The most hated sport

[ursus arctos]

The most hated sport

And yet it was a staple of New York State physical education classes for decades.

[Mumpo]

The most hated sport

Darts. It's darts. Darts is the answer.

DARTS.

[diggedy derek]

The most hated sport

How on earth could anyone not be fond of darts

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The most hated sport

Is there really that much to hate in polo? I mean, I understand the class war thing, but if polo didn't exist, the silver spoon types who play it would probably be doing something worse. It's the players not the game that's hated, surely?

I have to say that if "motorsport" counts as sport then Formula One is a hands down winner for me. I hate it 10 times as much as all other dislikable sports put together. Partly because it is so intrinsically loathsome and tedious in so many ways, but also because it is vomited all over half the fucking television channels, plus being the subject of far too many questions on Pointless thanks to that wanker Richard Osman's infatuation with it.

[laverte]

The most hated sport

Amor de Cosmos wrote: The brightest kid in my class also happened to be quite overweight. As a result, he was picked on and bullied unmercifully. He frequently ended up in the ring with his worse tormentors, who took great glee in pounding him relentlessly under the approving eye of the gym teacher.

The good old days. I'm guessing safety precautions were not high on the agenda.

When did gym teachers start to be recruited from among the non-sadistic? Mine were very indulgent. They did usually make me play in goal in hockey, but that was a kindness, really, because it meant I didn't have to do much apart from try to keep warm and apologise when I conceded a goal.

I would have enjoyed square dancing. Is/was it a big thing in schools all over the US? I associate it with the South for some reason, perhaps because of the music. My school was run by an Austrian order, so we had to learn to dance the polka. My friend, who I danced with, was even less suited to leading than I would have been, but she was several inches taller so lead she did. I remember spending a lot of time on the ground.

It's remarkable how often kids were given set roles in PE according to nothing but how tall and broad they were. What a waste.

[Amor de Cosmos]

The most hated sport

The good old days. I'm guessing safety precautions were not high on the agenda.

When did gym teachers start to be recruited from among the non-sadistic? Mine were very indulgent.

The ones at the secondary modern I attended (after getting kicked out of the grammar school mentioned above) were OK. Maybe because they were a few years younger, and it was a couple of years later. Also the grammar school was very old (Elizabethan) and its traditionalism was reflected in all the worst ways.

It's remarkable how often kids were given set roles in PE according to nothing but how tall and broad they were. What a waste.

Yeah. Well, the human wastage due to educational assumptions extends way beyond PE I'm afraid.

[Bored Of Education]

The most hated sport

It's got to be Formula One. Not only is it the most elitist sport to participate in but it is also incredibly boring. Polo is elitist but, as I love horses, could probably enjoy a game (again with dressage but I really would have to have loads of beer on to enjoy it). I don't like American football but I am sure I could sit through a live game if I had to. Obviously, bullfighting, hare-coarsing, fox-hunting and that are much more vile than F! even but don't have the acceptability that the latter has. There's Superbikes and whatnot which I find boring but when Carl Fogerty is passed over for SPOTY when he is obviously excellent at what he does, you have to feel some sympathy.

[San Bernardhinault]

The most hated sport

Of the sports I've physically been to watch, dressage is massively the dullest. It's quite frighteningly boring.

But I don't hate it. I hated playing rugby at school (and I hate the way members of the stupid-English-upper-middle-classes try and make supporting it similar to supporting football (except entirely artificially with none of the visceral stuff that makes supporting football feel like a real thing), while at the same time despising football and football supporters). But I don't actually hate it these days. I can get pleasure from watching rugby.

Golf is at least a fun game to play, which counteracts its shittiness as a sport to watch. Although the shittiness of most pro golfers is quite astounding.

For me, I think what I find most offensive is US college football, with all its lies and fake pretensions about being amateur and being about education of the athletes while being utterly ubiquitous (arguably more so than pro football), and utterly professional, but without even the scant safeguards and massive rewards that are available in the NFL. It's vile, brutal, absolutely everywhere, and it seems to somehow be exempt from the criticism the NFL (rightly) gets.

[ad hoc]

The most hated sport

Bloodsports would obviously win here if they were actually sports. But they're not because sport is about competition and "man vs fish" is not a competition. No amount of people saying "bloodsports are sports because we say they are" makes them sports. So, most hated? Yes. Sports? No.

Despite my instant answer in the first instance, nobody really hates polo, because nobody normal ever sees polo or encounters polo. It's not on TV, the results are not reported in the papers, and I suspect that the aristocracy just see polo as a way of providing vague entertainment on a summer afternoon in front of which they can drink Pimms and wear hats.

Like others, rugby was my most hated sport at school, because we had to play it and it was a fucking miserable game. Cold, wet, violent and only fun for the big muscly kids. The class hatred of it only came when I went to University and I could see it was the sport around which the braying public schoolboys congregated. I don't hate it any more especially, having as an adult met quite normal RU fans. (Though rarely normal English RU fans, I have to say). RL is better as a game though.

So we get down to the ones that are actively harmful in some way. Formula one, for example, or golf. My mum used to play golf when she was young though, and her parents did too, and it was obviously something they all enjoyed (and a completely normal pastime across classes at that time, at least where they lived in Sheffield). So, I can;t really hate that either.

F1 then, or any sport in which animals are harmed for the enjoyment and amusement of humans.

[Cesar Rodriguez]

The most hated sport

San Bernardhinault wrote: For me, I think what I find most offensive is US college football, with all its lies and fake pretensions about being amateur and being about education of the athletes while being utterly ubiquitous (arguably more so than pro football), and utterly professional, but without even the scant safeguards and massive rewards that are available in the NFL. It's vile, brutal, absolutely everywhere, and it seems to somehow be exempt from the criticism the NFL (rightly) gets.

Great post.

I like college basketball which might seem a tad hypocritical but at least the best college basketball players are in and out within a year and on to the pros to make their money. Then those that stay all four years are not graduating having had their bell rung one too many times.

Oh, one last thing, college football coaches are, by my reckoning, the sleaziest people in US sport, certified goons. The Meyers, the Saban's and such are not the type of people I would ever entrust my kids with.

[arthur924]

The most hated sport

Like others on this thread it would be rugby union.
My hate stemmed from having to play it at school. Unbelievably though I went to a local comp which prioritized rugby over all other sports.
The PE teacher was a steroid fuelled Geordie who barely seemed to acknowledge football-once telling off a kid for wearing an 'Aston Villa top' instead of the standard school PE kit- he was wearing an Arsenal shirt.
The Rugby team were quite good but it was packed full of the over confident, bigger, pseudo bully types. They always got tonked when coming up against the toff schools though. There seemed a bubble around my school that Rugby was king no other sports came close to it. It wasn't just me but most of the people were turned off for the same reason. This atmosphere would be akin to one I would imagine is similar to a high school gridiron team. The players got the best looking girls, were generally heroes around the school with the teachers, the team and hangers on were one big clique, even getting dispensation with their studies.
They even used to pack your shopping bags in the local Safeway in order to fund their annual losing 'tour' to Canada
In my adult life I detest some rugby followers for the incessant jealously that their sport is not as popular, as well as the smugness.

[VTTBoscombe]

The most hated sport

I can take an interest in most sports, even golf and F1; but I hate the fans of many sports who take a delight it seems in choosing it as an alternative to Football, and being very snooty about it.

In my experience Rugby fans are the worst in this, posting pictures of maimed Rugger players limping on manfully covered in blood, usually with a caption showing Ronaldo doing several twists in agony to a broken fingernail or some gush. As in real men don't play football.
They get very irate if I ask them if it was real blood.
Trouble is I like Rugby so can't say I hate it - just many of the fans.

[Me Old Flower]

The most hated sport

Rugby Union for me.

My father was banned from RU for having professionalized himself by playing amateur rugby league for his university in the 1970s.

I've no doubt things have changed since 1995, but the sheer hypocrisy of RU prior to that (expenses/boot money = fine, but payment for broken time = illegal), plus the French RU working with the Vichy government during WW2 and Union's complex history with Apartheid South Africa make it a hard sport to love.

[Ray de Galles]

The most hated sport

If we were to choose most hated sport based on our attitude to it's administrators and/or many of it's fans then football would be the obvious candidate, and football's my favourite sport.

[Ray de Galles]

The most hated sport

Evariste Euler Gauss wrote:

I have to say that if "motorsport" counts as sport then Formula One is a hands down winner for me. I hate it 10 times as much as all other dislikable sports put together. Partly because it is so intrinsically loathsome and tedious in so many ways, but also because it is vomited all over half the fucking television channels, plus being the subject of far too many questions on Pointless thanks to that wanker Richard Osman's infatuation with it.

Is Osman actually in to F1? That doesn't come across on his regular 'Fighting Talk' appearances when the subject is usually subtly mocked whenever it is brought up. He seems to have a very wide range of sporting interest but majoring in football and snooker.

[Ray de Galles]

The most hated sport

San Bernardhinault wrote:

But I don't hate it. I hated playing rugby at school (and I hate the way members of the stupid-English-upper-middle-classes try and make supporting it similar to supporting football (except entirely artificially with none of the visceral stuff that makes supporting football feel like a real thing), while at the same time despising football and football supporters...

Do you think rugby entirely lacks "the visceral stuff that makes supporting football the real thing"? If so, I'd invite you to sit next to me for the England v Wales game at The Heart of Darkness on Saturday. There is no sporting fixture more viscerally partisan than that for me and many others.

Do all the people who hate rugby because "I was forced to do it at school" have the same attitude towards literature and history, out of interest?

.

[ad hoc]

The most hated sport

I can't speak for all of them, but for me, no. I quite enjoyed literature and history, and more pertinently they didn't seem to be part of the curriculum just so that some psychotic lunatic could basically use it as an opportunity to work out his issues on weedy children.

[Ray de Galles]

The most hated sport

You clearly didn't have the same history teacher as me.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

The most hated sport

Harry Truscott wrote:

But I don't hate it. I hated playing rugby at school (and I hate the way members of the stupid-English-upper-middle-classes try and make supporting it similar to supporting football (except entirely artificially with none of the visceral stuff that makes supporting football feel like a real thing), while at the same time despising football and football supporters...

Do you think rugby entirely lacks "the visceral stuff that makes supporting football the real thing"? If so, I'd invite you to sit next to me for the England v Wales game at The Heart of Darkness on Saturday. There is no sporting fixture more viscerally partisan than that for me and many others.

Do all the people who hate rugby because "I was forced to do it at school" have the same attitude towards literature and history, out of interest?

.

In my case rugby would also be neart the top of my list -not the sport itself, but the sociological bubble surrunding it- not because I had to play it at school, but for opposite reasons - to me it belongs to the same alien upper-middle class English world of Just William, cricket, Stephen Fry and the Bullingdon Club.

I would challenge those who don't consider motorsports 'proper sports' to try one lap in a Moto GP bike or indeed an F1 car.

[Ray de Galles]

The most hated sport

You could challenge them to pilot a space shuttle but that's not a sport either.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

The most hated sport

Harry Truscott wrote: You could challenge them to pilot a space shuttle but that's not a sport either.

If your reluctance is based on a supposed lack of physicallity, you're wrong. You would be more on point questioning table tennis or cricket.

[Ray de Galles]

The most hated sport

I don't think anyone's objection to F1 is based on a lack of physicality.

[Haddock]

The most hated sport

Roderick Spodes black shorts wrote: to me it belongs to the same alien upper-middle class English world of Just William, cricket, Stephen Fry and the Bullingdon Club.

I cede to no person in my chip-on-the-shoulder class-warriorship but I would put Richmal Crompton along PG Wodehouse (creator of the original Roderick Spode, for those who don't know) as a comic genius. She was a product of the Home Counties she grew up in, for sure, but she um, transcends all that.

Cricket's not upper-middle class in the North, and all.

Anyway
Golf: shite
Rugby Union: shiter
F1: shitest

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

The most hated sport

Haddock wrote: Cricket's not upper-middle class in the North, and all.

Fair point, but around 70% of any Test team will be privately educated, compared to 7% of the general population, so all in all my point still stands.

[Bored Of Education]

The most hated sport

VTTBoscombe wrote:
They get very irate if I ask them if it was real blood.

Good line, I will use that.