can argue that this definition has lost its applicability somewhat, but there are definitely at least a few genuine conservatives still around.

I consider myself to be a liberal, free-thinking individual. I am also relatively athletic and a casual sports fan (i.e. I am not a rabid, paint my face team colors, season ticket holding, never miss a game fan). But, Jeff's post succinctly captures why Democrats cannot win an election, even when the Republicans run a major league jackass. While the Democrats posture themselves as the party for the people, they are extremely snobbish and condescending.

I'm a pretty big sports fan, usually vote Democrat, but was nodding my head while reading this post -- until the comparison to the Harvard Club. WTF?

Sports is about order. And what do people love the most? The disruption to that order -- upsets, plays that you've never seen before, etc. These are fun, diversionary disruptions of order. Far more tolerable and digestible than some car bomb.

I gotta believe the Sept. 11 attacks have helped put the NFL on a pedestal. Football as orderly war, where people don't die, and you can spend a week worrying about one casualty (Kevin Everett). Much better than news from Iraq.

As someone who typically feels compelled to defend Jeff because I sense where he's coming from even when he writes something overbroad or somewhat off-base or simply in poor taste...

I gotta say: Worst. Post. Ever.

Jeff, I understand if you're simply speaking from your own personal experience--as you said above. But that means your experience is spectacularly limited. Which is to say: when it comes to sports and sports fans, you are simply ignorant.

If you'd like to correct that ignorance, read some of the great, great literature out there about sports and being a fan. In particular, I'd recommend Norman Mailer's The Fight (about the Rumble in the Jungle)--far better and richer than When We Were Kings.

Also: Hemingway's "Death In The Afternoon," Dostoevsky's "The Gambler," Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," Halberstam's "Boys of Summer," "The Amateurs," and his book about Michael Jordan. And next chance you get, make a point of watching Tiger Woods play a round of golf.

Sports is about a lot of things, but order is not one of them. First and foremost, I think that sports is about the attempt to push yourself to the limit of what you are physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually capable of without risking imminent death. It's about human striving and the quest for excellence... I could go on and on...

One more thing (I can't help myself):

Parmenides once said that three types of people are present at athletic contests:

Athletes, merchants and philosophers.

GO PATS!!!!!!

Totally wrong, Jeff. Sports freaks are all homos who like watching men being physical together.

Wells to James: I've read Mailer's "The Fight" -- great reading, great writing. But last January I was mocked for complaining about a table of drunks laughing like hyenas every 75 seconds or so, and I was called a butt-plugger for complaining about this because I was in a sports bar. "Jeff, you were in a sports bar!," everyone said. In other words, a place where people who guzzle beer and laugh like hyenas tend to congregate. But why is it you never read into guys like this at places like the Harvard Club? We've got a double standard going here, methinks.

cause nobody at Harvard cares about sports.

My favorite people have the amazing ability to talk about sports, cult films, Match game cast members, hardcore porn and cooking without the coversation dying.

Pure film people seem to be the most stuck up bastards to talk to. Especially when they scoff TV as less than cinema. Do you really want to spend that much time with people who spend that much of their life in dark rooms staring at a screen and slurping down Golden Flavoring?

I'm a huge sports fan. But I only go into sports bars if I can't watch something I really want to see any other way. They are not for me precisely because they are not good places to really watch a sporting event. They are more of a place for a certain sort of person to hang out and laugh like a hyena with his (rarely, her) friends. So if you want to dis sports bars, be my guest, but all sports fans?

Actually, I think what Jeff is saying about sports fanatics is--generally, not uniformly--accurate.

But Jeff...seriously, you don't think those Harvard club guys love "order"? I mean, we're talking about the ones who actually, after they graduated, joined the fucking *club*.

You went into a sports bar and complained about some drunk guys laughing? Wow. "Oh, bartender. Do we HAVE to watch the Red Sox/Yankees game? Couldn't one of these TVs be turned to PBS?" Do you complain about the nudity in strip clubs, too?

Jeff the key phrase u seem to always use in all your generalizations is "from my experience" or "people I know".

There is a term known as sample size. And in your case it is quite quite small, thus leading to your lame observations being no where close to the truth.
Look it up and then stop talking like the people in your little circle represent everyone in the known universe...you will look like less of an idiot that way.

Do they show football on big-screen TVs at the Harvard Club? Maybe I'll start getting drunk there...

Oh, and congrats to the Sox for making the playoffs!

I couldnt decide if I wanted to shoot hoops tonight or creepily bug some guy I barely know for pictures of a marginally-hot blonde actress.

I played ball.

"The obvious fact that nobody's reading what I wrote and responding to the notion that sports fans aren't literate is in itself supporting evidence."

Read exactly what you wrote (again) and I still think it was ridiculously short-sighted and idiotic.

I remember reading an interview with Tom Courtnay a few years back in which he recalled running into Omar Sharif for the first time in many years. As they talked, they discovered that they agreed that sports, especially golf and soccer, have more drama than anything they had recently experienced in show business.

While there is some truth to what Wells says, what he says is an appalling example of the sweeping generalizations to which he is too prone. His failure to respond intelligently to these posts shows how narrowminded and petty he can be.

I'd like to second (or third or whatever) the notion that live sporting events can be far more inherently dramatic than anything on the screen. No movie I've ever seen can quite match the suspense, the unpredictability and the overall emotional rollercoaster ride that I've witnessed time and again on the playing field.

I love movies as much as anybody else. But talking to someone who can ONLY converse and make references in "movie-speak" is mind-numbingly dull.

Any group that is tight knit in it's womb of knowledge is going to be insular to some degree. This goes for movie fans as well as fans of Washington politics and sports fans.

Although, there are different kind of sports fan. A NASCAR fan is different from a football fan who is different from a baseball or basketball fan.

Everyone is a fan of something. I think if you walked into the Harvard Club, you might find MBA's discussing Wall Street and the stock market in the same way as football fans discuss the strengths and weaknesses of players and teams.

When you put these people together, you get a mob and that makes for stupidity. The more people in a room, the dumber the room is.

Which makes carpooling all the more dangerous.

Oh, and one more thing: another reason I like sports is because it's one area where liberals and conservatives can actually bond. Politics go right out the window among Red Sox fans, for example.

"By the way, if we concentrated more on art than sports, our society wouldn't be one whit better or wiser."

pop on over to the right-wing daily kos townhall.com and you'll find their war and political theories peppered with sports metaphors -- which proves they're one whit dumber.

you know what the main topic a the Harvard Club this week? It's "When't Manny coming back?"

and right now on fox is the season premiere of KING OF THE HILL where peggy and other sports fans become violent after their team loses. i sure hope they're not implying that sports fanaticism leads to mob violence, i tell you what...

Seriously, what the fuck happened to the Skins in the second half today?

Wells, I take this as a broader response to my query on the other thread about Into the Wild, and I'm not sure why you felt the need to justify an entire post to it. I was diligently teasing your opinion.
Still you're being way too defensive about this.

It's pretty myopic to think that just because you think sports are a waste of time that anyone who doesn't is obviously some sort of conservative beer swilling under-read redneck.

I vote for the best candidate (in Canada that means everyone's a liberal ;)), read as much as I can, watch any film that I can get to, and watch hockey and the occasional football game. And for what it's worth, my favourite band is Radiohead...and I may even sit down for a beer with you.

Really, to be a hard core movie buff, one must choose to live in a world of fantasy rather than the world of reality, especially if one chooses to work in film making or film critism for a living. Some one who works in argiculture or engineering or medicine or any number of other real world disciplines must constantly acknowledge that there are many factors in their work that are beyond their control, while say, a film critic, lives within the safety of a screen and three walls.
I'm not saying that a film buff can't have some ideas about reality, they get a glimpse of it through documentaries. But even the makers of documentaries limit the elements presented, allowing the film buff to live a cloistered existence.
Walking into your average theater, you will meet people that are much less atuned to the grave realities of life than you will meet if you go into the staff room of a hospital or an army barracks or an intercity rescue mission.
I'm not saying people who devote much of their lives to studying movies are less grounded in reality some other people...or yeah, I am.

Sorry Jeff, But I would have to count a night that I was able to laugh hysterically like a hyena every 75 seconds (whether in public or private) as a great motherfucking night. Maybe you should spend more passionate nights alone with your Billy Wilder boxed-set and a bottle of Astroglide and leave the rest of us to our baser entertainments. Backpedal all you like, but this post was irredeemably self-congratulatory. But mercy if you didn't garner plenty of hits from it! Looks like someone can afford another dinner for one at The Grill on the Alley.

Hey Jeffrey, why don't you ask Jett what he thought about Syracuse knocking off Louisville on Saturday?

A reiteration of my own: Jeffrey seems painfully out of his depth, and very, very limited, indeed, on anything other than movies.

Sports are about rivalries. Yankees vs. Red Sox, Cardinals vs. Cubs and so on. While I wouldn't name an Olympic sport after it, isn't this little pissing match between you and David Poland a rivalry of sorts? And what about the whole Oscar Balloon thing? Kind of reminds me of a betting pool even if there is no money exchanging hands.

Also who is typically sitting at the sidelines at a Laker's game? Jack Nicholson. While I don't think he's ever came out and declared an political affiliation I hardly think he would be a conservative. Woody Allen who does a good job I think of representing the typical Manhattan liberal is a huge Knicks fan and even cuts film production short to attend games. Spike Lee is a fan too....Mark Cuban owner of the Dallas Mavericks and avowed Basketball nut produced Depalma's Redacted....

Need I go on? Your broad generalizations are somewhat amusing but because you're so damn serious about them it makes you look ridiculous.

my god, the jocks are touchy.

go team!

I'm a liberal through and through and I love watching sports.

More and more, you seem to filter everything solely through your own perspective, JW. It's actually very right-wing of you.

Those yahoos at the ESPN site are so intellectually vapid. Now can we get back to talking about how hot Alicia Silverstone looks?

i always think of john waters hilarious anti-sports rant in SHOCK VALUE when he wonders why it's okay for every stranger to nudge him about the big game but not for him to say, "hey, didja see the new fassbinder?"

Ok, this is - by far - the most ignorant, ridiculous, arrogant and misinformed thought you've ever posted, Jeff. I am probably to the left of you politically, but I love sports. Do you know why? It isn't because my inner-Rove is poking his ugly little head out, it's because I love competition, both participating in it and watching it. The irony of your ridiculous assertion is that you watch and comment on the Oscar race as if it were a sport (hmm, wonder if there is any significance to the word "race" in that phrase?), yet you see actual sports as some sort of haven for mouth-breathers, which is not only insulting, it is completely incorrect.

Please, stick to things you have a clue about, such as hitting up directors for nudie pics and hating Peter Jackson. Sheesh...

I think the thing Jeff really fails to grasp is that sports allow people to leave behind the often exhausting mental aspects of their lives and thrive on pure emotion for a few hours. So when you see people in a bar screaming at a sporting event on TV, it hardly encompasses who they are. I went to one of the most stereotypically liberal colleges in the entire country (and well respected as a top tier institution) and yet during certain sporting events the student body would shed all of that intellect and just have fun. That's the whole point.

Frankly, these days, sports are far less predictable and more exciting than most movies. There's a lot more intellect involved in a good NFL game than the latest Michael Bay flick, that's for sure.

i went to one of the most liberal colleges in the world and i found it scary and pathetic how nationalistic and aggressive even liberal sports fans acted about "their" teams.

sometimes they set fires to cars and buildings because of their unbridled emotion. yippee.

Blue Jays 4, Evil Empire nada, sixth inning.

Sorry. This is a load of crap. I'm a huge sports fan and consider myself fairly well-rounded. Get off the generalizations. Calling me "inherently conservative" is a joke.

Wow, I just read this. Obviously, Wells is just piling all of the things he doesn't like together into a big heap and setting fire to it.

"I like football, and porno, and books about war..."

You've somehow mangled the definition of the term conservative...you're not alone, but that doesn't make it any less egregious...

...funny how the most ardent free market proponents would be labeled "conservative", but then at the same time those craving rules on a sports field can be splattered by the same brush... huh? Seems as though "conservative" has come to envelope any quality you deem undesirable no matter how inane or contradictory.

In the 8th, up-and-coming Nats 10, pathetic losers from Queens 3. Go, Cubs.

Sports aren't "conservative", they're masculine.

Unfortunately, liberal pundits seem determined to feminize and emasculate America, so it's not surprising that a diehard lefty like Jeff would feel the need to associate something masculine as "conservative". He's right.

"Unfortunately, liberal pundits seem determined to feminize and emasculate America"

oh, you're such a tough guy. liberals are the ones who take stands and get their heads busted. they also fight wars.

but today's conservatives have other priorities.

go sign up for iraq sweetbubba. prove you're a man. drinking beer in front of your tv screaming for your team isn't masculinity.

Wow finally a post that compelled me to actually make an account.

Jeff, if you're gonna pull in Albert Einstein as some sort of reference/backup for asserting how sports fans are "naturally deferential to "order."", and that "Sport happens in a definable, quantifiable world", you really ought to make sure you understand what you're actually saying. Because to people who know a little bit about Einstein, your statement is rather comical in its error.

Einstein, in fact, was all about ORDER. You never heard his famous quote when asked about why he does not support Quantum Mechanics, "God does not play dice."? His entire life quest was to find The Theory of Everything (ToE, or Unified Field Theory), to find the "rules" that describe all the workings of the cosmos. If you're gonna assert that sports fans love rules and order, I'm not sure bringing up Einstein as some sort of an example of the polar opposite works for you.

>go sign up for iraq sweetbubba. prove you're a man. drinking beer in front of your tv screaming for your team isn't masculinity

I'm not a man, nor American, but your ignorance and crudeness is certainly typical of American lefties. Be more of a stereotype.