I always hated sports. I got caught in some negative feedback loop where I never practiced so I was never any good; I was never any good so I never practiced.
Also it didn't help that I had no siblings or neighbor kids around, kicking a ball around by yourself gets boring quite quickly. I've never been fast or coordinated enough to catch things reliably, it's like my brain didn't come with some physics module that's standard feature on most models. And due to when my birthday fell, I was always one of the youngest kids in my grade, which didn't help either.
Sports really suck if you're at the bottom end of the curve. Usually I ended up waiting or something to happen or running around to various places. On the rare occasion I had a chance to make a difference in the outcome, I usually screwed it up. Nobody wanted me on their team, and I didn't enjoy playing.
I'm not really unhappy; if I had a chance to design the "character sheet" I was born with, I don't know that I'd do anything different. In RPG's and such, I tend to prefer tricky builds that are unbalanced and optimized for unconventional strategies.
You're talking about playing sports. The article is about watching sports. Or, since it's not just watching but talking about, identifying with, and generally obsessing over, fanboying sports.
The two are, i think, not at all related. Indeed, if we accept the analysis in the article, they are opposites - fandom is about subsuming your identity into a herd defined by its submission to some set of idols, whereas participation is about asserting your identity as an individual or member of a team defined by your (intended) domination over your rivals.
Also it didn't help that I had no siblings or neighbor kids around, kicking a ball around by yourself gets boring quite quickly. I've never been fast or coordinated enough to catch things reliably, it's like my brain didn't come with some physics module that's standard feature on most models. And due to when my birthday fell, I was always one of the youngest kids in my grade, which didn't help either.
Sports really suck if you're at the bottom end of the curve. Usually I ended up waiting or something to happen or running around to various places. On the rare occasion I had a chance to make a difference in the outcome, I usually screwed it up. Nobody wanted me on their team, and I didn't enjoy playing.
I'm not really unhappy; if I had a chance to design the "character sheet" I was born with, I don't know that I'd do anything different. In RPG's and such, I tend to prefer tricky builds that are unbalanced and optimized for unconventional strategies.